My Consorts, Please Rein In Your Powers - Chapter 2

Murong Jin named me Consort Li—“Beautiful.”

Straight to the point. I liked it.

I’d have liked “Empress” even better.

But I wasn’t in a hurry.

Other people were.

From the day I entered the palace, the emperor missed court for thirty days running.

Day and night, he tumbled between the sheets with my paper figures, oblivious to everything else.

There were plenty of dusty books in his study, anyway. Whenever one figure tore, I simply cut out a few more.

The look in Murong Jin’s eyes grew more besotted by the day. He thought me learned in both ancient and modern matters, endlessly obedient—the perfect woman, born just for him.

“My beloved consort seems a little more wan than before. Have I been too unrestrained?”

His long fingers curled around the ends of my hair, his smile teasing.

I couldn’t smile.

He was getting fed.

I was going hungry every day.

In this enormous harem, never mind virgins—Murong Jin was the only man with the necessary equipment.

There were guards in the front halls, but they were always in formation or standing watch. Not one alone.

Besides, I had refined tastes.

They hadn’t a trace of scholarly elegance. Not my type at all.

This couldn’t go on.

The Way of Carefree Freedom.

How was I supposed to attain it if I wasn’t having any carefree fun?

The approaching full moon was ideal for harmonizing yin and yang.

I was absolutely going out for an extra meal.

Naturally, this was when the ministers started watching me.

Memorials swarmed into the Hall of Diligent Governance like locusts, begging the emperor to safeguard his imperial health and put affairs of state first. They took a swipe at me along the way: a vulgar, lowborn demoness defiling the imperial bed.

I picked my ear.

More than two hundred years had passed since I toppled the previous dynasty.

Why were they still using the same insults?

Had literature made no progress?

Chief Minister Pei Yan led the petitions. Floods in the south, drought in the north—at such a troubled time, the emperor should redouble his efforts to govern, not drown himself in private pleasures.

Murong Jin had never been good-emperor material.

His mother died early, and his father paid him little attention.

The low-ranking consort who adopted him constantly used him to compete for favor while allowing the maids and eunuchs to mistreat him.

He ascended the throne full of hatred and resentment. That very night, he burned down the palace where he’d grown up. His adoptive mother and every attendant inside died.

Afterward, he emptied the treasury on grand building projects and lived a life of extravagant debauchery to make up for a childhood of contempt and abuse.

If he hadn’t been grudgingly willing to listen to Lu Rong, Great Yan would already have been on the verge of collapse, rebellions rising everywhere.

Seeing him frown over Pei Yan’s memorial, I slipped my arms around his neck.

My turn for a little pillow talk.

“Those who take Your Majesty’s pay should shoulder Your Majesty’s burdens. If you must personally handle every matter from one end of the realm to the other, what use are all those civil and military officials?”

For a moment, his pupils lost focus.

Among foxes, red nine-tailed foxes had the most powerful arts of enchantment.

But we didn’t create things out of nothing.

We merely magnified a person’s true likes and dislikes a hundredfold, a thousandfold.

He tapped his temple with his knuckles and tossed Pei Yan’s memorial to the eunuch standing beside him.

“What year hasn’t had floods and droughts? Tell Chief Minister Pei that if he needs me to intervene in such trifles, Great Yan has no shortage of talented men. He might as well resign and make room for one.”