The Amnesiac Blank Period - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When I rushed to Qinzheng Hall, I heard my father and Li Jingye arguing inside.

In all my years, I had never seen my father so furious.

“I told you not to perform a backflip, but you wouldn’t listen! You just had to do it!”

“Well, look at you now. You’ve flipped yourself into an idiot.”

“And you even said you were going to use this move to coax my daughter-”

Li Jingye sat on the dragon throne, a fresh red bruise still throbbing on his forehead. His eyes were vacant for a moment before he finally snapped back to reality and cut my father off.

“Me? I, the Son of Heaven, performed a backflip for you, the Prime Minister?”

“Would anyone believe such a thing?”

My father shot him a disgruntled look. “Indeed, no one would dare believe it, yet you dared to do it.”

“If I hadn’t stopped you, you were originally planning to kowtow to me, too.”

Li Jingye’s eyes widened, his face full of disbelief. “Why don’t you just say you’re my biological father?”

My father fell silent for a few seconds. “Not your biological father, but at most your father-in-law.”

Li Jingye’s first reaction upon hearing this was to shout, “Guards! Throw this fraud… bah, this madman out of Qinzheng Hall!”

The eunuchs standing by immediately dropped to their knees, their voices trembling as they tried to stop him.

“…Your Majesty, the Prime Minister is indeed the Empress’s father. Have you forgotten it all?”

Li Jingye exploded instantly.

“How could I possibly appoint that Old Fox’s daughter as my Empress?! Did he force me into it?”

“Wait, since when did I even have an Empress?”

At those words, my father’s remaining few whiskers bristled with rage, and he began to speak with biting sarcasm.

“Oh, I wonder who it was? When I refused to marry my daughter to him, he brought the Imperial Censors with him every day to perform the ‘shattering a boulder on one’s chest’ stunt right in front of me.”

“Heh, ‘the Son of Heaven.'”

“The only reason this country is still standing is that the late Emperor built such a solid foundation!”

Li Jingye still didn’t believe it.

“Are you still holding a grudge because I clipped your beard until it was bald when I was a child and glued it to your bald head? To think you’d make your daughter my Empress… No, I want to depose the Empress!”

The moment I heard him say “depose the Empress,” my steps into the hall faltered.

The Gilt Hairpin tucked into my hair swayed and clattered because of my loss of composure, as if it were crying out in protest on my behalf.

The worry that had been weighing on my heart transformed into a surge of grievance, rushing to my eyes.

Tears fell silently, like pearls from a broken string.

My disheveled appearance happened to catch Li Jingye’s gaze as he looked up at the sound.

The vast palace fell silent for a heartbeat, followed by the sound of him sharply sucking in a breath.

He stared straight at me.

His eyes, which were usually deep and inscrutable in front of his ministers, were now wide and round.

That look in his eyes… it was a bit like when he saw a plate of roasted mutton, fresh from the Imperial Kitchen, sizzling with oil and steam-bright and unwavering.

His handsome, majestic face now held a hint of silliness.

Just as my father’s whiskers were about to bristle again in preparation for another round of insults, Li Jingye suddenly slammed his hand down on the armrest of the dragon throne and made a loud proclamation:

“This one is good!”

“I want to make her my Empress!”

Me: ???

To this, my father had only one thing to say:

“The late Emperor’s foundation was indeed built far too solidly.”