The Cold Palace Maid's Path to Empress - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I’ve been cruel and ruthless, willing to do whatever it took, ever since I was little.

That was what my grandmother said about me.

Her reason was that I had eaten two extra sweet potatoes she had cooked for her precious grandson.

My father gave me a beating and ordered me to stand in the corner and reflect on my mistakes.

I looked at my thin, scrawny reflection in the puddle on the ground, then compared it to my father’s tall, powerful build, and came to a conclusion:

My main disadvantage was the gap in strength.

If I wanted strength, I had to eat more. And next time, I would still dare to do it.

“She’s going to be traded for a bride price someday. How dare she eat meat!”

I never reflected on anything.

Since I was going to be traded for a bride price, that meant I was more useful than my two-year-old brother.

So why did that pig-fat infant get to eat until his mouth shone with grease every day, while I was so thin my skin clung to my bones, yet could only drink the soup he left behind?

It was as if, in this family, my brother was a person, and I was livestock.

I went to snatch the meat my brother couldn’t finish, and my grandmother slapped me so hard that half my face swelled up high.

A sharp ringing burst through my ears.

Unable to endure it any longer, I viciously sank my teeth into the old woman’s arm.

No matter how my father and my eldest uncle beat me, I refused to let go. I bit off a chunk of flesh.

I chewed that piece of meat in big mouthfuls, my mouth full of the reek of blood, and forced it down.

Then I glared at my father and bared my teeth in a huge grin.

They decided I was insane.

An insane girl couldn’t earn them a bride price.

The imperial palace put up a notice saying they were recruiting innocent commoner girls to serve as the lowest-ranking sweeping and cleaning maids.

My father sold me and earned 20 taels of silver.

He was very happy. At last, he had gotten rid of me.

I was very happy too. Surely the imperial palace couldn’t let me go hungry.

But after I entered the palace, I discovered that going hungry there was truly possible.

When I entered the palace, I was eight years old, and I was assigned to the remotest, most dilapidated Cold Palace.

When the other girls were led away, they cried because they missed home.

When the matron led me to the Cold Palace, I was beside myself with excitement.

The matron couldn’t stand the damp, moldy smell of the Cold Palace. Covering her nose, she saw my excited face and sneered, “You’re this happy about going to the Cold Palace? What an idiot.”

I had heard plenty of worse things at home. Grinning, I sidled up to her and asked ingratiatingly, “Matron, can you eat your fill in the palace?”

She rolled her eyes and laughed disdainfully. “So all you want is a mouthful of food.”

What else would I want?

After I entered the Cold Palace, the door was immediately locked tight from the outside. The matron said that was the rule.

I quickly asked how I was supposed to eat. The matron impatiently tapped the dog hole at the base of the wall. “They’ll shove it in through here.”

I obediently swept fallen leaves in the Cold Palace for half the day. When it was time for meals, a young eunuch pinched his nose and pushed a food box inside.

I opened it, and a sour, rotten stench rushed up to my nose.

I hurriedly stuck my head out through the dog hole and called to the young eunuch, “Sir, the food has gone bad.”

He turned back with a sway of his waist and rubbed his fingers together at me.

I didn’t understand what he meant.

In a thin, shrill voice, like a duck, he said, “No money, and you still expect good food?”

So even in the richest imperial palace under heaven, one still might not get enough to eat.

I smiled at him, baring my canine teeth.

“I have money. Sir, reach your hand over here.”

He gave a cold snort through his nose and stuck his hand into the dog hole.

I struck out suddenly and grabbed his hand hard.

“If there’s no good food to eat, then I’ll eat your flesh!”

My sharp teeth sank into the young eunuch’s arm.

I took out the medicine bottle I carried with me. It was my mother’s keepsake.

My mother had once been a female physician, but after she married my father, the whole family forbade her from showing her face in public to practice medicine.

Bored with nothing to do, she taught me medicine instead.

My father insisted on having a son. My mother gave birth to two children in succession, and in the end, she died from a difficult labor.

I scattered the medicinal powder onto the young eunuch’s wound, and an ear-piercing scream rang out.

Like a pig being slaughtered.

Soul-Eating Grass could make a person itch deep into their bones.

I wasn’t afraid of him reporting me at all.

Who cared about people like us? We were so insignificant that anyone could crush us like ants.

If he reported me, the ending would certainly be both of us losing our lives.

He cared most about his own life, and that was exactly why I could control him.

Sure enough, he scrambled away in a panic, then before long, scrambled back again.

The young eunuch brought me a plate of pig’s head meat.

Afraid it might be poisoned, I made him eat a piece first.

Only after I saw that nothing happened to him did I start eating.

Relying on the medicinal powder my mother had given me, the young eunuch never dared shortchange me again.

I originally thought my days would continue on like that.

Then one day, without warning, the person delivering my meals changed.

The new eunuch was very rigid, but he didn’t cut back on my food either.

From him, I learned two pieces of news:

“The previous young eunuch is gone.”

“Consort Yu has been granted death, and the palace city is under lockdown.”