The Empress Resigns - Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Outside the window hung a bright full moon. Inside the room sat two lonely ghosts.

Consort He and I stared at each other. This whole affair was so absurd that neither of us knew where to begin.

“So, would you say we’ve come back from the dead, or is this just our final flash before we kick the bucket?”

He Hongye sighed helplessly. “Look at our shadows. We don’t exactly look fake.”

Fair enough.

I asked He Hongye, “What do you plan to do next?”

“In my last life, my father and brother were implicated in a crime. In this life, I’ll have my family prepare early, just in case.”

She glanced at me in surprise. “Your father will agree to that?”

I lowered my eyes and smiled. “That will depend on my ability.”

She arched a brow and let out a cold laugh.

“In our last life, didn’t Li Yuan use my entire family’s lives to pave the way for my cousin? Since we are sisters after all, how could I bear to make her wait so long in this life?

“I intend to have my cousin enter the palace early to serve His Majesty.”

We looked at each other and smiled. “As husband and wife, if His Majesty has a girl he likes, it isn’t as if I, the Empress, can’t tolerate her. Why hide her away?”

While we pawns fought ourselves bloody in the harem, what right did He Mianmian have to sit back and reap the rewards?

“Your cousin is just a minor detail. She isn’t worth fearing.

“Our Emperor is the real problem.”

He Hongye curled her lips coldly. “We were nothing more than pieces in His Majesty’s hand.

“My personal lady official was afraid I wasn’t dead enough, so she held me down and forced another half cup of wine down my throat.”

I froze. For us consorts of the inner palace, our personal lady officials were supposed to be our own people. With He Hongye’s caution, there was no way she would have kept someone unsafe by her side.

“You mean-”

“She was assigned to me by the Emperor from the start.”

Li Yuan, you truly are less than human.

“With both of us dead, wouldn’t His Majesty’s beloved have a perfectly smooth road ahead of her?”

“He used our lives to pave her way.”

He Hongye tapped her scarlet-stained fingernails against the table, one tap after another. “Honestly. What a devoted emperor and his pretty little sweetheart. I’m so moved I could cry.”

I picked up my handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of my eyes. “Who says otherwise?”

“Since I’ve been given this chance, I will not let Li Yuan or my cousin live peacefully in this life. When I act, you’d better not get in my way.”

Me: ?

How was I supposed to respond to that?

“Who has the free time to get in your way? If you hadn’t come looking for trouble with me over and over, would I have bothered with you?”

He Hongye’s beautiful eyes widened. Ignoring all rules of rank, she raised a hand and pointed right at my nose.

“The year I first entered the palace, when I fell while dancing-wasn’t that something you had arranged?”

“Absolute nonsense!”

I would not take the blame for that!

“No matter which of you won His Majesty’s favor, I was still the Empress. Why would I care how brilliantly you danced?”

She looked at me suspiciously. “In the Jian’an third year, when I lost my child, that wasn’t you either?”

“What does that have to do with me? When you were pregnant, I didn’t even dare pass by the gate of your palace!”

She leaned back in her chair, at a loss. Only after a long while did she say, “But I always thought it was you.”

“Right. Haitang investigated all of those things. And what Haitang meant, wasn’t that the same as what His Majesty meant?”

Haitang was He Hongye’s personal palace maid.

The moment she said that, I understood too.

Li Yuan, as if that mountain of court affairs weren’t enough, you had to personally step in and stir the harem into unrest as well. Emperors really were not ordinary people.

True, He Hongye and I had fought for so long, and privately, I had done it partly to put Li Yuan at ease. But who could have imagined that if there was no conflict, Li Yuan would go out of his way to create one?

If the timing weren’t so wrong, I would have told him one thing: impressive.