The Making of a Palace Intrigue Victor - Chapter 1

The Imperial Noble Consort was dying.

She was not even fifty yet-not even at the latest statutory retirement age.

That word, already unfamiliar to me, suddenly barged into my mind, making me involuntarily reveal a strange smile.

Shen Junrou, lying on the bed, asked me softly, “What are you smiling about?”

I shook my head. “This servant was thinking of things from the past.”

Her face, worn down by the illnesses brought on by repeated childbirth and miscarriages, looked far more haggard than her actual age.

For a long time, she had relied on taking cinnabar to ease the pain, but now even large doses of cinnabar could no longer suppress the agony deep in her bones.

The imperial physician would only prescribe some harmless, useless medicines.

She was almost dead.

I found some flowers shaped like corn poppy flowers, scraped out some black paste, and gave it to her to take.

“I was thinking of the first time we met.”

After taking opium, Shen Junrou’s face finally showed a peaceful smile. “Back then, you really were stupid!”

I smiled faintly. Wasn’t I?

I was just an ordinary corporate slave. After transmigrating overnight, I thought I could carve out a world for myself, but I never expected that ordinary people simply could not survive in a feudal dynasty.

I had once mocked myself as a beast of burden, but I never imagined that here, people were not even worth as much as beasts of burden.

I transmigrated into Xu Qing, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a minor clerk in the Ministry of Revenue from the Xu family. Here, I had only two paths to choose from.

One was to marry. The other was to enter the palace.

To marry meant I would be bound to a man I had never met. I would know nothing of his appearance or character, yet on the day we met, we would have to become intimate. I would have to experience pregnancy and childbirth in an environment with extremely poor medical conditions, and from then on be imprisoned in a tiny courtyard, my life and death in the hands of others.

Compared to such a terrifying future, entering the palace was instead the better choice.

At the very least, I could escape that cramped little courtyard, the endless embroidery work, and the unkind gazes of my family.

I resolutely became a palace maid, and in my heart, I had once secretly fantasized about whether I might chance upon the young Emperor and begin an unparalleled romance, or rely on my modern, progressive thinking to create a new era.

Unfortunately, my hopes were shattered by the slap that landed heavily on my face.

All because I had stepped forward to protect a timid little palace maid.

“She wasn’t the one who broke this.” I pointed at the sandalwood rack in front of us.

The little palace maid looked at me timidly, tears brimming in her eyes, looking utterly pitiful.

The senior palace maids before us sneered at the little palace maid. “Then tell us, who broke it?”

Her face was fair and clean, her voice as faint as a mosquito’s buzz. Her fingers, red and swollen from being stepped on, pointed at me. “It-it was her.”

I froze. This little palace maid knew full well that the rack had already been broken when it was delivered.

Her voice actually grew louder and louder. “It was her!”

“The senior palace maid heard it too. She said it wasn’t this servant, so naturally it was she herself who broke it,” the little palace maid said urgently. “If senior palace maid wants to punish someone, punish her. If she wasn’t the one who broke it, why would she speak up for this servant?”

The senior palace maids’ expressions turned mocking. “Is that so? Then punish Xu Qing with twenty strikes of the paddle.”

They looked at me with smiling eyes. “This is what kindness gets you in the palace.”

When the paddle first struck my body, it hurt. Later, I felt nothing at all.

My knees scraped against the stone slabs as they dragged me like a dead pig to the back of the storeroom.

They left me there to fend for myself.

The little palace maid never appeared again. She was probably rejoicing that she had escaped disaster.

I was hot and thirsty, my back burning fiercely, yet my mind had grown somewhat unclear.

When I woke again, someone was gently wiping my forehead with a piece of soft cloth.

Shen Junrou’s fingers were already very rough at that time.

I had once spoken up for her too.

With my foolish recklessness, I had saved quite a few people.

But only Shen Junrou, when I was thrown into the storeroom, came with wound medicine to visit me.

In a feudal dynasty, there was no power-fantasy heroine novel.

There was only survival.