She had been born in a distant water town and had learned medicine from her mother since childhood.
Back when the Emperor was still the Crown Prince, he had been ordered to travel to the water town to control the floods.
After the floods came the plague.
She and her mother treated the people, while the Crown Prince assisted at their side, doing everything himself.
The young man and young woman had both begun to awaken to love, and they were drawn to each other.
After the Crown Prince returned to the capital, he petitioned the Emperor for an imperial marriage decree.
She became the Crown Prince's secondary consort.
When the Crown Prince ascended the throne as Emperor, she was named Noble Consort, favored above all six palaces.
She bore the Emperor a daughter—the round-faced girl from earlier, named Meng Ying.
When Meng Ying was five, her hometown suffered another flood. Worried for her family, she could neither eat nor sleep in peace.
The Emperor pitied her and permitted her to return home for a visit.
Thirty li from her hometown, she saw a man lying by the roadside, covered in blood.
She ordered her people to save him. Though she knew that, as a consort, she ought to avoid unfamiliar men, she was also a healer.
She brought the man to her ancestral home.
In the intervals between treating injured and sick fellow townspeople, she also tended to him with all her heart.
The man woke, and there was something wrong with the way he looked at her.
She tried her best to avoid him, intending to have her father persuade him to leave once he had fully recovered.
Yet not only did he refuse to leave, he appeared in her room one night while she, exhausted after a day of work, was bathing.
She called for help.
But the serving maids outside had been immobilized. They could hear, but could not move.
They could only make faint, muffled cries.
With another point of his finger, the maids could no longer cry out.
Empress Chu wept and cursed, telling him to get out.
Not only did he refuse to leave, he immobilized her and forcibly violated her.
For the next month, he came every night.
Only after a month did he leave. He even proudly announced his identity, left behind a token, and said that in ten years, his wife should have ascended. She could then come find him, and he would grant her the status of a concubine.
If she bore him a child, she could become a favored concubine.
She only wanted to die.
The rope would snap when she tried to hang herself.
When she threw herself into the river, the River God would catch her.
Whenever she jumped from a cliff, she would somehow fly back up.
Poison had no effect on her at all.
Instead, she was found to be pregnant.
She tried every possible way to abort the child, yet never succeeded.
When the Emperor saw that she had not returned for so long, he wrote to urge her back.
How could she still have the face to see him?
She delayed again and again.
The Emperor could wait no longer and came personally to fetch her.
At the time, a vast procession of officials high and low, guards, palace maids, and attendants arrived.
The high-spirited Emperor stepped down from his dragon carriage, only to see her slightly rounded belly.
She had been away from the capital for half a year. She should not have been this far along.
In the Emperor's fury, blood flowed for a thousand li.
Her entire clan was slaughtered. Not even a live chicken remained within ten li.
The maidservants she had brought with her were all beheaded.
She was brought back to the palace, where the Emperor used every sort of prescription to destroy the child, but none succeeded.
The Emperor finally realized something was amiss and asked her what had happened.
After she explained everything, the Emperor was ashamed.
But when she had watched with her own eyes as the Emperor killed her parents, brothers, and sisters, her heart had already died.
She requested to enter the Cold Palace.
The Emperor sent Meng Ying to keep her company.
She gave birth to Meng Shiwan in the Cold Palace.
Perhaps because she had been tormented too fiercely in the womb, Meng Shiwan was somewhat foolish and dull-witted.
Three years ago, she ran out of the Cold Palace, was bullied by the other princesses, and fell into the lotus pond. When she woke again, she had suddenly become lucid.
Meng Anli paused slightly as she peeled a grape. "She fell into the water and woke up no longer foolish?"
Empress Chu nodded. "After learning of her own background, she was very happy. She said she wanted to find her father. I tried to dissuade her, telling her how terrifying Meng Mingde was, and how difficult the circumstances were for a child who was half human, half beast.
"But she said, 'My fate is mine, not Heaven's. I started with such misery, so I must have been handed a script for rising against the odds. I should be a beloved child of the Heavenly Dao—otherwise, why couldn't the child be aborted no matter how many times they tried?
"'So what if this is cultivation? So what if Gods and Devils abound, storms gather and clouds converge, and capable people cover the land? With advanced knowledge and technology, I can crush these ancient people beneath my feet.'"
Just then, Meng Anli bit into a grape, and the sourness made her little face scrunch up.
Mm, it was nowhere near as tasty as the ones her master gave her.
Seeing her like this, Empress Chu could not help curving her lips into a smile.
Meng Anli gave a light cough and resumed her unfathomable expression.
She could vaguely understand what the female lead meant, like the dan role in an opera.
"Advanced knowledge and technology?"
She thought about it. Some of Meng Shiwan's words were indeed novel.
But in the Meng family, Meng Shiwan more often used that innocent, fragile face to frame her and play the pitiful victim.
Empress Chu shook her head. "I do not know exactly what they were. In any case, she took the token and went to Chongwu Mountain."
Meng Anli nodded faintly, indicating that she understood.
She asked Empress Chu, "You hate Meng Mingde, don't you?"
"At the root of it all, he ruined my entire life. How could I not hate him? But I..." Empress Chu trembled in fear. "I do not dare hate him. He is too powerful."
"You do not need to be powerful to keep them in your grasp. Meng Shiwan can do it without even having an inner core. You are prettier than Meng Shiwan, and tougher too. Her toughness looks terribly fake to me, yet they fall for that act every time.
"Let me tell you how Meng Shiwan did it..."
Meng Shiwan went alone to Chongwu Mountain, displaying her steadfast nature.
After being sent to the Meng Manor in the Heavenly Realm, she deliberately asked to live in a remote little courtyard. Then, because the courtyard was dark and damp, red rashes broke out all over her body.
With eyes full of envy and innocence, she said she had caused them trouble, and that it would be wonderful if she could live in her sister's sunlit little courtyard.
She spoke pitifully, but where her father and brothers could not see, she rolled her eyes at Meng Anli, her gaze full of provocation.
Meng Anli had originally agreed, but after seeing that look, she no longer wished to.
Meng Shiwan looked as though tears were about to fall and nearly fainted.
Third Brother pitied her first and told Meng Anli to move out of her courtyard.
Big Brother told them to live together.
Meng Anli reluctantly agreed.
They had not lived together for many days before a venomous scorpion was found on Meng Shiwan's bed.
After her father and brothers searched everywhere, they found a jar of venomous scorpions in Meng Anli's room.
On the surface, Meng Shiwan spoke for her. "Sister certainly did not mean to do it. Sister merely resents me for living here and was upset for a moment."
No matter how Meng Anli explained herself, they would not believe her.
Her father told her to move into that dark little courtyard and reflect upon herself.
She encountered Meng Shiwan in the manor gardens.
Meng Shiwan grabbed her hand and used it to push herself into the pond.
The manor guards and maids saw it clearly, and all said that Meng Anli had pushed Meng Shiwan.
No one listened to her explanation.
Her father and brothers only believed that the earlier incident had made her bear a grudge against Meng Shiwan.
Meng Anli let out a long breath and barely tugged at the corners of her mouth.
"You see? Those were the tricks she used to edge me out bit by bit, while she became the treasured jewel in my father and brothers' palms."
Empress Chu's face was full of shame. "When she was foolish, she would help me plant vegetables and fetch water for me. She was a good child. I never expected that after she recovered... Perhaps she had seen too many filthy things in the palace while growing up."
"So..." Meng Anli asked her, "Did you often let her run around outside?"
Empress Chu paused. "She was a simple-minded child. Though I resented her father, she was still the child I had given birth to. I generally kept her confined within this Cold Palace. The only time she went out was when she fell into the water..."
"When she fell into the water, did anything strange happen?"
"Meng Ying was the one who found her first."
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