Another year of high summer had passed in the blink of an eye.
Year Six of the Yanhuang Era.
A piece of news spread like wildfire through the streets, accompanied by a flurry of rumors.
The ruler had decided to suspend Court Sessions for two whole months.
The common folk and officials alike were uneasy, worried that something had happened at the royal court.
"I heard the ruler is in poor health and has taken to bed, unable to rise."
"How could she be unable to rise? I clearly heard that remnants of the old dynasty were still plotting against her. They'd been lying in wait for years, and had poisoned her!"
"That's right, that's right. There was a commotion one morning a few days ago."
"What kind of poison is so powerful? Wasn't she supposed to be immune to all poisons?"
"I heard it wasn't poisoning. Supposedly, the ruler practiced both civil and martial arts in her early years, defying the Heavenly Dao, and something went wrong along the way."
"No, no, I distinctly heard that..."
A timid voice rang out from the crowd.
"My family runs a breakfast stall. We have a neighbor who works as an official at court and has bought my meat buns every day without fail for four years. I saw her leave for work on time today, and she didn't look any different."
If something had really happened to the ruler, she surely wouldn't be acting so normally.
At those words, a crowd gathered around the speaker.
They pressed the person for details about what expression the official had worn when buying the buns.
"What expression could she have had? Her eyes were half-lidded, and her face had less color than a corpse that'd been dead for seven days. She looked like she