"Why are you shouting at her? You're the emperor, yet you're yelling at a little girl. Have you no imperial dignity at all?"
Unable to explain herself, Wenren Shuang turned and threw herself into the Empress Dowager's arms.
The Empress Dowager immediately turned her wrath on the emperor. How dare this unfilial son bully someone under her protection?
She wasn't dead yet!
The Empress Dowager grabbed whatever lay beside her and hurled it at the emperor without a second thought.
At once, the sounds of jade, porcelain, and wooden objects crashing to the floor rang through her bedchamber.
[Wow! As expected of the Empress Dowager! So many fine things, and she smashes them without even blinking. In the modern world, every single one would be a priceless treasure.]
Wenren Luoshui gazed mournfully at the jade and porcelain strewn across the floor, unable to resist complaining to the system.
Truly, this was the highest-ranking woman in the ancient world.
[Salty Fish System: Host, you can collect these broken porcelain and jade pieces and exchange them for points.]
[You sure offer a wide range of services.]
[Salty Fish System: We're all just trying to make a living~]
The emperor's expression remained unchanged, but his opinion of Wenren Shuang sank a little further.
"Mother, I was merely asking Wenren Shuang how to put it into practice."
His answer was flawless, but finding fault with him was the Empress Dowager's favorite pastime.
"She's just a little girl. How would she know things only those rough laborers understand? Instead of finding a solution yourself, you make things difficult for a little girl. What an accomplishment!"
[Badass!]
[With that logic, she'd definitely make the finals in a debate tournament!]
Hiding behind the emperor, Wenren Luoshui silently complained about the Empress Dowager to the system.
In the Empress Dowager's eyes, her own son was less dear to her than an outsider.
How pitiful.
[Salty Fish System: Your emperor really has a good temper. Even after all this, he still hasn't started arguing with his mother.]
[He's probably used to her temper. Besides, even if he argued with her, nothing would change the next time they met. Her attitude has already drained him of any desire to argue.]
The emperor thought, Finally, this little girl has said something sensible!
He suddenly felt the touching pride of seeing his little girl grow up.
[But he could go berserk.]
[Wouldn't it be better if everyone went berserk together and entered a more beautiful world? Why does he have to stand obediently in the Empress Dowager's palace and listen to her scold him?]
The emperor thought, *...*
She had started off so well, only to lapse into nonsense again.
He was a full-grown man of seven feet. How could he make a spectacle of himself by going berserk in public?
At first, the emperor had wanted to hear what advice Wenren Luoshui might offer, only to discover that the little girl simply had a screw loose.
The Empress Dowager felt as though countless steel needles were stabbing into her head. Seeing Wenren Shuang grieving in her arms made the sensation even stronger.
The look she cast at the emperor suggested she wanted to flay him alive.
The emperor's heart was now as cold as that of someone who had spent ten years gutting fish at RT-Mart. He simply chose to ignore her glare.
Before the emperor could reply, Wenren Luoshui suddenly rushed to the Empress Dowager's side and placed both hands on her head before she could react.
Although the Empress Dowager was already over sixty, she still had a luxuriant head of hair.
How many modern-day office workers would have died of envy at the sight?
Wenren Luoshui felt around in her towering bun. Before long, something like a needle pricked the pad of her finger.
It had been driven into the scalp, leaving only the tiniest bit of its end exposed.
She had no choice but to wrap spiritual energy around her fingers and slowly pull out the silver needle she had found, a little at a time.
In less than a minute, her head was drenched in sweat.
The system suddenly spoke.
[Salty Fish System: Holy crap! There's even a hidden storyline?]
Hearing this, Wenren Luoshui grew interested, and the emperor was even more curious.
Could there be something about his mother that he still didn't know?
And who had driven silver needles into his mother's head?
Although the emperor had given up on the Empress Dowager, he could not tolerate anyone daring to scheme against her right under his nose.
[Salty Fish System: Tsk, tsk, tsk. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.]
[Enough commentary. Hurry up and tell me what the hidden storyline is.]
The emperor thought, Exactly! You're a system. Why are you dragging your feet?
[Salty Fish System: In short, the Empress Dowager ended up with a frenemy.]
The moment the system said that, Wenren Luoshui thought of someone.
[Don't tell me this frenemy is my step-grandmother?]
[Salty Fish System: Bingo. It's her.]
The system then gave a vivid, impassioned account of how the Empress Dowager had been betrayed by her best friend.
The current Princess Consort of Beiping was a concubine-born daughter of the Liu family, whose maiden name was Liu Yuner. Both the Liu family and the Empress Dowager's natal family had held sesame-seed-sized official posts, and they had once served in the same place.
The two families had therefore been on quite good terms.
At first, Liu Yuner had sincerely wanted to be friends with the Empress Dowager-until Liu Yuner's legitimate elder sister married into the prince's household, and the Empress Dowager and her sister both entered the imperial palace.
She believed her looks were no worse than those of the other three women. And what had happened?
All three had found good matches, while she alone remained at home, waiting for someone to come and ask for her hand.
Still, her luck had been fairly good. Less than two years after her legitimate elder sister married into the prince's household, she died, leaving behind a newborn baby.
Liu Yuner began entertaining the idea of entering the prince's household as his second wife. But how could she get the Prince of Beiping to notice her?
The Empress Dowager was simple-minded, so Liu Yuner visited her in the palace from time to time, filling her ears with stories about maternal aunts and aunts by marriage caring for young children who had lost their mothers.
Without thinking much of it, the Empress Dowager went to tell her own elder sister. Her sister told her not to meddle, but she refused to listen. Knowing that Liu Yuner's legitimate elder sister had just died and that the Prince of Beiping would surely remarry, she worried that Sister Liu's child would suffer at a second wife's hands. She therefore arranged for people to spread stories of second wives tormenting eldest sons and daughters at events the Prince of Beiping attended.
Thus, Liu Yuner successfully married into the prince's household. Later, she discovered that the Empress Dowager was actually pregnant.
If the Empress Dowager gave birth to a child of her own, she would devote all her attention to that child.
Liu Yuner's footing in the prince's household was still too shallow, and the Empress Dowager's legitimate elder sister had always treated her with indifference.
The only person who could serve as her backer was the Empress Dowager, who was still a palace consort of the jieyu rank at the time.
Her birth mother's family had descended from Daoist priests, though not respectable ones.
Whenever she entered the palace to visit her best friend, she used the opportunity of combing her friend's hair to insert silver needles into her head.
She spent the night poring over the secret arts her ancestors had left behind and found one called the Child-Aversion Curse.
As long as nine silver needles, each three inches long, were driven into someone's head, that person would gradually lose all ability to feel close to their own children.
Ordinarily, the victim would show no symptoms, but the moment they met their biological children, they would feel revulsion toward them.
In the end, the victim would kill their own children with their own hands.
And Liu Yuner had done all this simply because she wanted the Empress Dowager to put her first, forever and always!
Not even the Empress Dowager's own children were allowed to come before her!