June weather could turn on a dime. Before court ended, brilliant sunshine still blazed outside.
A quarter of an hour before the emperor dismissed court, dark clouds gradually covered the sky, followed by a torrential downpour.
Thanks to the blasted weather, the officials leaving court ended up soaked over much of their bodies, even if they had brought umbrellas.
When I returned to the prince's residence, Yin Xing already had a bath and clean clothes ready for me.
I changed into a fresh dress, but before my hair could be combed, Wenren Shuang barged in from outside.
Yin Xing was standing behind me, comb in hand, brushing my hair.
Wenren Shuang rushed over to hit me, but Yin Xing stopped her and delivered a backhanded slap.
"You bitch! How dare you hit me!"
Wenren Shuang clutched her stinging cheek and stared incredulously at Yin Xing, who clearly saw nothing wrong with what she had done.
Her delicate, fragile little-flower face was so twisted that Wenren Luoshui feared she might lunge forward and bite Yin Xing the next second.
"So what if I hit you? Not only did you barge into our lady's bedchamber, you even tried to hit her! Even the prince can't bear to lay a finger on our lady. You might be a mistress of this household, but you're no mistress of mine!"
Yin Xing planted both hands on her hips, looking every bit a mother hen protecting her chicks.
"Fine, fine, fine!"
Yin Xing's words infuriated Wenren Shuang so much that she spat out "fine" three times, then turned to roar at Wenren Luoshui.
"Wenren Luoshui, we both know exactly what the other is. I'm warning you: stop ruining my plans, or I'll make you disappear from this world!"
Wenren Shuang considered herself the protagonist of this book. No matter how many cheats Wenren Luoshui possessed, once her heroine's halo took effect, Wenren Luoshui was destined to be nothing but cannon fodder!
She had no idea what method Wenren Luoshui had used to save the entire eldest branch of the family.
As long as Wenren Luoshui stopped popping up to make trouble, she could turn a blind eye to this cannon fodder's existence.
But if Wenren Luoshui kept stealing her opportunities, she wouldn't mind using her heroine's halo to erase her outright!
Wenren Shuang had stormed in, tossed out a warning that made no sense whatsoever to Yin Xing, then hurried away again.
The whole affair could only be described as utterly baffling.
With her hands on her hips, Yin Xing watched Wenren Shuang disappear before returning to comb my hair.
She kept muttering about what had gotten into Wenren Shuang today.
Speaking of medicine, Wenren Luoshui remembered that the empress dowager in the palace had awakened quite some time ago.
Apparently, the empress dowager had forgotten almost everything that had happened over the years and reverted to her old carefree personality.
As she was now, the empress dowager got along splendidly with the Seventh Princess.
That was why the Seventh Princess was always running over to the empress dowager's palace, sometimes even spending the night there.
The relationship between the emperor and the empress dowager was no longer as strained as before, either.
The empress dowager couldn't remember when she had given birth to the emperor or how she had become empress dowager.
But in her youth, she had been the sort who never worried about questions she couldn't answer.
So now she spent her days in the palace eating, drinking, and strolling around the imperial gardens.
She was simply a lively old lady.
Meanwhile, after running out of Wenren Luoshui's room, Wenren Shuang did not return to the second branch's quarters.
Without taking a single maid or an oil-paper umbrella, she ran straight into the curtain of rain.
The downpour plastered strands of hair tightly against her scalp, while her drenched dress clung to her body.
Never mind looking beautiful-her current appearance could only be described as utterly bedraggled.
The streets, normally bustling with people coming and going, were deserted in the torrential rain. No one was foolish enough to come out at a time like this.
Except, of course, those who had no choice.
The more Wenren Shuang thought about it, the more miserable she became. In her previous life, she had sharpened her head to a point trying to squeeze her way into success in the entertainment industry.
Yet by almost forty, she was still nothing more than an extra in Hengdian.
She had finally managed to transmigrate into a book and become its protagonist, but unfortunately, the powerful male lead wouldn't appear until the middle-to-late part of the story.
The early and middle parts were actually about the push and pull between her and the various supporting male characters.
For some reason, however, the emperor of this world seemed to have gone mad. Ever since she arrived, he had found fault with her original body's father at every turn.
He was either scheming to have Wenren Chun demoted or piling work onto him.
The emperor made his displeasure with Wenren Chun abundantly clear, and court was full of people who trimmed their sails to the wind.
As a result, the ministers' families also began treating Wenren Chun's wife and children poorly.
Wenren Chun's wife had taken Wenren Shuang to several banquets, but unfortunately, they were ostracized every time.
Things had already reached this point, yet the supporting male characters meant for her still hadn't appeared!
Was Heaven deliberately toying with me?
Why couldn't I use my protagonist's halo to enjoy being a pampered wife for once?
"Luoshui! My dearest friend! Come see what I got!"
After Yunjian returned home, she noticed an update notification in her Taobao marketplace and casually tapped to update it.
Then she went off to bathe. Wearing those soaking-wet clothes was far too uncomfortable. After enjoying a relaxing bath, she checked the Taobao update's progress while her maid dried her hair.
She summoned the system panel and found that the update was complete.
She browsed the marketplace to see what had been added after the update.
Spotting a "Crops" category at the top of the panel, she opened it and found a potato icon inside.
She sent her maid away, then redeemed the potato.
The moment she held it, she discovered to her astonishment that it was the new potato variety she had researched and improved during the apocalypse.
Because of the apocalypse's unusual environment and climate, the variety she had developed had a shorter growing cycle and a higher yield than ordinary potatoes.
Potatoes were already a high-yield crop, and her variety could triple that yield.
In an environment as desperately short of food as the apocalypse, successfully developing this potato was nothing short of a great invention.
"Holy crap! Are you serious?! That system of yours is seriously awesome. Double-tapping a like for you!"
After hearing why Yunjian had braved the rain to find her, Wenren Luoshui hugged her joyfully, and they spun around together.
Like a pair of lunatics, the two bounced and hopped about, accompanied by peals of unrestrained laughter.
Wenren Qingluo came to call Wenren Luoshui to dinner, but when he heard the commotion coming from his older sister's room, he turned and ran back on his short little legs.
My sister's been possessed by a monster! I have to tell Father and Mother.
After venting their excitement, Wenren Luoshui and Yunjian agreed to tell the emperor about it the next day and ask him to assign them an official who could help record the potatoes' growth, growing cycle, and harvested weight once they matured.
Sometimes, when it was time to slack off, one really ought to sneak in a little laziness.
Who stayed wound up like clockwork twenty-four hours a day?
Even the emperor, busy as he was every day, still found time to sleep with his consorts and make a few babies along the way, didn't he?
Afterward, the two discussed where they could find a plot of land to use as an experimental field.
"Let's just use the garden at my family's residence. There's a huge patch of land there with nothing but grass."
Yunjian said, "And you still call that a garden?"