[In another twenty years]
[Let us meet again]
[Sent to the crematorium]
[All burned into ash]
[One pile for you]
[One pile for me]
[Neither knows who the other used to be]
Seeing the emperor's expression, as though he had nothing left to live for, Wenren Luoshui could not help singing a song in her mind.
The song was so maddeningly catchy that the drawn-swords-and-bent-bows tension in the throne hall instantly turned rather awkward.
If they laughed, they risked becoming targets of the emperor's anger.
If they did not, it was terribly hard to hold it in.
Several ministers who laughed all too easily kept pinching their thighs fiercely, afraid a laugh might slip out.
Clinging to the emperor's leg, Wenren Qiao even began sobbing to the beat.
The emperor truly had no words for these three walking jokes!
"Enough! Keep making a racket, and you two can kneel outside the hall!"
Only then did Wenren Qiao and Prince Heng let go of the emperor and obediently return to their places.
The emperor looked at the wrinkles in his dragon robe and seethed.
"What do you ministers think about these two matters?"
Wenren Qiao said, "Your Majesty, I have something to say."
The emperor was speechless.
Why must you stick your nose into everything?
Seeing that the emperor had not stopped him, Wenren Qiao continued.
"Why don't you pass my title on to my Luoshui, Your Majesty?"
The emperor asked, "Why?"
Wenren Qiao said, "Both matters involve my family, so there is certainly no escaping responsibility for me. I am therefore willing to pass my title on to my daughter right now."
The emperor pinched the bridge of his nose with a budding headache and let out a long breath. Only after steadying his emotions did he ask calmly.
"Didn't you separate your household from the second branch long ago? Ever since then, Wenren Hongyu's branch has had no dealings with yours. They brought this trouble upon themselves by courting death. Why are you so eager to jump out and admit fault?"
If not for their many years of brotherly affection, the emperor would probably have sent that oaf Wenren Qiao flying with a kick long ago.
Seeing how effortlessly the emperor brushed his proposal aside, Wenren Qiao wanted to say more, but the murderous warning in the emperor's gaze frightened him back. He could only obediently continue being an idle prince.
The atmosphere at the morning court session was poor that day. Even the commotion Wenren Qiao and Prince Heng caused failed to turn it around.
After discussions between the emperor and his ministers, and with the evidence submitted by the Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice, Wenren Chun, Wenren Hongyu, and all those officials who had preyed upon the local people were sentenced to exile and the confiscation of their property.
All wealth in their residences was confiscated by the state.
When the imperial decree reached the imprisoned members of the Wenren family, Liu Yuner was the first to protest. She shouted that she was the princely residence's Old Princess Consort and that the emperor could not treat her this way.
The eunuch delivering the decree was merely following orders from above. He had no concern for how these people reacted to it.
He dusted off his backside and left, leaving everyone in the prison tearing at one another's hair.
Since Wenren Shuang was being held in a separate cell, she escaped that ordeal.
But after hearing the contents of the decree, her initial disbelief gave way to terror.
Ignorant as she was, even she knew how brutal exile was in ancient times.
Then she looked at the Wenren family members in the neighboring cell, each staring at her as though they wanted to eat her alive.
She gritted her teeth and decided to stake everything on one last gamble!
If a cannon-fodder character like Wenren Luoshui could defy heaven and change her fate, she refused to believe that she, the protagonist, could not transmigrate into a book again when she had already done it once!
Under the gazes of the other Wenren family members, she slammed her head against the wall of her cell and killed herself.
By the time the head jailer received word and hurried over, she had already stopped breathing.
Chests of gold, silver, and jade were carried into the Imperial Treasury, one after another.
The emperor's face blossomed with joy. After so many years of poverty, he finally had a little money to spare.
From now on, he would have to steer that girl Luoshui toward digging up more juicy gossip about the court officials.
What was the point of always feasting on gossip about him, the emperor?
The system immediately informed Wenren Luoshui that Wenren Shuang had killed herself by smashing her head against the prison wall.
At the time, Wenren Luoshui was in the rear garden with Yunjian, inspecting the potatoes they had planted.
They had only planted them yesterday, yet today they had already sprouted. The two eunuchs sent from the palace to keep records followed closely behind Yunjian, paper and brushes in hand.
Besides them, officials responsible for agriculture from the Ministry of Revenue were also present.
Seeing potatoes planted just yesterday sprouting today, every one of them looked as though they had witnessed a miracle.
The hidden guards immediately reported this to the emperor, who was counting silver in the palace. Upon hearing the news, he promptly assigned another squad to them.
These two groups guarded the rear garden of the princely residence in alternating shifts until the potatoes matured.
The Eldest Princess's paper mill was more or less ready, too. All that remained was to hire workers and test the method I had given her.
Time slipped by, the sun rose and the moon set, and a week passed in the blink of an eye.
That day, the emperor was handling official business when the Eldest Princess walked in carrying a bundle of something dazzlingly white.
At first glance, he thought she had come to him carrying a bolt of white silk.
Then the Eldest Princess lifted a thin sheet of uniformly white xuan paper and displayed it before him.
The emperor could no longer stay seated. He reached out to examine the white paper on his desk.
Heavens!
Paper could actually be made this white! This soft?
Once the emperor's excitement had settled, the Eldest Princess explained how much each batch of paper cost the mill to produce.
Compared with the cost of the Li Kingdom's existing papermaking methods, the figure she gave represented far more than a fifty-percent reduction!
Good news had come one after another over the past few days. When the emperor visited the Empress that evening and found three of his consorts pestering her to play leaf cards, he could not even be bothered to take issue with them.
Beaming, he brought over an embroidered stool and sat beside the Empress to watch her play cards with the others.
The other three consorts had nothing but disdain for this worthless-looking display of his. One moment they ordered him to fetch fruit, and the next they wanted him to cover the losers' losses.
The emperor cheerfully agreed to everything, the very picture of an obliging fellow.
Unable to watch her friends bully her husband any longer, the Empress announced that she was done playing once the current round ended and told everyone to go back to their own quarters.
A new shop had recently opened in the capital. It was on Vermilion Bird Street and had even borrowed the capital's only pet tiger to advertise its opening.
The publicity stunt attracted plenty of attention. Some particularly curious people stepped inside to see what the shop sold, but after looking around, they discovered that it had nothing but paper.
What sort of bookshop sold only paper?
Even if paper was indeed rather expensive, could a shop make money selling nothing else?
Someone, curious, went to ask an assistant how much the cheapest paper cost.
The assistant quoted a price that nearly made the curious onlookers' eyes pop out of their heads.
Afraid that this was merely a special offer for the shop's opening, everyone still inside hastily declared that they wanted to buy some.
With such good quality at such a low price, only a fool would not be tempted!
Thus, the first specialty shop jointly opened by the Eldest Princess and the emperor brought in quite an impressive sum on its very first day.
When those people scrambling for a bargain today later discovered that the paper in this shop was always this cheap, would they regret it until their guts turned green?