During morning court, the Left Chancellor and the Right Chancellor began arguing over something.
Wenren Luoshui listened for ages. Their bickering sounded like a lullaby, making her drowsy.
[System, have you detected any gossip? Let's hear it.]
[Salty Fish System: No idea.]
The system sounded like a hungover office worker who had come to work before fully sobering up.
[What were you doing last night? Why do you sound like your kidneys are shot?]
[Salty Fish System: Whose kidneys are shot? Yours are! Your whole family's kidneys are shot!]
[Yunjian: Hahahahaha, even the system gets its hackles up!]
The two of them thought the system would keep snapping back, but instead, it suddenly burst into tears with a loud wail.
Wenren Luoshui and Yunjian, those two thoughtless fools, had only ever known how to roast people since childhood. They had never unlocked the skill of comforting anyone.
[System, you're crying so hard. Don't tell me you got your heart broken?]
[Yunjian: Did you go confess to your dream goddess yesterday?]
They had only been guessing at random, but who knew they would hit the bull's-eye?
The system immediately shut its mouth, turned into a little ball, and floated around in front of Wenren Luoshui.
Its big, watery eyes were bright red. Large tears slid from their corners in strings, then pattered onto the ground in strings as well.
Threads of disappointment lingered in its gaze.
It seemed the system had suffered quite a blow last night.
But she and Yunjian had both been single since birth, all the way from their previous lives to the present.
Wenren Luoshui had no desire to find anyone, while Yunjian had a thief's ambition but none of a thief's courage.
So when it came to this heartbroken system, the two terrible friends were remarkably united in their response: they both stayed silent.
[Salty Fish System: Seriously, can't you two comfort me a little?]
The system's voice was choked with tears. Compared with its usual lively voice, it now sounded as though they were bidding each other a final farewell.
[Well, five words drift down from the sky.]
Yunjian picked up the next line perfectly naturally.
[None of that is trouble.]
System: ...
What a miserable life it had!
It couldn't win over the system it liked, and the host it had bonded with was unreliable!
[Yunjian: Little system, although you've lost love, you don't have money either. So cheer up and keep finding gossip. You earn money, we feast on gossip-two birds with one stone, right?]
[Salty Fish System: You two only love gossip. You don't love me at all!]
[Of course we do. You're a god in our hearts.]
[Salty Fish System: Really?]
[Yunjian: Really. Truer than pure gold.]
[If you're unhappy, go find someone else's embarrassing stories. Haven't you heard that saying? Smiles never disappear; they only move to someone else's face.]
[Yunjian: Love, friendship, and family can all betray you, but sweet little money never will. So, little system, perk up and let's keep roaming through the melon fields of gossip.]
After their decidedly unprofessional counseling, the system finally pulled itself out of its world of heartbreak for the time being.
[Salty Fish System: Wait here, you two. I'll go rummage through the system database.]
[You can do it! Get back on your feet, little system.]
[Yunjian: We'll be waiting for you.]
[Salty Fish System: Got it, got it! Want some gossip about Prince Chen?]
The emperor, whose head was aching from the two chancellors' bickering, suddenly heard there was gossip about Prince Chen. He immediately felt refreshed, and even his eyes lit up.
Of the brothers who had fought him for the throne back then, some had died and others had been stripped of their positions. Those remaining had obediently gone to their own fiefs.
Only Prince Chen and Prince Qi, armed with the protection the Late Emperor had given them, stubbornly stayed in Capital City and refused to move!
These two brothers truly gave the emperor a headache. He could neither kill them nor drive them away.
More than once, he had considered simply sending his shadow guards to finish off both families.
[Salty Fish System: Prince Chen has a peculiar hobby. In your era, it definitely counts as bizarre for nobles like him.]
Prince Chen, who stood among the crowd but could not hear their thoughts: Why do I feel like someone's staring at me today?
But when Prince Chen looked up at the emperor, the emperor's expression was perfectly normal.
He glanced around, but none of the officials nearby were openly watching him either.
Could he have been under too much pressure lately and started imagining things?
The other ministers who could hear the thoughts: Prince Chen has a peculiar hobby?
Does coming over to annoy the emperor whenever he has nothing else to do count?
Aside from that, none of them could think of any hobby of Prince Chen's that qualified as peculiar.
The main thing was that all the Late Emperor's children had rather bizarre personalities.
The Late Emperor's first son, the First Prince at the time, had insisted on becoming a monk when he was ten. No one knew what had gotten into him. Upon hearing of it, the Late Emperor had sent him straight to the Great Buddha Temple without another word.
The ministers had thought the father and son were merely having a spat. Who knew that after entering the temple, the First Prince would never leave again, and would even end up becoming a revered monk of his generation?
Then there was the Late Emperor's Second Prince. At sixteen, he had run off with a princess from a small kingdom, leaving his imperial father just two words-"I'm gone!"
And the Eldest Princess, who had somehow heard that a true beauty's waist had to be slender enough to encircle with one hand. This beauty-loving princess had then literally starved herself to death.
There were countless incidents like these, and these were only the ones everyone knew about. There might have been even more bizarre stories they didn't know.
[Yunjian: System, stop keeping us in suspense. Hurry up and tell us what his peculiar hobby is!]
The system switched its voice, cleared its throat, and only then continued gossiping with us.
[Salty Fish System: Prince Chen likes placing a large mirror in front of his bathtub, then admiring his own figure in it as he bathes. Sometimes, when he finds himself particularly handsome in the mirror, he even summons the painter from his residence and has him paint the poses he finds attractive. So Prince Chen's secret chamber contains lots of naked portraits of himself.]
Wenren Luoshui: ...
Yunjian: ...
The ministers: ...
The emperor: I really want to laugh! Hahaha, next time I'll send someone into Prince Chen's secret chamber to steal a few of those bathing portraits he's hidden away.
He wanted to see just how attractive those poses Prince Chen admired actually were.
To think he had the painter capture his appearance before he had even put his clothes on.
After hearing the system's account, Wenren Luoshui was also speechless for a moment.
[Isn't this taking narcissism too far? If he were in the modern world and these things leaked, he'd suffer social death in minutes!]
[Yunjian: Suddenly, I really want to know how archaeologists would explain it if, a thousand years from now, an excavation team dug up this prince's tomb and found a pile of paintings of naked men among his burial goods.]
Yunjian genuinely wanted to know. Her tone brimmed with a thirst for knowledge.
[I don't know how the experts would explain it, but I can guess what the clickbait accounts would write. A prince's tomb, filled with portraits of naked men-isn't that love transcending society's conventions?]
[Yunjian: Hahahahaha, the legendary "I love myself."]
Everyone around them: Little Lord Yun and the Little Commandery Princess are so malicious toward Prince Chen. They're actually looking forward to future generations digging up his tomb. Poor man.
Prince Chen: Why do I keep feeling like everyone around me is looking at me strangely?
The emperor: Hahahahaha, finally, some gossip that delights me body and soul. Tell us more of this kind in the future.