Wenren Luoshui stood behind the Prince of Beiping, secretly chatting with the system.
[Attending court is even more boring than standing at attention.]
[Salty Fish: Host, I have some juicy gossip here. Do you want to hear it?]
[What gossip? Whose is it?]
[Salty Fish: Do you want to hear the gossip about Minister of the Court of Judicial Review Lord Xu?]
[Yes, yes! Hurry up and tell me. He looks so proper; what kind of gossip could he possibly have?]
The people who had come to court today suddenly heard two strange voices, and they all looked in the direction of those voices before feeling a majestic gaze staring right at them.
Based on their many years of experience as officials, this gaze definitely belonged to the emperor seated above.
Thus, the various officials who could hear Wenren Luoshui's inner voice all chose to remain silent.
The Prince of Beiping, who had been dozing off, immediately perked up upon hearing the conversation between his daughter and the system.
Lord Xu looked like such a proper person, so he had gossip too?
If not for not wanting his daughter to know that he could overhear her inner voice, he definitely would have grabbed her sleeve and urged her to spill the gossip quickly.
[Salty Fish: This Lord Xu is a mysophobe in private. He has to wipe his chopsticks three times before using them to eat. Three days ago, he woke up late and didn't like the scent of the incense lingering on the official robe his servants brought him, while his other official robe had just been washed and wasn't dry yet, so he ended up hanging three or four of his favorite sachets from his body. But the scent of the sachets still couldn't mask the smell on the clothes, causing his complexion to look less than stellar the entire day.]
So that was how it was!
The surrounding officials eavesdropping on the inner voice silently sighed in their hearts. Lord Xu's expression really did look a few shades more stern than usual that day.
Everyone had assumed he had run into some thorny case, leading others to rush over and try to console him.
For the common people to encounter a good official is even harder than a daughter from an ordinary family marrying into a prestigious aristocratic clan.
If a good official like Lord Xu chose to resign because of too much pressure, they wouldn't be able to push forward a second person like him.
Wenren Qiao turned around openly to observe Lord Xu. Who would have thought this lord actually had a mysophobia?
Then how did he manage to endure going to the privy?
He wasn't trying to make things difficult for anyone; he was genuinely curious about this matter.
Minister of the Court of Judicial Review Lord Xu found himself stared at by Wenren Qiao's gaze, making him feel unusually ill at ease.
The emperor sitting on the dragon throne noticed this and immediately covered his mouth to cough.
He was reminding that ill-fated brother of his not to make it so obvious.
[Salty Fish: There's more, there's more. Last night, the emperor went to the empress's quarters, but the empress got angry and kicked him off the bed four or five times all night long. In the end, the emperor had no choice but to pitifully hug his quilt and go sleep on the couch.]
Wenren Luoshui: ...
Was the interaction between the emperor and the empress this interesting?
The emperor: ...
Could the two of you stop always chatting about My gossip? Talk more about the court officials!
Constantly discussing Me every day, aren't you afraid I'll actually punish you for a crime one of these days?
The emperor merely thought this to himself; after all, thinking wasn't a crime.
[Salty Fish System: Actually, the emperor brought this upon himself. For no good reason, he insisted on arranging a marriage for the Seventh Princess. The Seventh Princess heard from who knows where that the Young Marquis of the Guangping Marquis Estate was fond of southern customs and loved to torture people between the sheets. After she came out of the emperor's Imperial Study, she went straight to the empress's palace and spilled the whole story, infuriating the empress so much that she almost grabbed a saber to go find the emperor. It was only because her Senior Palace Maid fought tooth and nail that she was stopped.]
[Salty Fish System: So when the emperor went to the empress's quarters at night, he encountered an empress in a foul mood. He didn't even know what he had done wrong, so he spent the entire night just crawling back onto the empress's bed.]
[Hahahahaha, what a pathetic emperor! Hahahahaha.]
[Being kicked off the bed by his own wife wasn't enough; he still had to silently crawl back up. It took getting kicked four or five times for him to learn his lesson. Why didn't Empress Mother pretend to sleepwalk and slap him twice? Serving him right for arbitrarily arranging a marriage for her own daughter; this was all he deserved.]
The emperor: ...
Very well, his fists were clenched.
This dead girl was truly heartless to the extreme!
And here he usually treated their family so well, too!
The more the emperor thought about it, the more pitiful he felt.
A wave of decadent aura permeated his entire body.
The biological father standing right in front of Wenren Luoshui heard that his good brother was actually this miserable, and he silently chuckled to himself, shaking like a sieve.
"Father, what are you laughing at?"
Wenren Luoshui leaned in close to Wenren Qiao's ear and softly asked why he was laughing so happily over nothing.
"Oh, well, Dad just remembered a story one of your uncles told me yesterday, and it suddenly popped into my head, so I accidentally laughed."
Wenren Qiao reined in his expression and did his best to casually talk nonsense with a calm face.
The surrounding lords: No, he is lying; your father is mocking the emperor!
Too bad they had mouths but couldn't speak. After all, the emperor seemed just like them and could also hear this princess's inner voice.
Presumably, the emperor suddenly giving her an official position was also for the sake of better eavesdropping on her inner voice.
Not to mention, with this princess's inner voice around, this morning court had become much more interesting.
For instance, they now knew the private dynamic between the emperor and the empress.
They also learned that Lord Xu, who was always so rigid and bound by the rules, actually had mysophobia.
During regular work hours, they truly had never noticed this little habit of their colleague.
The emperor sat upon the dragon throne, discovering that this girl Wenren Luoshui kept chatting about his gossip, and forced himself to maintain a calm expression on his face.
He finally knew what it felt like to encounter an unruly brat.
It was precisely this urge to beat her to death while desperately trying to remain composed; it truly tested his willpower to the utmost.
And that ill-fated good brother of his, what was he laughing at?
He was a prince, after all; why was his laugh line so low?
The emperor felt that bestowing an official position upon Wenren Luoshui was entirely lifting a rock to drop it on his own feet.
With so many civil and military officials in the court, she didn't go gossip about anyone else, choosing exclusively to chat about his.
Was she deliberately seeking out familiar targets to strike?
"Your Majesty, winter arrives relatively early in the Northwest. May I ask when the winter uniforms will be issued to the Northwest Army?"
The Deputy Minister of War was a woman nearing forty with thick eyebrows and large eyes, but those eyes were exceptionally bright, and whenever she looked at people, she always gave a strong sense of security.
"Deputy Minister Lü, why must you bring this up every single day at morning court? If the Ministry of Revenue has the money, it naturally won't drag things out. What are you all in such a rush for?"
Minister of Revenue Wang stepped forward. They also knew the Northwest was a bitterly cold region and that military supplies and the like needed to be prepared as early as possible, but the Ministry of Revenue genuinely had no money!
[Salty Fish: This emperor of yours is a good man. After ascending the throne, he issued an order to reduce taxes, resulting in there not being much money left in the Imperial Treasury now. Usually, to rack his brains for money, he loses hair by the handfuls. He loves to tug at his hair when he has nothing to do, and when someone proposed increasing taxes, he refused, yet he would go back and continue agonizing over it. It's simply a vicious cycle.]
[Not to mention, the current tax rate is truly the lowest in all dynasties. In times like this, you can develop the economy! Sell our unique domestic goods to surrounding foreign countries. Why keep fixating on trying to find a solution domestically?]
The emperor: ...
Oh, right!
How could he have forgotten the path of commerce?
As expected, bystanders see more clearly!
The emperor had originally been agonizing over whether to stop the argument between Deputy Minister Lü and Minister of Revenue Wang, since officials quarreled every single day during morning court.
Having been emperor for so many years, he was almost used to it.
He was always given a headache by these people arguing every time.
Suddenly reminded by Wenren Luoshui's inner voice, he experienced a sudden flash of insight, and his entire body radiated happiness.