[Last time it was one or two little squeaky farts. This time it's a whole chain of them. Her digestive system really is outstanding.]
System: [Your mother deserves some credit, too. Ever since the soybean incident, Jiang Liuli has stopped eating soy products, so your mother fed her plenty of leafy greens and sent her loads of sweet potatoes and potatoes.]
Understanding dawned on everyone. Sweet potatoes really did make people fart.
It seemed those foods would have to be banned for two days before banquets from now on.
Jiang Shuyue: [That's my dear mother for you! Huh? Why did the sound stop? Keep going. We won't laugh at you.]
As if!
Zhou Luming clenched her teeth so hard they nearly cracked.
Farting wasn't funny. Listening to Jiang Shuyue's inner voice alongside the farts, however, was hilariously funny.
It made her reluctant to leave.
"Jiang Liuli, what's wrong with you? Why are you farting?"
Jiang Liuli's face alternated between red and green. Didn't she understand the principle of seeing through something without pointing it out?
Damn Chen Furong. Since she was asking for humiliation, she couldn't blame Jiang Liuli for what came next.
Jiang Liuli squeezed out two tears. "If that's what you insist on saying, there's nothing I can do. We're friends, after all. No matter what you do, I won't blame you."
[Good grief, is she trying to pin the farting incident on Chen Furong? Such deep sisterly affection.]
Who would have thought Jiang Liuli was that sort of person!
Everyone had reached a decision. Whatever relationship their children had with Jiang Liuli, they would order them to keep their distance.
Anyone who got involved with a woman like that was courting disaster.
"Her Highness Consort Shu has arrived!"
Before Chen Furong even noticed Jiang Liuli's scheme, Consort Shu arrived with a grand procession of palace attendants.
Jiang Shuyue: [So this is Consort Shu? I thought she'd be a delicate, tender beauty. Turns out she's a walking gold ingot. Even the emperor doesn't sparkle as much as she does. How does she manage it?]
A walking gold ingot...
They had never thought so before, but looking at her now... she really did resemble one!
System: [Consort Shu's paternal family runs the Jiangnan Imperial Textile Bureau, and her mother's family are wealthy Jiangnan merchants. She wore robes embroidered with gold-thread chrysanthemums when she first met the emperor, so over time, people stopped minding her extravagant clothes.]
[I remember she became Imperial Noble Consort in the original novel, second only to the empress. Later, she even allowed the Fourth Prince to attack my husband. This woman has some serious ambition.]
System: [Ambition is only the beginning. She pretends to share a deep sisterly bond with the empress, bowing and scraping before her in everything except food and clothing. In truth, she hates the empress to the bone. Later, she even has the empress's limbs cut off, turning her into a human stump.]
Chu Xin'er broke out in a cold sweat.
The empress was a cousin of her father's, a kind and dignified woman. She had never imagined the empress would meet such an end.
Jiang Shuyue: [What about that juicy gossip you mentioned earlier? Can you tell me now?]
System: [Let's start with a little tidbit. Three years from now, she falsely accuses the empress of adultery with a guard. But that man is actually Consort Shu's old lover-or, more accurately, her devoted lapdog.]
[A lapdog licks and licks, only to end up with nothing. He even throws away his own life, doesn't he!]
The system bristled and glared, making its disdain for people like Consort Shu clear.
[That's not all. The emperor originally executes only the guard, but Consort Shu fears the truth will leak out, so she sends people to slaughter his entire family. She doesn't even spare his six-month-old baby.]
[The poor lover thought Consort Shu would pave his son's road to soaring success. Instead, all he got was a reunion in the underworld. After Consort Shu becomes Empress Dowager, she even keeps thirty male favorites. And their looks... tsk, tsk, tsk.]
Jiang Shuyue perked up. [How good-looking? Enough to make fish sink, geese fall, the moon hide, and flowers blush? Beauties who could topple cities and kingdoms?]
[Look toward your eight o'clock. See that short, squat fellow with the full beard?]
Jiang Shuyue looked in that direction. Sure enough, there was a guard who stood out painfully among the tall men, whose average height was about 1.8 meters.
At a glance, he was only around 1.71 meters tall, a head shorter than the others.
His reddish-brown full beard also left all the other guards in the dust.
Jiang Shuyue was torn and puzzled. [Consort Shu... likes little dwarfs?]
[You're looking for sugarcane in a pile of radishes. You're too picky! She just thinks men like that are burly and masculine, and she especially loves full beards.]
[Combing beards, braiding beards, picking out white hairs and grains of rice from beards-those are all things she loves doing. Her interests come with their own distinctive smell.]
Everyone agreed inwardly: that certainly was an interest with a distinctive smell.
One or two would have been one thing, but thirty... How had she managed to round up so many bearded men?
Jiang Shuyue regretted it. Instead of a little whip, she should have prepared a whole box of fake beards.
System: [She also likes stinky tofu, fermented bean curd, and rotten salted eggs. Worse still, she dips fried cicadas in stinky fermented bean curd juice. Next time, she wants to try earthworm noodles. Her tastes are seriously extreme.]
No, no, no. That wasn't extreme. That was terrifying...
Consort Shu savored things even pigs wouldn't eat. This woman was more frightening than an omnivore...
Jiang Shuyue asked curiously: [With tastes that... unusual, isn't she afraid of stinking out the emperor?]
[To keep anyone from growing suspicious, Consort Shu not only fumigates her bedchamber with copious amounts of fragrance, but rinses her mouth with it too. She even pretends her breath is as fragrant as orchids in front of the emperor.]
[In reality, all that fragrance comes from the aromatics. Even her back molars have been stained.]
[Before coming here, she ate a piece of durian and rinsed her mouth with three cups of fragrant water.]
Wow~~ She really would risk her life for a bite to eat.
Why not add something to her aromatics and take her life while she's enjoying herself?
System: [No, no, no! Killing someone with your own hands brings evil karma upon you. Your path to ascension would be severed forever.]
[I'm only joking~~ But you should have told me later. Now I keep feeling as though even the way she looks at me reeks of stinky fermented bean curd...]
Now that she mentioned it, the young ladies seemed to sense it too.
They had always praised Consort Shu's overwhelming fragrance. Only now did they realize that a foul stench lay beneath it.
When the emperor read the live report delivered by a palace attendant, his tongue twitched inside his mouth.
He had kissed Consort Shu that very morning!
Prince Huai gloated. "Don't dwell on it, Imperial Brother. She rinsed her mouth with aromatics, after all. Just pretend you don't know."
Zhou Yunshen agreed. "Yes, play the fool. You'll get over it after a while."
Get over it, my ass! Was this something he could get over anytime soon?
He finally understood. Not one of these brothers was reliable. The imperial preceptor was still the best.
The emperor threw himself onto Murong Tianci's shoulder and sobbed.
Murong Tianci patted the emperor's head. "Don't worry, Third Brother. I have a plan to ease your troubles."
"Oh? Tell me quickly, my worthy brother!"
"I can give you two acupuncture needles to seal off your senses of smell and taste. That way, no matter what Consort Shu eats, you won't smell or taste a thing."
The emperor shoved Murong Tianci away and kicked him in the backside.
"Heartless wretch! Someone, pass on my verbal decree! From now on, reduce the palace's supply of aromatics by three quarters. Leave only enough for each palace's basic needs. Anyone caught concealing and smuggling aromatics shall be executed without mercy!"
The emperor grinned wickedly. "Let's see whether she'll still eat those things without aromatics to suppress the smell!"
Zhou Yunshen thought the emperor looked even more like the Great Villain now.
Before you continue