Yun Yi had no idea how to return to the modern era.
Or rather, she didn’t know how to break free from this dream that felt far too real.
Holding her breath—she nearly made the emperor’s beloved ranchu goldfish turn belly-up.
Banging her head against the wall—she had just tried using a pillow as padding, but aside from a faint red mark on her forehead, nothing happened.
Rubbing her sore brow, she looked up and saw a thin line of light slowly creep across the floor, then extinguish without warning.
Was that wretched emperor sneaking a look to laugh at her?
With all thirty-six stratagems exhausted, Yun Yi flopped onto the bed, pulled the brocade quilt over her head, and decided to let heaven and earth crumble if they must—she’d deal with it after she woke up.
And so she drifted off quite contentedly.
The door closed silently behind her.
Xiao Zhi’s lips held the faintest trace of a smile, but it gradually faded.
His mind grew more and more restless.
These cold palace halls—did he ever want to stay in them for even a moment longer?
Assassination plots, border fires, undercurrents in the court… danger at every turn.
Had his father hated him? On his deathbed, he had forced this rotting empire into Xiao Zhi’s hands.
It was worse than the days under house arrest. At least then, though the food and clothing were poorer, he could still swallow what entered his mouth and close his eyes to sleep.
Thud—another dull sound came from the duty room.
What exactly did she want? If she wished to return to the celestial realm, she was free to do so. Why all this racket, disturbing his peace? He really felt like having her caned a hundred times.
This was the Great Yan imperial palace. This was Xiao Zhi’s territory!
A low-ranking little immortal who had appeared out of nowhere—how dare she throw a tantrum in his bedchamber? Who was he supposed to settle this score with?
The emperor lay down, then rose from the dragon bed again and walked straight to the duty room. He pushed the door open with an imposing air.
Wang Delan quickly raised the candlestick higher.
The candle flame flickered. The group stood in silence for a long moment, looking into the inner chamber of the duty room.
On the small bed lay a single lonely pillow.
Their gazes drifted downward—
At the foot of the bed was a tightly rolled bundle of blankets, clearly with a person wrapped inside. Motionless. The shape resembled nothing so much as…
Two words popped unbidden into Xiao Zhi’s mind: stuffed pancake roll.
No one dared step forward.
Xiao Zhi crouched by the foot of the bed, curled two fingers, and lifted a corner of the quilt. Well, well—as expected, a face was buried inside, robbed of its usual fair, warm glow, its cheeks flushed with an unnatural, deep red.
Since the founding of Great Yan, no subject had ever suffocated to death in their own bedding. She had nearly become the first.
I just saved your little life, Xiao Zhi thought, shaking his head.
The attendants’ gazes silently followed the emperor’s every move—they watched as he reached out and steadily lifted the girl who seemed fused with her blanket, carrying her all the way to the dragon bed.
Just before the chamber doors closed, Wang Delan stole one last glance.
The candle shadows danced, tracing a blurred figure beyond the screen. The moment the girl touched the dragon bed, she rolled smoothly to the inner side with the practiced ease of someone returning home for the New Year, casually propping her feet up on the imperial pillow.
A small mound rose on the dragon bed.
The emperor’s silhouette seemed to pause for a moment. Then he bent down.
Wang Delan closed the doors, his heart pounding like a mad rabbit in his chest.
He seemed to have glimpsed a tremendous secret: The emperor, who cowed the court with thunderous authority, was tucking in Miss Yun’s blanket corners!
Yun Yi had an absurd dream.
In the dream, the bed creaked, and someone squeezed in next to her and lay down.
This was insane! This was clearly a narrow 1.2-meter bed—how could it fit two adults?
She was about to protest when the person turned her over without a word. The world spun before her eyes, and when her vision finally steadied, she found herself lying on top of him, face-to-face.
Yun Yi saw Xiao Zhi’s sleeping face.
He covered one of her eyelids with his fingertip, his voice thick and drowsy. “Stop fussing. Sleep.”
Who exactly was fussing over whom? This was turning things completely upside down.
Yun Yi moved slightly.
“Don’t move.” The murmur drifted into her ear.
She stiffened on top of him, like a lump of dough that hadn’t been kneaded properly.
Then a warm palm reached for the back of her head and gave it a soothing rub.
The pressure was gentle, but it made Yun Yi’s face sink downward.
Her cheek was pressed against his chest.
So this was what relaxed pectoral muscles felt like.
She gave them a discreet poke.
Pop… soft → firm.
Like a soufflé in the oven, reaching critical heat, the cake expanding to its limit, spilling abundantly over the edges of the ramekin.
Yun Yi collapsed on top of him like that and drifted into a hazy sleep. In the latter half of the night, her entire body ached terribly.
After she turned into the imperial seal, the emperor became so engrossed in state affairs, stamping memorial after memorial, that he gave her a strained lower back.
All of this counted as work-related injuries!
Forced to share a bed with the emperor, Yun Yi silently waved her inner flag and shouted: Good looks can’t be cashed in—I want my wages!
—
The sovereign of a mighty nation, curled up in one corner of the dragon bed, making do.
Oh well. She was, after all, his savior. Since he was the emperor, he ought to display the bearing of the Son of Heaven. He would let her have the bed.
Just as Xiao Zhi was about to drift off to sleep, a noise came from the inner side of the bed.
The night eunuch: “Your Majesty?”
“Withdraw.”
Now that there was a young woman in the bedchamber, though the eunuchs were castrated, the emperor selfishly didn’t want anyone to see her. He dismissed all attendants.
But the stirring from the inner side only grew louder.
Xiao Zhi threw back the bed curtains to let the candlelight in.
The person on the bed was sleeping in a wildly unrestrained posture, her head tilted to one side, a touch of glistening moisture at the corner of her mouth.
Xiao Zhi thought he must have seen wrong. He leaned in closer and saw, clearly at the corner of Yun Yi’s lips, a large glistening blob of…
Drool.
“…”
Dreaming of fine food and delicacies?
Xiao Zhi instinctively pinched the hem of his sleeve and moved to wipe it away.
The next moment, reason exploded in his mind: He was the sovereign of a nation, the exalted Son of Heaven—how could he wipe someone’s mouth for her?
Preposterous! He wasn’t some serving eunuch.
He grabbed a corner of the quilt and scrubbed her mouth with it like a rag. But inexplicably, a nameless vexation rose in his heart. A petty vengefulness took hold, and he pressed that same corner of the quilt against the tip of her nose.
Choke on that, why don’t you.
Then, inexplicably, he stared at her for a long while.
Thick lashes, a delicate nose bridge, skin as white as porcelain… Lying there with her eyes closed, she looked quite like a proper human being.
Just as he was thinking this, she nuzzled the quilt corner he had pressed against her nose and buried her face even deeper.
“…” Sleeping face-down will flatten your nose.
A rare burst of kindness overcame Xiao Zhi. He turned her over.
The person on the bed didn’t wake at all. Instead, she sprawled naturally into the shape of the character for “big.”
Radiating the benevolent light of a Buddha, Xiao Zhi rearranged the wild “big” into the orderly character for “ten.”
The emperor, revered by all under heaven, was finally satisfied.
He studied her for a moment longer. The faint curve at the corner of his mouth gradually flattened, and his expression turned grave. “Summon the imperial physician.”
—
The news that the emperor had summoned an imperial physician in the dead of night spread through the palace in less than half an hour.
The Dowager Empress threw a robe over her shoulders. “Is the emperor unwell?”
“Your Highness, the emperor had trouble sleeping. The Imperial Medical Institute has already prescribed a calming formula for rest.”
The Dowager Empress understood some medical principles. This prescription was much the same as the calming formula the imperial physicians had given her.
“Perhaps the emperor is overtaxed from worrying about state affairs. Tomorrow, send over that newly acquired thousand-year-old ginseng root.”
After the attendants withdrew, the Dowager Empress scoffed, “The late emperor didn’t develop insomnia until he was fifty. You’re only twenty—afflicting yourself with this ailment? How affected.”
The Dowager Empress was deeply calculating. This midnight drama of summoning the imperial physician was, in the end, nothing more than a performance by the emperor for her and the Fifth Prince.
A female physician knelt beside the dragon bed, taking the pulse of the young woman lying on it.
“Your Majesty, judging purely by the pulse, this young lady appears no different from an ordinary person.”
“Then why won’t she wake?” The emperor’s brow furrowed deeply. He took the wrist the female physician had just released and loosely encircled it with his thumb and forefinger. Yun Yi’s pulse was steady, her breathing even and long. The wrist itself was like a sugarcane stalk—thin and brittle-looking, as if it might snap at the slightest pressure.
The female physician asked, “Has the young lady recently experienced any fright or shock?”
Xiao Zhi was silent. Yes, she had.
The assassination attempt had clearly affected her greatly. The more Xiao Zhi thought about it, the more certain he became—a young lady’s courage naturally couldn’t compare to a man’s.
The female physician inserted acupuncture needles, pressing them into specific points.
After ten needles, the person on the bed’s eyelashes fluttered.
After twenty needles, her eyeballs rolled back and forth beneath her eyelids.
At thirty needles, Yun Yi struggled to pry her eyes open a crack.
In her blurry field of vision was a face inches from her own.
“Don’t move.”
Xiao Zhi’s voice stirred memories of her dream. In the dream, she had clearly been on top of him. So how was it that now…
Whatever remained of her amorous courage was instantly shattered. Her lecherous heart crumbled into dust.
“You… why are you in my bed?”
Xiao Zhi couldn’t be bothered to argue over whom the bed belonged to. He simply pressed down on her upper arm to keep her still.
Her unfocused gaze slowly sharpened and landed on the several silver needles stuck in her face.
“?”
“!”
In the span of a single sleep, the emperor had turned her into Ziwei?!
“Miss, do not panic. This servant will remove the needles,” the female physician said, sweat beading on her forehead. She was a woman trying to survive among those old quacks in the Imperial Medical Institute, her career path strewn with thorns. She had only barely earned this chance to needle before the emperor!
The honored ancestor on the imperial bed had refused to wake up the entire time, only to open her eyes at this very moment!
What about her needle technique, honed through endless practice on pigskin? His Majesty hadn’t even seen it.
The honored ancestor spoke: “I want a mirror.”
The emperor held her arm down. “Remove the needles first. Looking can wait.”
The tactless female physician pulled a small bronze mirror from her bosom.
The emperor gave her a deep, meaningful look.
The female physician: “…”
The bronze mirror clearly reflected a face that looked like a hedgehog turned into a spirit.
Yun Yi’s older brother studied traditional Chinese medicine. Once, he had asked his sister to fill in for him and help with attendance in his class. On that acupuncture day, the old professor had called out the girl in the peaked cap pretending to be a boy and needled her arm on the spot as a teaching model for the entire class.
Back then, Yun Yi had wanted to chop her brother to pieces.
Right now, Yun Yi wanted to butcher the emperor.
The female physician moved to remove the needles, but the patient on the bed started pulling them out herself while looking in the mirror.
The female physician: Today is my first day working at the Imperial Medical Institute, and also my last.
With each needle Yun Yi pulled, another appeared on the tray Wang Delan held.
The female physician counted the needles, drenched in sweat: fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one…
Xiao Zhi leaned lazily against the headboard, watching her fuming. The corner of his mouth, which had been drooping, unconsciously lifted.
“It’s just a few needles,” Xiao Zhi said. “It doesn’t hurt.”
The emperor’s tone was casual. Yun Yi glared at him. “Says who?!”
That female physician was clearly a rookie. One of the needles had landed exactly on her Zusanli point. Heaven knew how she had managed to keep down the sour, bloated churning in her stomach. Otherwise, she would have done something or other… she’d have ceased being a decent person!
“Says me,” Xiao Zhi said. He held out his hand, pointing to the web between his thumb and forefinger. “Try needling me.”
Without a second word, Yun Yi picked up a silver needle and stabbed it straight into the Hegu point on his hand.
“Hiss…” Xiao Zhi sucked in an exaggerated breath, then laughed softly. “See? It doesn’t hurt at all.”
The scene before him was one Wang Delan would never forget for the rest of his life.
The female physician fainted.
Yun Yi said bitterly, “Next time, I’ll needle your Taiyang acupoint.”
“Alright.”
When she was angry, she really didn’t hold back. A dull pain spread from the Hegu point, threading through his meridians and forcing his blood to race. Xiao Zhi found a strange sweetness in that clear, unmistakable pain.
Outside the hall.
The imperial guard commander reported in a low voice: “Just as Your Majesty predicted, the Dowager Empress obtained the insomnia prescription. This subordinate has identified the messenger—a palace maid responsible for decocting medicine.”
Xiao Zhi: “Don’t touch her. Let her live for now.”
“As you command.”
The eunuchs and palace maids in close attendance were all trusted individuals.
Inside the Yongsuo Hall, the hypocaust was burning fiercely. Warmth seeped through the bricks, filling the chamber with the air of spring. But the emperor’s gaze pierced through this luxury, straight to the festering sores it concealed beneath.
Factional strife, covetous ambition, external threats… danger lurked everywhere.
He didn’t lie back down on the couch. Instead, he sat lazily with one knee bent, leaning against the edge of the bed. The calming incense drifted outward, slowly consuming something called loneliness.
Xiao Zhi suddenly said, “You should go back soon.”
Yun Yi had just been about to chase him away when she was met with a faint sigh, like a wisp of wind that couldn’t be caught.
She sat up, hugging her knees, and lightly nudged his arm with her shoulder. “Back where?”
Xiao Zhi’s voice grew heavier. “Back to your home.”
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