“Ahahahaha!”
Inside Chenhua Hall, a burst of laughter exploded in rapid succession.
Yun Yi’s expression was indescribable—the Emperor’s wife had such a boisterous laugh?
“You mean—I’m the Empress?” The princess laughed so hard she choked, and her attendant maids hurriedly patted her back to soothe her.
Wisps of incense curled around Yun Yi’s nose, and she gradually grew confused: if this woman wasn’t the Empress, was she a consort? But if her rank were any lower, how could she afford to live in such a magnificent hall?
“My imperial brother has never married,” the princess said after taking a sip of tea and finally catching her breath. “His taste is bizarre—no proper gentlewoman catches his eye.”
Yun Yi’s stiff eyebrows relaxed. “You’re… Xiao Zhi’s sister?”
“Ha?”
The princess’s smile vanished for a moment—clearly taken aback—then she seized the chance to intimidate her: “Bold! How dare you speak His Majesty’s name directly!”
Self-preservation came first. Yun Yi quickly knelt: “This servant dare not. Princess, have mercy.”
Seeing her kneeling, the princess felt dissatisfied—no fun at all.
What she had seen last night while peeking over the wall with her eldest imperial brother was a girl who was utterly audacious. She had propped Second Imperial Brother’s pillow upright on the bed, pummeled it soundly, and cursed as she struck.
The princess asked again: “What are you holding in your arms?”
“They’re this servant’s clothes.”
“What clothes? Are they pretty?”
The kneeling girl shot up at once, looking exasperated, like a girl complaining to her bestie about her mother’s taste: “Look—my mom bought this green hoodie. I look like a Christmas tree in it.”
Yun Yi shook out the clothes.
Ugly warning ahead!
The princess walked down gracefully and studied the strange outfit.
“What’s this?”
“It’s the hood on the hoodie.”
They went back and forth, question and answer.
The princess was about the same height as Yun Yi, with a girlish innocence in her brows that made her look five or six years younger.
In modern times, she would be a bona fide “flower of the motherland.”
“Want to try it on, Princess?”
“I can wear it?” The princess’s eyes lit up instantly.
“Yeah.”
“You’ll help me put it on?”
A princess’s delicate body required attendants—that was only natural. Yun Yi decided to humor her; she had already washed the princess’s clothes, so helping her get dressed wouldn’t cost her anything.
Just as Yun Yi was about to help her dress—
The princess and her personal maid were enthusiastically discussing: “Does the hood go over the head? How do you tie the drawstrings on the pants?”
Ah, so that was it—ancient people had never seen hoodies and sweatpants.
Before the full-length bronze mirror, the princess examined herself with satisfaction. A lovely water-green—like a willow tree brushed green by the spring breeze—nothing like a “raw egg tree” at all.
“This maid’s uniform you’re wearing is dreadfully shabby. Luan Ying, give this young lady—”
The princess shot her a look, and Yun Yi caught it perfectly: “Reporting to Your Highness, this servant’s name is Yun Yi.”
“I’m Xiao Qingzhu.”
“Yes, Princess.” Yun Yi nodded dully, like an unenlightened stone.
“Xiao Qingzhu.” The ancient princess was like a modern repeater.
Yun Yi couldn’t catch the princess’s meaning this time: “Huh…?”
“Summon the boldness you used when calling my imperial brother by name!”
“Xiao Qingzhu?”
“Bold! How dare you call my name directly! Off with your head!”
Yun Yi: “…” I knew it.
Xiao Qingzhu was immensely satisfied and ordered: “Luan Ying, take Miss Yun to change. That set of clothes made a few days ago…”
Yun Yi was escorted into the inner chamber by several maids on both sides.
She shed the maid’s uniform and changed into a cloud-like ceremonial robe, looking every bit the dignified noble lady.
Luan Ying was about to compliment the young lady’s beauty when Yun Yi flashed eight gleaming white teeth: “Hehe.”
Luan Ying: “…” She had never seen such a smile before.
.
Xiao Zhi arrived at Chenhua Hall.
Before the bronze mirror stood a familiar figure.
She was wearing a green hoodie and green pants—the spitting image of that strange tree in the Yun family garage.
He stepped forward two paces and unceremoniously lifted the hood, almost able to imagine the porcelain-white face behind it.
“Outrageous!” The princess slapped away the hand behind her head.
She turned around and met the Emperor’s dark, heavy gaze.
“…Your humble sister greets His Majesty.”
“Where is she?” Xiao Zhi didn’t see Yun Yi, and the menace in his eyes deepened as he studied his sister’s strange outfit. “Why are you wearing her clothes?”
“Miss Yun gave them to me.”
Those words grated on his ears. Xiao Zhi felt inexplicably displeased—like every older brother who finds fault with his sister—and for once, he let his emotions show: “What have I taught you? You just take people’s clothes like that? Do you know how poor her family is?”
If she wore such ugly clothes, the Yun family must truly be scraping by.
“…” The princess suddenly felt as if she had looted a starving villager’s last grain.
The siblings conspired loudly outside the hall.
In Xiao Zhi’s description, the Yun family was akin to refugees in a famine year.
“No wonder Miss Yun sneaked into the palace to work.” Xiao Qingzhu tugged at the hem of the hoodie, instantly feeling terribly guilty—a princess, stealing the clothes of a destitute refugee?
The maid styling Yun Yi’s hair had finished pinning it up. In the bronze mirror, this upgraded version of herself looked presentable and refined—clothes truly made the woman.
Yun Yi smirked to herself: when she kept her mouth shut, she really did look like a proper lady of a noble house.
She smiled smugly.
At some point, the maids had all vanished.
Fragrant incense filled the air, and the beaded curtain rattled with crisp sounds. Beside her, the dressing case gleamed with jeweled hairpins. For a moment, she felt as if she had wandered onto the set of a period drama.
A figure appeared in the hazy mirror.
The Emperor had quietly arrived and was standing behind Yun Yi.
Her light indigo robe set off her delicate beauty, and the faint red mark between her brows was indistinct in the bronze reflection. Xiao Zhi felt she looked like a flower about to bloom—so much so that he couldn’t help gazing at her a moment longer.
Yun Yi started—frozen in place as if struck by an acupoint.
“Caught red-handed.” The Emperor shook out the imperial edict—the very one Yun Yi had scribbled all over.
He had sent his secret guards to steal it back. The Minister of Rites’ household must be in chaos by now—losing an imperial edict was a grave offense.
Seeing Xiao Zhi looking ready to settle accounts, Yun Yi gave up all pretense and thumped her head heavily against his chest: “Here—take my head as compensation.”
Xiao Zhi casually picked up a hairpin from the dressing case and stuck it into that head.
Yun Yi looked up. At the tip of the pin, where kingfisher feathers gathered, an eastern sea pearl glowed with a lustrous sheen.
“I’m not taking your life—what are you afraid of?” The Emperor’s tone softened, as if he were in a reasonable mood.
Yun Yi’s brain short-circuited, and she stepped on the Emperor’s boot: “Then why did you bring the edict?”
How was this any different from a creditor showing up at the door with an IOU?
His toes nearly crushed, Xiao Zhi said through the pain: “I just wanted to…”
He had come to apologize.
Why had Yun Yi come and then run away? Xiao Zhi had thought it over and over, and the root of the problem lay in this edict.
After traveling to a thousand years later, he had once carved words at the archaeological excavation site: “Xiao Zhi, Emperor of Great Yan, was here.”
Yun Yi had discovered it and hurriedly rubbed it off with a stone.
Add Rule No. 5 to the 2026 Survival Code: Defacing scenic spots is a crime!
So after she doodled on the edict and hid inside the seal, listening to the ministers’ fierce debate in court, she had been afraid.
Afraid of being thrown into the dungeon.
It was his fault for not reining in those old men—he had scared her.
The words “I’m sorry” reached his lips, but his two lips seemed stuck together—he simply could not say them.
“What do you want?” Yun Yi crossed her arms, looking more like an emperor than the Emperor himself.
Xiao Zhi unrolled the edict and pointed to one spot: “I… wanted to ask—what does ‘wife’ mean?”
In the Yan Dynasty, “wife” meant an elderly woman—an old dame.
“Wife means Empress.”
Hearing this, the princess immediately put it to use: “Imperial Brother—she just called me your wife.”
“…”
This princess was a crime beyond enumeration!
…
Yun Yi ducked into the Emperor’s imperial carriage.
She lifted the curtain slightly and poked her head out—the princess’s green figure grew smaller and smaller at the gate of Chenhua Hall. From a distance, she really did look like a little tree.
“Kindly go all the way to the end, then turn right,” Yun Yi said, watching the road. “Further ahead—left turn.”
Rustle, rustle—the wheels rolled over the palace path.
Following Yun Yi’s directions, Xiao Zhi ordered the eunuch attendant to change course.
He remembered that in the era a thousand years later, she also liked to drive aimlessly through the city in her car.
In the Yan Dynasty, the imperial carriage circled the palace path once, then twice.
The Emperor patiently indulged her, frittering away the hours.
“Stop right here. Thanks.” Up ahead stood the Buddhist pine that Yun Yi recognized.
Xiao Zhi twirled the tassel between his fingers. The sight of his old residence, glimpsed through the gaps in the lattice doors, stirred an uneasy feeling in him.
So she was going back to his old residence.
“Won’t you return to Yongsui Hall with me?”
Yun Yi kept a distance of several people’s width between herself and Xiao Zhi. Xiao Zhi looked down at the empty space and suddenly felt the carriage was far too spacious.
He remembered sitting in her car in that later era, the two of them pressed close together, and when she had taught him how to fasten the seatbelt, he could still catch the faint fragrance of her hair.
Yun Yi pulled Xiao Zhi’s thoughts back to the Yan Dynasty and said, “That wouldn’t be appropriate.”
The carriage came to a steady stop.
A young woman in resplendent robes leaped down, her long skirts billowing—like a peony falling into the spring light.
“Come back—” Xiao Zhi reached his hand out through the carriage window.
He touched—
Only the corner of a shadow beneath the spring shade.
The owner of that shadow, like a peerless martial artist, agilely scrambled up the Buddhist pine, her delicate embroidered shoes treading on the cracked bark. She paid no heed to the Emperor’s calls and arrogantly climbed over the palace wall.
Their gazes met midair.
Yun Yi spotted the bronze key in Xiao Zhi’s hand. Without even wiping the sweat from her brow, she glared with wide almond-shaped eyes: “You had the key all along and didn’t say so!”
A sovereign of a nation was talked back to by a young woman.
Xiao Zhi bit his lower lip and tossed the key over.
An arc of light sliced through the air.
The wild monkey atop the wall caught it steadily, her brows lifted to the sky: “Hmph—trying to hit me on the head? I have magic powers.”
The Emperor laughed in spite of himself. What magic powers—he had clearly thrown it with a deft touch.
The palace path fell silent. At some point, the Emperor had stepped down from the carriage and stood with his hands behind his back outside the gate of the old residence.
A dark eye peered through the crack in the door.
“Why haven’t you left yet? Playing doorkeeper?” The order to leave came from inside his own old residence.
Who exactly was the master here?
Xiao Zhi was helpless: “You truly won’t return to the palace with me?”
“That’s for you and your wife to live in.”
Wife.
Meaning Empress.
“What empress is there in my palace?”
“Once you hold the consort selection, won’t you have a wife?”
“I—”
“Consort Zhao, Beauty Qian, Lady Sun,” the voice behind the door said with a rhythmic lilt. “No wonder everyone wants to be emperor—now I want to be one too.”
The attendants nearby broke out in a cold sweat for her upon hearing such treasonous words.
Yun Yi: “Rent this residence to me. As for the payment—deduct it from the seventy thousand taels you owe me.”
The Emperor found it utterly absurd—as if he would ever ask her for rent!
“Go on, go on—hurry up and leave. It wouldn’t be good if anyone saw you.”
What was he—something shameful to be hidden?
How infuriating.
Just as the Emperor, driven back to his carriage, was about to depart, he heard another voice from the residence.
“Remember to send someone to replenish the tea! And dried apricots! And if there could be some sweet-and-sour pork from the imperial kitchen, that would be best.”
“Aren’t you afraid of being seen?” the Emperor retorted.
Yun Yi resented him—such a petty emperor.
“Can’t you be discreet? I’m just begging alms from the Emperor—do you have to be so stingy?”
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
Her skill at turning blame around was truly unparalleled.
Leave a Reply