Zhu Huan’s face was pinched, and he looked utterly stunned—just as he had yesterday when Xie Shuishan first lifted the bed curtains and saw him. His phoenix eyes widened in shock.
Xie Shuishan had reached out instinctively. Seeing his reaction, she did not let go. Instead, she twisted his cheek half a turn.
The palace maids nearby dropped to their knees once more.
But Jiang Yi, the one who usually spoke on the emperor’s behalf, was not there. No one could guess the imperial will, and no one dared overstep their bounds by rashly reprimanding Xie Shuishan.
Zhu Huan’s cheek had been pinched hard enough that the smile vanished from his face. He turned his head and raised a hand to push Xie Shuishan away.
Even after living to this wretched state, he was still a born prince and nobleman. No one had ever dared offend him so brazenly.
He lowered his eyes, concealing the violent fury rising within them.
After a moment, he lifted his gaze again. All that remained in his eyes was a mild, placid warmth.
He said to Xie Shuishan, “The medicinal dishes I usually eat are specially prepared by the female physicians and the Imperial Food Bureau.”
“If you find them unpalatable, you needn’t force yourself.”
“Que Zi, instruct the Imperial Food Bureau to prepare a banquet according to the dietary regulations of the Palace of Everlasting Joy and send it over.”
The female food-service official was still kneeling on the floor. At his words, she raised her head and answered steadily, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Inwardly, however, a storm was raging.
The Palace of Everlasting Joy was the empress’s residence. To prepare a meal for this woman according to the empress’s standards… Could it be that…
Que Zi did not dare think any further. She immediately ordered the attendants who served the emperor to hurry to the Imperial Food Bureau and make the arrangements.
Zhu Huan said again, “Remove all of this.”
The female food-service official, Que Zi, rose at once. She wanted to persuade His Majesty to eat a few more bites, but people like them had never been in a position to say such things.
The only person who normally dared to speak freely, Chief Eunuch Jiang, had been severely punished that very morning.
Que Zi and the others could do nothing but obey. Efficiently, they cleared away the dishes on the round table, most of which had barely been touched.
The red-robed junior eunuch supervisor then ordered someone to carry over a small desk laid out with brush and ink. A stack of memorials was brought over and presented to the emperor.
After eating a few bites and drinking several mouthfuls of soup that tasted worse than dishwater, Zhu Huan resumed dealing with the memorials.
Xie Shuishan remained at his side the entire time. At first, she sat upright, but later she simply ordered a palace maid to bring her a bolster. She wedged it behind her lower back and leaned against it.
With her head resting against the carved wooden railing of the couch, she stretched out her long body across it, blocking Zhu Huan completely inside.
Her vigorous, warm legs, separated from his by only a few layers of thin fabric, lay beside Zhu Huan’s legs. Because of his paralysis, the muscles in his legs had inevitably atrophied. No matter how fine-boned and long they might once have been, they now appeared thin and feeble.
Xie Shuishan kept her head turned toward Zhu Huan as well.
Zhu Huan spoke softly the entire time, yet every person attending him remained tense, trembling, and impeccably proper.
If someone truly had a gentle temperament—and was already unable to walk—then the people serving him could not possibly be so tightly wound. The female food-service official had not even dared advise Zhu Huan to eat a few more bites.
The only person who normally dared chatter in Zhu Huan’s presence and speak for him was Jiang Yi.
But if Zhu Huan was truly the savage, ruthless monarch described by the system, a king who knew nothing but slaughter, then how had he managed to make these attendants risk their lives serving him while trapped in such a crippled body?
There were many ways to manipulate people, but relying solely on violence to suppress them would only produce the opposite result.
Besides, in Zhu Huan’s current condition, he would cough until he seemed close to death at the slightest provocation. If the people beneath him truly could not bear it any longer and wanted him dead, they likely would not even need to lift a finger. They could simply leave him to waste away.
Everything in the Palace of Supreme Harmony was shrouded in strangeness. Of all the strange people there, Zhu Huan was the strangest.
Xie Shuishan had deliberately offended him several times. Not only had he refrained from killing her, he had even acted as though he was not angry at all, indulging her as she behaved outrageously throughout the Palace of Supreme Harmony.
He had even ordered a banquet to be prepared for her according to the empress’s standards.
Xie Shuishan was no innocent, carefree girl. She did not believe that Zhu Huan’s smiles and indulgence meant he felt something special for her, nor that the resemblance between their faces concealed some ineffable attachment.
But deliberate indulgence always concealed an ulterior motive. What, exactly, did he intend to keep her around for?
Xie Shuishan leaned back against the couch, watching half of Zhu Huan’s profile as he seriously reviewed the memorials.
She did not ask him.
Whatever Zhu Huan intended, Xie Shuishan would never do anything for him.
Before long, the female food-service official returned with several attendants carrying the meal.
She stopped a short distance from the couch and bowed. “Your Majesty, the banquet is ready.”
Zhu Huan lowered his head slightly. Through the gap between the small desk and his abdomen, he saw that sometime earlier, another leg had been draped across his legs beneath the desk.
Since he had no sensation in them and had been concentrating on the memorials, he had not noticed in time.
Zhu Huan lowered his head and looked at it for a moment. Then, as though he had seen nothing unusual, he said in his soft, languid voice, “Set it in the side hall.”
Although Xie Shuishan did not see the change in Zhu Huan’s eyes, she could inexplicably sense that he was eager to send her away.
So she propped herself up with the bolster and sat up. Her leg did not move. She maintained the brazen, incongruous position, one leg resting on Zhu Huan’s insensate leg, and gave it an arrogant little swing.
“I’ll eat here,” she said.
“This couch is big enough, isn’t it? There’s room.”
Xie Shuishan tilted her head and deliberately looked up at Zhu Huan from below. “Is that not allowed, Your Majesty?”
She imitated Zhu Huan’s tone when she said the words “Your Majesty,” giving them a pointed, lingering emphasis.
Zhu Huan did not raise his head. The hand holding the memorial paused on the page for a moment before he said, “As you wish.”
That worked?
The female food-service official directed the attendants to bring over another round table. They placed it directly beside Zhu Huan’s small desk, facing him, and began serving the dishes.
Xie Shuishan’s gaze roamed over Zhu Huan’s face with unabashed interest.
She was no longer curious about why Zhu Huan had kept her around. Instead, she was intensely curious to know what she could do to make him finally lose patience and deal with her.
But she was hungry at the moment. For now, Xie Shuishan decided to fill her stomach first.
She got up and sat beside the round table.
When Zhu Huan saw that her leg had finally moved away, he let out an almost imperceptible breath of relief.
A palace maid helped Xie Shuishan remove her shoes. She sat cross-legged, picked up the golden chopsticks, and began eating before the food-service attendants had even finished tasting the dishes for poison.
The female food-service official’s lips moved as though she wanted to say something. She quickly glanced at His Majesty, and when she saw that he remained unmoved, she said nothing. She merely signaled for her attendants to serve the food more quickly.
The small round table could not hold the full meal prescribed for the empress. It was piled high with dishes, and there were still many more that had yet to be brought out.
Whenever Xie Shuishan took two or three bites of something—or stopped touching it altogether—a palace maid would swiftly step forward to remove it and replace it with another dish.
Xie Shuishan ate with great satisfaction, glancing at Zhu Huan as she did so and treating the sight of him earnestly reviewing memorials as an accompaniment to her meal.
In truth, no matter how much two people resembled each other, if their temperaments were different, their faces might only be confused at first glance. Anyone observant enough would not mistake one for the other after a brief examination.
Xie Shuishan and Zhu Huan resembled each other in appearance, but their temperaments were completely different.
Even Xie Shuishan herself never experienced any sense of disorientation when looking at Zhu Huan. Apart from their faces, they were alike in no way at all.
Xie Shuishan ate with unhurried elegance, a pleasing sight to behold. But unlike a prince who had undergone specialized training, her poise was relaxed and natural.
Unlike Zhu Huan, whose every movement was as elegant yet taut as though measured with a ruler.
When someone stood beside her and served her food, Xie Shuishan did not accept everything placed before her merely to conceal her preferences. She took a few bites of what she liked, and if she disliked something, she simply reached for another dish, letting the plate in front of her pile up into a little mountain.
As she ate the barely swallowable meal, Xie Shuishan unfolded her crossed legs and stretched one long leg over the side of the daybed. The toes of her cloth-wrapped foot were not idle either, hooking and brushing against the outside of Zhu Huan’s thigh.
She kept watching Zhu Huan’s reaction from the corner of her eye.
When her leg once again came to rest directly across his, and the snow-white sock was visibly about to slide toward somewhere unmentionable, Zhu Huan finally reached the limit of his patience and said, “I am feeling somewhat unwell. Summon the female physician.”
Xie Shuishan looked at Zhu Huan, and Zhu Huan happened to raise his eyes at the same moment.
At last, Xie Shuishan caught a glimpse of his true emotions—emotions that he had not managed to conceal in time.
They were truly ferocious and wolfish, sealed beneath a layer of frozen ice.
Tsk.
A wolf is a wolf. Why pretend to be a lamb all day long?
Even so, Zhu Huan still did not lose his temper with Xie Shuishan. Before the time it took to finish a cup of tea, the female physician arrived.
By then, Jiang Yi, whose injuries had been treated, had also returned. A large group of people surrounded Zhu Huan and carried him to the bed.
Xie Shuishan had eaten her fill as well. She took a cloth and wiped her mouth, then rinsed it and put on her shoes with the palace maids’ assistance.
After getting off the daybed, she followed them over to watch the spectacle.
She thought Zhu Huan was about to turn into a porcupine again.
But this time, the treatment did not involve acupuncture.
Layer after layer of curtains was lowered. Basins of hot, fragrant water were carried inside one after another.
The palace maids and female attendants moved soundlessly and swiftly, carrying basins of water and damp cloths back and forth. Xie Shuishan watched from outside for a while. The whole affair inside Zhu Huan’s hall was so much like a woman giving birth in a television drama that, if not for the eerie silence within and the absence of anyone’s cries, she might really have believed that was what was happening.
She took a few sips of tea. In any case, no one was watching her or restricting her movements.
So Xie Shuishan simply lifted one curtain after another and went inside to watch the excitement.
When only a single gauze curtain remained, Jiang Yi stopped her.
“Miss, please wait.”
Jiang Yi’s voice was very low. There was no sarcastic undertone, nor did he berate Xie Shuishan.
His head was wrapped in a strip of white cloth, and his face was ashen. The bandage was still stained with blood. From her vantage point above him, Xie Shuishan thought he looked even more like a dutiful son or grandson dressed for mourning.
Jiang Yi had been perfectly fine when the sky grew light that morning. Half a day had passed, and now he had been reduced to this.
Within Taiji Palace—or rather, within the entire imperial palace—who would dare lay a hand on Jiang Yi?
Xie Shuishan stared at his head as though he were some rare and exotic creature.
Curling her lips, she asked, “What is it? Did His Majesty hit you?”
Jiang Yi’s expression stiffened. He neither answered nor looked at Xie Shuishan. He merely stood before her, blocking her path and preventing her from going any farther.
Xie Shuishan was in no hurry. She asked again, “Why? Could it be because you talked too much, overstepped your authority, abused your master’s favor, and finally angered your ‘mild-tempered’ master?”
Under ordinary circumstances, those words should have been enough to make Jiang Yi leap with fury.
But he remained completely unmoved. When Xie Shuishan tried to go around him, he flicked open his horsetail whisk, spread his arms, and blocked her once more.
His voice did not rise, nor did it carry any sting. “His Majesty is indisposed. Miss, you should return to the side hall and rest.”
Xie Shuishan raised a brow.
At that moment, Jiang Yi’s face was solemn and his back ramrod straight. Although he was still dressed as an eunuch supervisor, and the irritating wrinkles on his face had not diminished in the slightest, the shrillness had vanished from his voice. The obsequious, fawning manner typical of eunuchs had also disappeared without a trace.
Standing before Xie Shuishan with both arms extended, his official robes hanging heavily from his frame, he unexpectedly revealed the proud bearing of an upright minister with an unbending spine.
Xie Shuishan remembered that, according to the story, seven years earlier—before Zhu Huan had ascended the throne—Jiang Yi had still been the chief administrator of the prince’s household, a proper fourth-rank official.
It seemed that this master-and-servant pair, Zhu Huan and Jiang Yi, probably showed the world nothing of their true selves in their daily lives.
That was not difficult to understand.
A man who had been castrated and sent into the palace halfway through his life, even if he was the emperor’s closest and most trusted confidant, would have found it difficult to command the palace eunuchs who had grown up there from childhood unless he was willing to cast aside his own uniqueness and “do as the Romans do.”
Xie Shuishan actually found Jiang Yi much more pleasing to the eye like this.
But no matter what sort of person he became, he still could not stop Xie Shuishan from going where she pleased.
Xie Shuishan smiled at Jiang Yi and raised one slender hand before him, spreading her long fingers.
Then she placed her hand over his head and gave his injured spot a hard pinch.
Jiang Yi cried, “Ah!”
He had already struck his head against the floor with considerable force while kowtowing earlier, and his skull was still throbbing in intermittent bursts.
Having the wound prodded like that made him instinctively clutch his head and bend forward.
Xie Shuishan took the opportunity to stroll calmly around him and lifted the final gauze curtain.
The instant the curtain opened and she saw what was inside, Xie Shuishan let out a puzzled “Hm?” and froze beside the bed curtains.
Zhu Huan was transforming.
Just like a Transformer changing into a car.
At that moment, both of his legs were folded above his own head.
