LOT – Chapter 158 Palace Intrigue Is a Circle, and They Haven’t Even Entered It Yet

Lin Mo’s suggestion had, at first, opened up a whole new train of thought for the palace concubines.

“Little Lin is right! How come we never thought of this before?”

Besides, living in the inner palace, they had a natural advantage when it came to writing about this subject. As for worrying that palace secrets might leak out? That was completely unnecessary.

There were hardly any secrets in this palace at the moment. The only “secret” was poverty—but even if people knew the concubines and the emperor were poor, the commoners probably wouldn’t believe it.

After all, before Little Lin started attending court, whenever the emperor and ministers complained about being poor, the ministers all thought the emperor was just tricking them.

Returning to the main palace from the temporary palace, the empress began organizing the concubines to start the great project of writing palace stories.

But there was still one problem to solve.

“Empress, how are we supposed to write about competing for the emperor’s favor? It’s not like we’ve ever done anything like that,” said Virtuous Consort De, pen in hand, utterly clueless. It seemed they had never competed for the emperor’s favor before.

Even the empress was stumped. She didn’t know how to write this either.

The main reason was that there were too few consorts in the palace right now. Everyone was busy with their own affairs and had no free time—or motivation—to compete for favor.

“If competing for favor could improve our treatment a little, then we’d do it. But the emperor is poor! When he comes to their quarters, he even ‘borrows’ one or two things. They’d actually prefer he didn’t come at all.”

At this moment, the Xuande Emperor, busy in the imperial study reviewing memorials, let out a huge sneeze.

Eunuch Li quickly handed over a handkerchief. “Your Majesty, perhaps you should rest a bit. You’ve been busy all day. A little pause won’t hurt.”

Wiping his nose, the emperor replied irritably, “It won’t hurt a little while… but they are pressing so hard. I am only one person, and there are so many matters below needing my attention and approval. The ministers—oh, they keep pushing every day—it’s maddening.”

On top of that, his three sons had been running off constantly. He had no idea why they didn’t help their old father with official duties. The crown prince, too, seemed to be busy with who-knows-what since returning.

While the emperor was stressed, things weren’t much better in the palace.

To gather material, the empress even had the concubines ask the dowager consorts how things were during the previous emperor’s reign—how they had competed for favor.

The dowager consorts, suddenly dragged into this: …

“Wait, are you trying to humiliate us by asking this?”

None of the dowager consorts would answer, which frustrated the other concubines.

“Dowager Consorts, this matter concerns the very survival of our palace. Won’t you help? Don’t you want your lives to be better in the future?”

“Yes! The palace is tight on funds now, and the emperor is poor. Even though the national treasury is recovering, we can’t use its money. The previous emperor had his private funds, but our emperor has none. If he wants to give any reward, he has to scrape together from his own pocket. You all grew up seeing him—don’t you think he’s pitiful?”

The dowager consorts: … “Huh? Are you saying our emperor is worse off than a beggar? He can’t be that miserable.”

In fact, the emperor did have a private treasury earlier, but it was gradually emptied to support the national treasury. By the end, there wasn’t even enough left for himself.

Now the national treasury was finally rich again, but the emperor’s private funds were still poor—not even as much as some consorts. That’s why he always “borrowed” things from them.

Moreover, the empress’s birthday gifts were always generous—rare treasures would be shared with them. But for the emperor’s birthday, his gifts had been converted into money to replenish the treasury. Even the gifts from the empress had to be split in half to support the treasury; the rest was for living expenses.

Truly, after all these years, none of them had expected to see such a poor imperial household. Before entering the palace, they never imagined life would be like this.

After a day of persuasion, they finally convinced the dowager consorts.

One sighed and said seriously, “It’s not that we don’t want to tell you, it’s that we don’t know. The consorts of the previous emperor who competed fiercely are all dead. The slightly more influential ones left the palace when the current emperor ascended. We are just small fry. Frankly, we’ve never even entered the circle.”

Another dowager consort added, “Yes, that’s right. We have no family influence or wealth, and we aren’t particularly outstanding in appearance. Take me, for example—I only ever saw the previous emperor once, at a court banquet.”

The others nodded in agreement. “If you really want to know, you can ask Dowager Consort Chen at the Duke Chen’s residence. She had a period of favor and is the only one still alive who participated in more intense palace intrigues. But I hear her mind is failing these days—you probably won’t get anything useful from her.”

Those remaining in the palace truly were nothing, so when they heard the consorts asking about palace intrigues, they felt these people were deliberately humiliating them.

If palace intrigue were a circle, they had never even entered it.

Hearing this, the concubines’ expressions became extremely complex.

So this is the truth? There really is no one who can solve their problem?

The empress was stunned upon learning this as well.

Still, she sighed. “I’ve heard palace intrigues in the previous emperor’s reign were intense, with all kinds of harm done. But I never imagined it was this severe—so few survived.”

Indeed, the few dowager consorts left in the palace had never participated in palace intrigue. That was truly surprising.

It was also somewhat comical—those who participated in intrigue were dead, while those who never did were now enjoying the privileges of ancestors. Isn’t that ironic?

“Your Majesty, what should we do then? We really can’t write this!”

The opportunity to earn money was slipping away. They were truly unwilling to let this chance go.

At this moment, Lin Mo lay on the bed, sound asleep, completely unaware that a casual remark of hers had kept the palace awake these past few days.

Bai Xiao, shrunk down, was sleeping on her forehead like a tiny warm patch. Unaware, one might think he was a human-shaped fever patch.

A maid covering them with a blanket shook her head helplessly at the scene.

These two were getting more and more brazen—truly not afraid of being discovered at all.