Chapter 2: You People Are Sure as Hell My Blessing!

In this world, who else besides the Empress Dowager would refer to themselves as “this Dowager”?

Chun Rui’s face instantly turned pale. She tremblingly looked at Shen Yuezhuang beside her. “M-Miss… she, she, she is…”

Chun Rui swallowed hard. It took her a while to find her voice.

“A woman?!”

Her tone was timid, tinged with a hint of pity. “Her Grace the Empress Dowager has a younger brother, Miss. Didn’t you say you absolutely refuse to take a husband who has a younger brother?”

Shen Yuezhuang: “…”

Chun Rui was worried. “Was all of Second Brother Nie’s effort for nothing, then?”

Oh, my dear, you really know how to pick out the key point!

Shen Yuezhuang said flatly, “His effort wasn’t wasted. He’s just blind!”

A woman as seductive as a fox spirit, and just because she’d drawn her eyebrows thicker, he’d mistaken her for a “striking man”!

Striking my ass! Was Second Brother Nie capturing a husband for her or finding a wife for himself?

Shen Yuezhuang’s head throbbed with anger. But her “Crouching Dragon” beside her was still cautiously poking her nose into the drama.

Chun Rui looked at her with a face full of burning curiosity. “Miss, rumors say you and His Majesty are on very close terms. The Empress Dowager is His Majesty’s legal mother. So you tying her up like this…” She pondered for a moment, then defined the Empress Dowager’s status in relation to Shen Yuezhuang. “Tying up your own elder. Isn’t that a bit inappropriate?”

Elder?!

Shen Yuezhuang laughed in exasperation.

To make her old father’s grand plan of finding a son-in-law a little easier, she had been cultivating her character at home for five years. The old Daoist priest told her to keep her heart as calm as still water and to commit fewer verbal sins. But hearing Chun Rui say “elder,” the lake of her mind, calm for five years, suddenly stirred up waves.

“Elder? Ridiculous!” Shen Yuezhuang sneered coldly. “I was the Study Companion to the Seventeenth Princess, the late Emperor’s youngest sister. By seniority, I’m an elder to the Emperor too. If you say he and I are of the same generation, who are you insulting?”

Shen Yuezhuang was like a cat whose fur had been rubbed the wrong way. Chun Rui looked at her with an expression of absolute exasperation. “Oh, Miss! The point isn’t whether we tied someone up!”

Laughing now! Now she knows where the point is!

Chun Rui suddenly became clever. She quickly removed the sack and hemp ropes from the Empress Dowager, then respectfully bowed.

“Your Grace, please take your time catching up with Miss. This servant will wait outside the carriage.”

As soon as Chun Rui left, a suffocating silence descended inside the carriage.

Shen Yuezhuang leaned bonelessly against the carriage wall. The wind lifted the curtain, and through the gap, her light amber eyes looked at the dark green bricks of the alley outside.

It wasn’t very far from the place where the list was being announced. She could faintly hear shouts of “I passed!” and “I’m on the list!”

The distant clamor only accentuated the silence inside the carriage. Shen Yuezhuang refused to look at the person inside. The other person bowed her head slightly, her slender fingertips smoothing the cuffs of her blue robe.

The cuffs covered the abrasions left by the ropes. It must have stung fiercely, but she seemed oblivious. She tightened the cuffs, then lifted her head and smiled lightly at Shen Yuezhuang.

Six years in the Palace, and Liu Yun thought she would have long engraved that false politeness onto her skin. But looking at Shen Yuezhuang’s utterly different, subdued, and dim demeanor compared to years ago, the light in her beautiful peach-blossom eyes dimmed for an instant. Her lips moved, but in the end, she said nothing.

She followed Shen Yuezhuang’s gaze outside the carriage, but from her angle, she could only see the tightly closed, solid carriage walls.

The atmosphere inside the carriage was tense. However, this alley was lively. As soon as Chun Rui got out of the carriage, Second Brother Nie approached her.

The burly, rough-looking man glanced at the carriage and said gruffly, “Miss Chun Rui, how is it? Is the young man to the young miss’s satisfaction?”

Chun Rui stamped her foot indignantly. “Second Brother Nie, I’m not one to complain, but what kind of job did you people do? Do you even know who you captured? That is the current Empress Dowager!”

“The Empress Dowager?” The whiskers on Second Brother Nie’s face seemed to fly up. He slapped his thigh with regret. “Ah! The Empress Dowager has a younger brother! What a pity! Our young miss doesn’t want a husband with younger brothers!”

Shen Yuezhuang: “…”

You people are sure as hell my blessing!

All of Shen Yuezhuang’s melancholy and gloomy mood vanished. She frantically searched around the carriage, then took off her shoe. Half of her body leaned out of the carriage.

The embroidered shoe, with a pearl the size of a thumb on the toe, flew accurately and steadily, hitting the wall beside the two of them with a “smack” and landing in Chun Rui’s arms.

“Could you at least try to gossip somewhere I can’t hear you!”

Second Brother Nie and Chun Rui, who was holding Shen Yuezhuang’s shoe, exchanged looks, then smiled apologetically at her. They moved a few steps to the entrance of the alley, their backs to Shen Yuezhuang, and continued whispering.

Shen Yuezhuang: “…”

Not only that, but Old Kang from the Kang family also joined the discussion.

After all, Old Six Kang was the one who had put the sack over the Empress Dowager’s head and tied her up. Old Kang’s hands trembled. “Hey… I mean, shouldn’t your main concern be that tying up the Empress Dowager is a crime punishable by execution?”

“Right!” Second Brother Nie clapped his hands in agreement and looked at Chun Rui. “Miss Chun Rui, so…”

“Oh, it’s nothing!” Chun Rui lifted her chin confidently. “Before the Empress Dowager entered the Palace, she was still a member of our household. Roughly speaking, she grew up with our young miss. The Empress Dowager won’t hold a grudge against our young miss. Don’t worry!”

Old Kang’s trembling hands steadied a bit. “But I heard people outside say that the Empress Dowager was implicated by her family and made a criminal slave. She was bought back to our estate as a maidservant. They also say that the reason Miss hasn’t entered the Palace all these years is that our Miss mistreated her as a servant, and they became enemies!”

They had moved a bit farther away, but their voices still reached Shen Yuezhuang’s ears word for word. She had her second shoe in her hand now, her chest heaving violently as she listened to what dog nonsense they would spout next!

Soon, Chun Rui lived up to expectations and spoke again. “That’s all bullshit! Someone like our young miss—who could dislike her? Mistreat servants? I joined the household late, but do I look like someone who’s been mistreated?”

Second Brother Nie and Old Kang glanced at the embroidered shoe in her arms, then at Chun Rui’s chattering mouth, and shook their heads.

“No.”

She deserved it, more like.

“Exactly!” Chun Rui said smugly. “Those outsiders are just sour grapes. Look how well our young miss and the Empress Dowager are catching up… Ah!”

As if she had just remembered something, Chun Rui hurriedly ran over to the carriage door.

Shen Yuezhuang had just put down the shoe in her hand when Chun Rui poked her head in, braving her young miss’s fierce glare, and said with a reminder, “The Marquis said for you to speak less outside and not cause any trouble.”

Then she added quietly, “You were wrong just now too. How can you call yourself an elder to the Emperor right in front of his legal mother? No wonder our Second Young Master says that the speed at which our Marquis fills in the holes can’t keep up with the speed you dig them! Miss, you’re digging the graves of our entire family!”

The dirt dug from the graves wouldn’t be enough to fill your chatterbox mouth!

With a “smack,” the other shoe was also thrown out. Second Brother Nie and Old Kang watched with amazement.

The young miss sure had a good temper!

Chun Rui grabbed both shoes and ran. Inside the carriage, Liu Yun let out a light laugh. “Let’s talk about serious matters. I was going to find you today anyway, when I left the Palace.”