TN | The Malicious Empress

Chapter 13: Secretly Ganging Up

A cool breeze started up during the night as autumn neared, turning the weather cooler by the day. The Ding capital was in the North, making the cold more surprising.

Under the candlelight, the young female held a book, reading it slowly as she reclined against the couch. She did not realise that the tea beside her had turned cold as she continued reading her book in a trance.

Marie stared blankly at her Young Lady. It was as if in a short span of one night, her mistress had become different from before. Even quietly reading as she was now would be unusual as Jennie previously hated to read. But with the way things were now, if she did not know that it was her own Young Lady, Marie would have thought that she had come across a noble woman.

Marie did not really understand how a young lady would have such an imposing matter as she stood dazedly in her position. She only recovered when Alexia strode over and nudged her to reprimand softly, "Standing here foolishly for what?" Alexia then walked over to place a cloak around Jennie and warmly advised, "Young Lady, it seems that the time is no longer early and there is a need to go to Oak wood academy tomorrow. It would be better to rest early."

Jennie shook her head, "Go and rest first, I will read for a while longer."

What kind of reasoning would there be for a mistress to not sleep while her maid rested. Alexia could not do anything. She wanted to persuade her again but was held back by Marie who was changing the tea and pulled out to the outer room with one of the other maids.

"Marie, what is it?" Alexia did not understand, "Young Lady's health just recovered, why did you not go up to persuade her to rest?"

"How did I not persuade?" Maries's head ached, "Would the current Young Lady listen to my words? She has been reading books for an entire day and I suspect it should be the homework from her teacher and Young Lady has made up her mind to complete it tonight. What other choice do I have?" She glanced back to the room worriedly. When Jennie was formally timid, she would always want the advice of others. Now that she was no longer timid, when she made up her mind, no one dared refute. As she was serving close by, Marie felt one would not dare to refuse any of Shen Jennie's orders.

Just speaking plainly like that would also reveal an imposing stance. Even when Jennie's uncle flew into a rage, it wasn't as scary as this, Marie sighed.

In the room, Jennie was still reading.

She was seriously studying the contents of the book and did not leave any detail behind. If one were to look closely, they would have found that the book she was holding was "Ming Qi Official Annals". Other than the big events that had occurred from the founding of the country to the current Ming Qi, she was only familiar with the events that would happen in the next few decades and decided to prepare some methods to prevent the tragedies from happening. As an enemy's enemy is one's friend, she had to find out who were the vassal families and what their current situations were. If these vassal families reached their end, it would soon be the Shen family's turn.

The steps the Emperor took to eradicate these families were much nearer. As per what Jennie remembered, if there was no other mishaps, there would be a big catastrophe next month.

Before her father returned, only she could support Shen residence while she also had to defend against those wolves from the East courtyard.

As Jennie presumed, that night Gui Momo took the specialties that she had brought back from her trip to visit to the Rong Qing Tang. After she entered, Zhang Mama, who worked by Old Shen Furen's side, was pulled away by her as Gui Momo kept talking about Jennie's disobedient ways and how she would frequently lash out with words of anger.