The Blood-Stained Empress

C12: Scarlet Insignia

*

Three and a half weeks later.

"What do you think?" Li Meixing asks the middle-aged man before her.

He beams widely and graciously hands her the money. "Amazing! This unintelligent one thanks Master Liu Weixin for the poem. My wife will love it!"

"That is the last request Master Liu Weixin is taking for today! We will be open tomorrow afternoon as usual." Bai Wei announces loudly. The line of people before the stand labeled Moonlit Letters abruptly voices their disappointment before slowly scattering away. Bai Wei immediately gets to work with closing up the stand and storing all of the materials into the carriage that Xi Tan had prepared. "Brother Liu, you made so much money today!" she exclaims happily. "It looks like at this rate, Brother Liu won't even have to depend on funds from his family. Which family's young mi—master can say the same?"

"En, it truly is amazing." Li Meixing didn't think that the business she started on a whim would be this successful so quickly, and it's only thanks to the countless hours spent being grilled on literature by Cai Momo, her mother's lead maid, that her skills in poetry are so outstanding. "But just having the money is not enough." Right now, her biggest weak point is that she doesn't know the intricacies of the current situation. In her previous life as the figurehead of a beautiful, docile, and virtuous young lady, she made no effort to learn about politics and never had to fight for anything either. Her obliviousness was her mistake, and it's not a mistake that she will suffer for again. Since returning to the past, she has already read almost all of Li Huoxin's military books and become familiar with the history of Qi Kingdom. Her present self is many times more knowledgeable than she was before, but what she truly needs is power. "Did you sell the jewelry I asked you to sell?"

"Yes, but this lowly one truly feels that it's a waste," Bai Wei laments regretfully. "All of that jewelry was personally sent to the family by other furens and even the imperial palace."

"Having so many chests of jewelry lying around without being touched is the actual waste," Li Meixing responds. Her stomach lightly growls as she finishes packing the last piece of the stand into the carriage.

"Is Master Liu hungry?" Deng Kun asks. He is also in the process of packing up for the day. "As a frail-looking young man still in the process of maturing, you shouldn't be working this hard for half a day without food." His tone is like that of a warm father concerned for his sickly son. "I have leftover porridge if Master Liu wants some."

"No need to trouble Master Deng." Li Meixing smiles gratefully at Deng Kun, who in the past couple of weeks, has not only been extremely hospitable and welcoming but has also helped to advertise her stand to his customers. "Master Deng has done so much for me already and to ask for more favors would be selfish of me." She exchanges bows with Deng Kun before entering a carriage.

Deng Kun sighs softly to himself while scooping away the leftover porridge and offering them to eager nearby passersby. He doesn't know why, but somehow the two young men going by Liu Weixin and Wu Bai, despite always being courteous to others and himself, give him an unsettling kind of feeling—especially Liu Weixin. His eyes that look so calm and steady without even the slightest ripple seem like they've experienced great calamities in life, but how could that be possible given his young appearance?

As Li Meixing's carriage departs, a sudden harsh wind lifts the carriage's curtains and reveals a scarlet insignia embedded on the inside. Deng Kun catches sight of the symbol and freezes in his actions before slowly turning his attention back to the porridge in hand. Forget it. This kind of world is not something that a commoner like him can simply enter and leave.

***

"His Highness the Crown Prince really dotes on you a lot," Chen Suying mentioned off-handedly while peeling a grape. "He's at the age to start looking for a wang fei as well."

Li Meixing blushed and shyly looked down on her lap. "I don't dare to predict the future. Being with His Highness in the present is enough."

Chen Suying glanced at this beautiful friend of hers that managed to catch the attention of someone as powerful as Huang Siming, and a trace of jealousy crept into her. "Aiya, the future is indeed hard to predict. Who knows how quickly men's hearts change? I heard that just a month ago officials from Ding Kingdom offered countless beautiful dancers to the Emperor as concubines and that the empress is extremely upset."

"Accepting those concubines is a must in order to keep friendly relations. If there is a future with the Crown Prince, I—I am prepared to make such sacrifices." Her voice was delicate and sweet to the ear.

Chen Suying sighed while plopping a grape into her mouth. "Say, I heard that Prime Minister Guo finished investigating the cause of the Second Prince's death. Apparently it was his own mother, the Empress, that poisoned him!"

"Really?" Li Meixing recalled the poised and dignified woman that she met at the recent banquet. "But why? She didn't seem to be that vicious."

Chen Suying leaned in. "But she really is that vicious. The poison was initially meant for the Crown Prince and somewhere along the line, the poison ended up before the Second Prince! What a pity. Although I've never seen him, rumors say that he's extremely handsome," Chen Suying lowered her voice, "more handsome than the ordinary-looking Crown Prince. It's just that he was useless and didn't participate in court affairs much, so it's no wonder that the Empress became desperate."

Li Meixing abruptly wakes up and massages her aching temple. Why did she suddenly recall that memory from so long ago in her dream?

"Greetings to da xiaojie. Does da xiaojie want me to ask the kitchen to prepare breakfast?"

Li Meixing props herself up from the bed and notices that there's only herself and Bai Wei in the room. "Where are Hua Yin and Zuo Qing?" Aside from Bai Wei, who is her first-ranked maid, those two are her closest maids and are almost always at her side.

"Today is the maid examination for ranked twos and below, so the two of them went to the Western courtyard."

Li Meixing immediately gets out of bed and urges for Bai Wei to hurriedly help her dress. "When did the examination start?"

"Just a quarter of a sichen ago. Is da xiaojie interested in the results?" Bai Wei asks curiously. It's rare for Li Meixing to be interested in the complications of the fu and she has never inquired about these kinds of things in the past. Lately her mistress has been acting unlike her usual frivolous self and often dazes out thinking about things that make her normally young and adorable face look somber. She even out of the blue decided to become a street vendor selling poems and sold all of her unnecessary jewelry. Which family's young miss doesn't like jewelry? Bai Wei can't help but feel confused.