The Empress
"Prepares my clothes and sword… zhang will follow me" Jin Yu instructed his eunuch. Eunuch Wang cannot say anything when his master already made his mind. He is disgruntledly with a heavy heart to prepare his outfit to go out of the palace. Eunuch Wang always stays behind to cover his king absence from the palace. Eunuch Zhang always has a headache when his emperor leaves the palace as the opposite ministry who eyeing his position tries to find every fault in his Emperor.
Meanwhile, He is trying to be a responsible man by accepting the marriage even though it was not with the right woman. He keeps his chastity intact even he has more than enough woman fills his palace. Jin Yu let her run their harem and do everything as she wishes. He becomes her biggest supporter and her guardian to make all her wishes come true. that the only thing Jin Yu can do to express his gratitude to his wife.
She actually keeps everyone in their place. She did her job flawlessly and still keep her husband reputation intact. She spent time together and did nothing in regard to sexual intercourse. The empress is really good for covering her husband reputation and make them a normal married couple.
It makes her the target of the jealousy on his harem. He wants to implement a new law to ban any jealousy inside the marriage household. But there is more important stuff happen in his people interest at the moment rather than a silly law about marriage. The only thing he can do is pampering his empress to her heart content with everything he can gifts. This is the only compensation he can do for everything she already does, include promote his family to the court.
Jin Yu needs to flip the name tag of his concubine. Every time the concubine is asking for the night with the king and got her name flipped. The Empress will make it as she seduces the emperor to take the route to her palace.
This is a routine play for Jin Yu and Ni Lang to make his reputation intact to cover his chastity vow. He let Eunuch Wang leak the name tag flip news to the Empress when she will make the play. The Empress understands that someone already occupied his heart. One time she finds out about the marble name tag on his neck closer to his chest. Ni Lang sees the name tag familiar to her sister Ni Qing name tag, but she removes her suspicion about her sister. Anyway, Ni Lang knows her sister is already having a betrothal with Lin Yue.
She missed her family and she tried to lives in this cold palace. She is accepting her defeat by not competing with the owner of the Emperor's heart. She knows she can not win the heart and she did not want to get false hope within this cold Palace. She knows truly there is no hope to get into her husband heart.
The problem is happening that she does not know when she can hold up the play. There is something wrong with her body. She grows weaker by the day. She got her suspicion and asks her personal maid to test the food with the silver needle in front of her. The result shows a negative from the needle. Sometimes, she even summons a secretly physician to her palace to check on her condition. She tries to dedicate her time to read the scripture to Buddha to accumulate her good deeds. She already prepared for her departure from this world.
She did not know that someone already scheme her way to put poison into her tea. The most potent poison that can not even track with the silver needle. They only need to put a little dose every day, and the body will accumulate the poison to start failing the internal organ.
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The emperor is using a normal carriage and go outside with Zhang. He sat down inside the carriage to go outside the Palace. Because of his unhappiness, he already hears about the famous tea house in the capital for their lotus cake and caramel candy. He is telling Zhang to go to the tea house.
Ni Qing is busy inside her tea house who is a decoy place to gather information on the street. In the tea place, there is also an exclusive private room on the second floor. The tea house Qi Ning run is getting a good reputation among the rich people. This is the place for them to gather all the information to support his master Li Tzu and Lin Yue decision.
Ni Qing is disguising herself as one of the workers or lady escort for the tea house. The manager is hired as the person that responsible for the tea house. Lin Yue and Li Tzu are standing in the back of the shade to support and protecting Ni Qing.
Ni Qing was in the room next door to eavesdropping about the collaboration of the Chu family into the salt corruption. They are arranging the plan to swap the real ship with the ship filled with rock and sink it in the bottom of the Kun Ming river. They will swap the real ship fill with the salt and hides it in their warehouse. Their plan is to sell the salt at a really high price when there is a rare salt in the market.
Ni Qing is really immersing in her eavesdrop on the next-door area. She asks the server to serve her tea while she listens to their plan. In the tea house, they build a small open wall between the room for listening to their conversation. It is well hidden in the back for the painting hang on the wall. This time, Ni Qing can hear clearly for their cunning plan and send a small letter to Lin Yue for their wicked plan. This letter tells them to intercept the salt to board the ship. If there is a rare salt in the market, it will bring disruption on the market and the poor will take hit the hardest. There will be chaos in the country if this happens as their plan.