ALT chapter 1.1 A sunny day covered by snow
"When I was very young, Wan Niang told me that the most noble woman in the world is the Empress, and the palace where the Empress lives is called the 'Kunning Palace'. I asked Wan Niang what Kunning Palace is like."
"Wan Niang said, she also didn't know.”
"I sat under the eaves of a house that leaked with rain in the village and thought, if I could become that goose in the sky which just flew past, fly to the prosperous capital, fly to the Forbidden City and see what Kunning Palace looks like, how good would it be?"
The Palace door is closed because of the confinement and only a window on the left is open.
The sky is gloomy with a dim ray of light.
In the Kunning Palace, which used to be lively in the past, not even the shadow of a palace servant could be seen now.
Only Jiang Xuening was sitting on her knees in front of the table, holding the incense chopstick with her white and slender fingers, and gently plucking them into the low and short hill censer inlaid with gold on the other end of the table. The wispy smoke floated leisurely from its pores. Her golden and rusty phoenix robes spread out long behind her, and the complicated cloud patterns faintly swam in the darkness with a little glittering.
"Later, I really went to the capital. Heavens played a big joke on me. It gave me an arrogance that I shouldn't have but let me grow up in the countryside. I am not a famous beautiful lady in the capital and didn’t have the bearing of a lady from a noble family. But it still put me in this prosperous place and fighting field, and only gave me a good skin.... "
Jiang Xuening's appearance is very bright and colorful, burning just like a lotus.
Her eyebrows are graceful, the tail of her eyes is slightly raised, and the sandalwood lips were dotted with vermilion red. It was a natural charm. Because of the fact that she has been in charge of the Phoenix Seal and being in a high position over the years, she has developed a rare grace and dignity.
When she lowered her eyebrows and closed her eyes, it could even make people’s hearts beat with excitement.
You Fangyin stood still behind her for a long time and listened to her faintly dusty voice. Thinking of her life of scheming and striving for fame and profit in the eyes of the world, she suddenly fell into a trance.
There was even a kind of sorrow that rose from her heart.
They all knew, that she couldn't escape anymore.
Jiang Xuening suddenly laughed: "Fangyin, during this period of time, I have always been thinking, am I really wrong?"
When she was a child, she was raised by Wan Niang. She didn't know her own status and acted wildly in the mountains and rivers, fields and gardens outside the countryside. She was a bird that no one can control. Only Wan Niang's rouge and powders could make her go home.
Wan Niang was a girl bought and raised to be sold, and is a woman among women.
She said that this world is the men’s world, only men can conquer it; and women, as long as they conquer men, they will also conquer the world.
After tossing around and returning to the capital, she met Yan Lin, the Young Marquis from the Yongyi[1] Marquis Mansion. He took her to dress up as a man and played around recklessly in the capital. Even her father and mother didn't dare to discipline her too much, they were quite like a childhood sweetheart.
Later, the Yongyi Marquis Mansion was implicated in the case of King Pingnan’s rebellion.
Yan Lin’s entire family was exiled for thousands of miles.
At night, the teenager who had not yet been crowned, turned over the high wall of the Jiang Mansion to look for her. With a hoarse voice, he held her hand firmly: "Ning Ning, wait for me, I will definitely come back to marry you."
Jiang Xuening said to him: "I want to marry Shen Jie. I want to be the Empress."
Then she remembered again that Yan Lin in his teenage years was looking at her with a kind of sharp look, like a struggling cornered beast with red eyes and tightly clenched teeth.
That night, the teenager faded away all the greenness, let go of her hand and turned to escape into the darkness.
Five years later, she was already Shen Jie's Empress.
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[1] Yongyi : a title given by the Emperor, translated as ‘brave and steadfast’.
