The Empress’s Gigolo

“Your Majesty, please kill this man and choose another man as your husband,” Zhe Kouhai suddenly said. The empress squinted her eyes; a cold glint flickering in them.

The next second, the empress appeared in front of Zhe Kouhai. She gripped his throat forcefully and raised him up.

“Your Majesty, please be lenient!” Shi Qing’s facial expression changed drastically. Even though he did not like Zhe Kouhai, he knew that this man couldn’t die.

Raising Zhe Kouhai into the air, the empress stared into his eyes. When Zhe Kouhai’s face turned deep red and he began to gasp for air, the empress threw him to one side.

“None of you are fit to meddle in my business, you’re dismissed,” the empress said coldly. Then, she returned to her couch.

Holding his throat, Zhe Kouhai panted heavily on the floor. Following which, he stood up, gave the empress a bow, and left.

Outside the palace hall, Shi Qing looked at Shi Kouhai and said, “Why did you say those words? We are not allowed to meddle with Her Majesty’s personal matters.”

All this time, Shi Qing did not understand why Zhe Kouhai would say those words.

“Right now, it’s no longer her personal matters. That lad is bewitching Her Majesty, sooner or later he will bring about a calamity. I feel that even if Her Majesty doesn’t like it, as her subject, I still have to remind her,” Zhe Kouhai replied.

Shi Qing looked at Zhe Kouhai and remained silent for a long while. He did not believe Zhe Kouhai’s words. After all, Zhe Kouhai was the person that complained about Her Majesty the most.

He was also the most scheming individual that Shi Qing had ever met.

Sometimes, Shi Qing even felt that Zhe Kouhai might not be an aboriginal.

Shi Qing definitely did not believe that Zhe Kouhai was willing to risk his life to enrage Her Majesty for her sake.

Then what was his aim?

After Zhe Kouhai boarded his carriage and left, Shi Qing stood there by himself for a long time. Then, he shook his head and decided not to think about Zhe Kouhai anymore. That man was too scheming.

However, where exactly did Her Majesty and Storyteller Ren go? Shi Qing was extremely curious. He knew that he would naturally know if Her Majesty intended to tell him. If Her Majesty did intend to tell him, there was no need for him to ask her about it.

After Shi Qing and Zhe Kouhai left for quite some time, the empress let out a sigh.

“Your Majesty, what’s the matter? Do you have something on your mind?” Hong Luan massaged the empress’s shoulders and asked.

“Pour some wine for me!” the empress ordered. Even though it was currently morning, she felt as though it was evening that she returned here with Ren Baqian.

She liked to drink alcohol to drown her troubles. This was her method to ease her tension.

Especially when she was feeling troubled.

At this point in time, she was feeling very troubled.

…

Ren Baqian finished visualizing the [Visualization of Water] and slept for the entire morning in his room. He finally woke up when the palace maid that delivered his meals knocked on his door.

Ren Baqian waited for her to leave before sitting in front of the table. Before he touched the chopsticks, he could smell something different with the food. The dishes looked familiar, and the spices used to cook them smelled familiar.

This meal was cooked by the imperial kitchen.

All along, the imperial kitchen was only in charge of cooking for them empress. Everyone else’s meals, including Ren Baqian’s, were cooked by another kitchen.

“This was arranged by the empress, right?” This thought came to Ren Baqian’s mind. He couldn’t come up with any other possible explanation.

From this meal, he could tell that the empress’s attitude towards him had indeed changed after they returned from Earth.

When Ren Baqian thought of the empress, many indescribable and complicated feelings erupted in his heart.

“Such a pity, I really didn’t expect that we will return here all of a sudden. I will bring the things over here next time around.” Ren Baqian thought of the clothes and snacks he bought for the empress. He found it rather amusing.

The empress’s favorite line was “I want this”.

This line was less domineering and more gentle than “I want this”.

[The previous line uses “我” and this line uses “朕”. Both “我” and “朕” mean “I” but the latter is used by an emperor/empress to address himself/herself. Therefore, I translated this line as “I want this” too.]

Ren Baqian finished his food and headed towards Qingxin Palace Hall. He still needed to learn how to read Dayao words.

After entering Qingxin Palace Hall, Ren Baqian threw a handful of candies onto the table. The groggy Lin Qiaole immediately became energized. She looked at Ren Baqian with a burning gaze, resembling a husky that was begging for food.

“Continue to teach me more words. Today, we will use a different method. You teach me word by word and I will go back and learn them myself,” Ren Baqian said.

“Alright,” Lin Qiaole nodded her head.

However, she soon realized something wasn’t right.

Ren Baqian did not know Dayao words, but he would use an unknown written language to make notes. Because of this, Lin Qiaole knew that Ren Baqian actually knew how to read but just not Dayao words.

The written language Dayao used was similar to Great Xia’s. Even though aboriginals had their own written language, it had very little number of words and was not enough to express their spoken language.

Today, Ren Baqian did not use the slow and foolish method that he used in the past to learn Dayao words. Instead, he would make a note behind every word he learnt. This way, Ren Baqian would milk everything from her within a short period. In the future, when Ren Baqian did not need her anymore, how was she going to get more candies?

“I’m not teaching you anymore.” Lin Qiaole pushed the table away and leaned back on her chair. Her face filled with annoyance.

“Why?” Ren Baqian raised his head and noticed that she was throwing a tantrum.

“If I teach you through this method, you will learning everything in less than five days,” Lin Qiaole grumbled.

Ren Baqian was amused by Lin Qiaole’s reaction. Needless to say, he knew what she was thinking. “I will bring more candies for you next time around. In the future, I will open a candy shop and pay tribute to you using candies, alright?”

Upon hearing these words, Lin Qiaole became overjoyed. “It’s a deal then, tomorrow I want ten times the usual amount of candies you give me.”

“Alright.” Ren Baqian felt that this girl was too easy to fool. In any case, he did not have many more days to learn from her. Furthermore, his status was no longer the same as before. He did not need to be as careful as he was in the past. He wasn’t afraid of fooling her.

He had already given some of the candies he brought here last time to the empress. There were still some left.

For the whole afternoon, Ren Baqian had memorized over three hundred words. Previously, he had already learned many words. He merely needed five to six days to memorize every word.

At the same time, he had come up with a new idea. Later on, he would make a comparison table between Chinese words and Dayao words. He could hire a few programmers to make a comparison software to translate Dayao words into Chinese words. This could save him a lot of time.

Very soon, Ren Baqian left Qingxin Palace Hall. just as he reached the entrance of Pingle Park, the guard called after him, “Storyteller Ren, Her Majesty has summoned you to Yangxin Palace Hall to have lunch with her.”

Ren Baqian nodded his head. After putting the piece of paper with all the words he had learned in his room, he headed to Yangxin Palace Hall to meet the empress.

As usual, the palace hall was cold and empty.

The empress had changed back to her red muslin dress with a white shirt beneath it. She was lying on a couch with a table placed in front of her. On the table, there were dishes and one bowl of soup. Opposite her, there was an empty chair.

“Greetings, Your Majesty!” Ren Baqian greeted the empress. He scanned his surroundings and realized that Qing Yuan and Hong Luan were nowhere to be found. The empress was the only person in the empty and cold palace hall.

“Have a seat.” When the empress saw Ren Baqian, she felt a tinge of joy as her heartstrings twitched. However, she merely asked him to sit down.

Indeed, this is her usual self, Ren Baqian thought to himself before sitting.

While they were eating, they did not talk to each other at all. Ren Baqian kept on pushing the dishes that the empress wanted to eat to her. The empress felt a feeling of warmth flowing through her heart.

The same action that was done by a different person gave her a different feeling.

After they finished eating, the empress asked, “When are you setting off?”

Ren Baqian knew she was talking about the mine matter. To her, it was a matter of vital importance.

“I need to prepare first. Right now, I still can’t teleport between Earth and this place at will. Therefore, I don’t know how many days I will stay here. It will be very troublesome if I suddenly disappear,” Ren Baqian said softly.