The Empress’s Gigolo

The empress sat in front of the grave for the whole day. Wine bottles were thrown all over the graveyard from morning to night.

“He knows how to sing! It’s quite nice to listen to!” The empress threw a wine bottle aside, suddenly thought of a funny matter, and laughed.

The empress seemed to have drunk too much. Drinking in front of the grave was more than enough, yet she still wanted to sing. How about doing some disco dancing?

After a whole case of sorghum wine was emptied, even the empress couldn’t prevent herself from getting drunk.

He said modestly, “There is a song called ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ that I can sing well! It’s even better if accompanied by an erhu.”

The empress stopped talking, sat there in a daze for a long time, and then said blandly, “I have spoken for so long without getting a reply. It’s very boring to have only one person speaking, and I look like a fool talking to myself. That’s it—I’m leaving and will come back to visit you after some time.”

A wind from the mountains immediately followed and rustled the nearby branches and weeds.

“What are you saying? I can’t understand. I don’t want to say anymore. I’m leaving and there is no need to send me off.” The empress waved her hands and stood up unsteadily.

When Ren Baqian held her waist, she didn’t object.

“Goodbye, mother-in-law.” Ren Baqian politely bowed as he bade farewell.

After walking about 100 meters, they were met by some winged cavalry warriors.

However, their faces were swollen beyond recognition.

“Did you disturb a beehive?” Ren Baqian asked.

They reluctantly pulled out two beehives and explained, “Sir Ren, there were two Golden Ring beehives nearby. This honey isn’t only sweet, but also has hallucinogenic effects. It makes one feel like they are entering the clouds, forgetting all worries as well as time. Even a thousand taels of gold can’t buy it.”

“Is it that precious?” Ren Baqian asked curiously. Seeing their reluctant faces, he knew it was definitely something good.

“The important point is its rarity. It’s seldom seen outside the Sixty Thousand Mountains. Two of them just happened to be found here,” said a winged cavalry warrior with a swollen face.

His face was full of fingertip-sized pustules. In order to inflict such damage to these winged cavalry warriors, those bees must have been powerful.

“This is a present for Your Majesty.” The group brought the two beehives that were each the size of half a man.

“It isn’t nice to take your things. Alright, I will grant everyone some silver ingots…” The empress stopped hallway because she didn’t know how much was in the treasury.

Ren Baqian immediately added, “Everyone here will receive 300 taels of silver and everyone at the mountain base will get 100 taels.”

“Your Majesty, thank you very much!” the group said delightedly.

The salary of a winged cavalry warrior was only 15 taels of silver per month.

300 taels—this was almost equivalent to two years of their salary.

In comparison, the salary of an Earth Wheel expert in the Yun Nation was at least two to three thousand taels per year.

The empress shot a glance at Ren Baqian. 300 taels for the 200 winged cavalry warriors up here plus 100 taels for the 400 of them in the village. That meant a total of 100,000 taels.

The annual expenses of the palace, including the salaries of the palace guards and maids, totaled no more than 60,000 taels.

100,000 thousand taels was close to two years of expenses for the palace!

The empress only asked Ren Baqian when they were at the base of the mountain, “How much silver does the imperial treasury have?”

Ren Baqian was more well-versed in this matter than the empress, and the empress hadn’t concerned herself with it.

“Including the sales from spices and mirrors, there are 630,000 taels of silver in the imperial treasury. There are also some precious gifts that the delegates gave you at your birthday celebration last year,” Ren Baqian whispered.

The empress blinked her eyes and asked in amazement, “There’s so much?”

Prior to this, there were usually tens of thousands taels in the imperial treasury and more than 100,000 during good times, so this figure was rather surprising.

This was almost 10 percent of the annual revenue of the imperial treasury.

“One portion was already used to buy herbal medicine.” Ren Baqian continued, “At present, those officials in Lan City have had almost all of their money taken away, so revenue over the next half year will drop. However, Your Majesty used to spend money from the imperial treasury to buy weapons from the Yun Nation, but now, that money will be saved and there should be a surplus. At the end of the year, the gold mine will also contribute more than 100,000 taels of silver.”

The empress nodded and said, “This credit must go to you.”

Knowing that the treasury had so much money, the empress still felt the pinch of Ren Baqian giving away 100,000 taels, but she didn’t say too much.

In fact, Ren Baqian had other reasons for doing this. The salary of the winged cavalry warriors was too low and the fatality rate was high. In less than two years, about 600 people remained out of the original 1,500.

This was one among many matters where Ren Baqian couldn’t shirk his responsibility.

This time, they were escorting the empress to the Sixty Thousand Mountains and faced great difficulties on the road.

This sum of money was used to buy goodwill in the name of the empress. Plus, there was no limit to the amount of silver that he could obtain in the future.

By the time they descended the mountain, it was already dark. The village was dark except for some torches at the gate and some rays of light from the stone houses at the back of the village.

Illuminating the village had always been a difficult problem.

The animal oil used to fuel the torches was precious to them.

Qi Ziting had already prepared the meal. Ren Baqian and the empress put out the lights and rested in their room after the meal.

One was still on the bed while the other was on the floor.

After a short while, Ren Baqian heard the breathing of the empress become even.

It looked like she was sleeping soundly.

She didn’t sleep much last night, but it didn’t seem to affect her.

Still, spending the whole day talking in front of the tomb was rather draining for her, so she was somewhat tired.

Ren Baqian was very sleepy, yet he couldn’t fall asleep as he lay there. He crawled up from the floor and sat beside the table with his chin resting in his hand as he watched the silhouette of the empress in the darkness.

Although there was only a little bit of moonlight shining in, he was able to see more clearly in dim conditions than ordinary people due to his improvement in power and could see the empress clearly as her chest moved up and down.

As expected, a good looking person also looked good when sleeping.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…

He thought of climbing into bed… but he was afraid of being kicked out…

Ren Baqian let his thoughts run wild and felt like laughing when he recalled the empress talking about family matters in front of the grave.

He felt that the empress had looked very lovable.

On the bed, the empress felt uncomfortable from Ren Baqian staring at her.

She woke up when he got up from the floor, but she wanted to see what he was doing and kept quiet.

He just sat there looking at her and burst into laughter at times! She didn’t know what he was laughing about.

The empress wanted to open her eyes, but decided that it was better to continue pretending to be asleep.

She enjoyed the sweet feeling of being watched.

After a while, she just let him watch and drifted into dreamland.

The next day, Ren Baqian was yawning again as he went outside.

Seeing him appear like this, the empress felt that he deserved it.

Fortunately, there was nothing planned for the day, and the empress spent her time chatting with Qi Ziting. Ren Baqian found himself a place to catch up on sleep.

He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping when he was awakened with a punch to the face and nose.

He saw another person beside him.

It was Lin Qiaole!

She was always sleeping somewhere and had appeared out of nowhere, sprawling and salivating beside him. One hand was grabbing candy from a bag while the other hand had just landed a punch on him.

Ren Baqian covered his face as he got up. Then, the stench of liquor and chocolate from her breath hit him… Candy wrappers were also thrown all over the floor.

Her face had a reddish tinge, and Ren Baqian felt that she might have become too intoxicated.

She had eaten too much liquor laced chocolate!

This chick was unable to tolerate alcohol, not even a little bit.

He opened the bag to check. As expected, all the liquor laced chocolates were gone.

He threw the bag into her hand and felt like giving her a kick. However, she looked like a little girl, so he refrained from kicking her.

Ren Baqian sighed since he felt very unlucky to have encountered unexpected trouble while sleeping.

Stretching as he walked out, he saw the empress and Qi Ziting still sitting there.

The sun was setting, yet those two were still there talking.

Looking at this scene, it wasn’t easy to discern that one was currently the monarch and the other was known for his bloodthirsty ways and for attempting to assassinate the late emperor.

This scene seemed to be uncharacteristically harmonious.

They were close relatives and hadn’t met for 10 years. As a result, they had a lot to say to each other.

Ren Baqian finally understood that the empress wasn’t really reticent and opened up more when he was with her. With Qi Ziting, her behavior was similar to what she had displayed at the tomb.

The empress didn’t say much due to the fact that not many people talked to her.