LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 26 - In the Emperor's Palace
Chapter 26: In the Emperor’s Palace
Translator: Intheair
Editor: Asada
The palace of the Dachen Dynasty followed the former dynasty’s style. The buildings were square and symmetrical, solemn and rigid, just like the owner of the palace.
The servants in the palace were all walking in a hurry to finish their tasks. No one talked; no one laughed.
In the Imperial Palace:
The building was silent, yet all the servants sneak peaked at each other in slight amazement. They just saw the Emperor bringing a child into the palace and it had been almost fifteen minutes already!
Everyone knew what kind of person the Emperor of the Dachen Dynasty was.
The emperors in history might be violent, lascivious, diligent or wise, but none was like their emperor: both cruel and ruthless.
No one believed him to be an ideal “good Emperor” yet the Dynasty was experiencing some prosperity. He was especially talented in developing a mighty army which made none of the nearby kingdoms dared to invade.
But he could not be considered an Emperor who loved his people. He won’t even be attracted a bit by the most beautiful flowers, not to mention… a three-year-old.
A while ago, as the Emperor stepped into the palace, all the servants’ jaws dropped. Was that still the Emperor they served every day?
The man in the black robe placed Dumpling on one of the mats and commended a maid to wash her clean.
But for many years the palace hadn’t had any children and not new children’s clothes either. The maid knelt as far away from the Emperor as possible and said with a soft, shaky voice, “My, My Emperor. There are no clothes that fit the, the lady’s size.”
The man stared at Dumpling with deep and mysterious thoughts. No one could tell what he was thinking.
Servant Dou quickly stepped forward and lead the maid out of the room. While outside, Dou said quietly, “If you don’t have it, why bother the Emperor? Just figure it out yourself! What, you want Emperor to go get one himself? Just go find some nice clothes in good condition and make one out of that for the lady.”
The maid nodded then looked back into the palace. The child is the Emperor’s daughter?
Dumpling felt uncomfortable by her daddy staring at her like that. At first, she was quite happy to have her daddy’s attention, but soon she was made weird by his looks, “Oh, Daddy? Dad…”
Dumpling was nervous again which made her forget about calling daddy father.
The man stood up without saying a word. He was a bit taller than six foot two and Dumpling was not even taller than his thighs. The Emperor looked up still in deep thoughts.
This was what Dou saw when he came in. He almost burst out laughing, but he held back and said, “My Emperor, do you want to take a bath?”
Dumpling was confused and asked the system, “Uncle System, what does bathing mean?”
System had no idea how to answer that, “Bathing, bathing is just bathing.” The Emperor almost wanted to laugh at this illiterate little cub as well, he exclaimed, “You made my clothes dirty!”
YinYin looked down at her ragged clothes and pulled on her daddy’s robe again. She pleased, “YinYin want to bath too!”
The man looked at her indifferently and answered, “Yes.” Brief and concise.
Dumpling, “…”
While the maid carried her away, Dumpling sighed sadly, “Uncle System, you’re right, Daddy thinks I’m dirty.”
She grumbled. Little Dumpling was always truthful to her daddy, so she place two small hands beside her mouth and shouted, “Father, wait for YinYin to be washed!”
Dumpling added with a cute voice, “When I’m clean, you have to love me!”
The maid was shocked by the little Dumpling that the Emperor brought back and Dumpling almost fell from her arms. Did she just call Dachen’s mighty and cruel Emperor ‘father’?” How dare she to she so rude? Was she crazy?”
But then she was puzzled, the Emperor never had birth then why did he bring a child back?” She knew that he didn’t like children at all!
As far as she knew, the Emperor would probably categorize these noisy, ignorant, and useless creatures as irritating.
Just look at those who worked at the palace you would know. In the Emperor’s eyes, there were only two types of people: useful or useless.
If you were considered useless, no matter how weak or cute you were, you would never gain his interest and if you irritated him, you would just lose your life.
The maid stopped, but didn’t dare to look up, she shivered and waited for the Emperor’s next commands.
Even if the emperor let her go, Dou would punish her too.
The man paused then after a while said in a low voice, “Be quite.”
The maid understood immediately as the Emperor remained silent after that. She quickly and quietly brought Dumpling out of the palace.
After everyone left, Dou bent over closer to the man and asked, “My Emperor, who is the lady that you brought back?”
The man glanced down and replied, “We just met on my way back.”
Dou though the Emperor was just bored so he brought a little pet back to play around in the palace, so he suggested, “You see, the child is still too young to know the rules of the Palace, would you like me to arrange a maid to teach her those?”
The man hesitated for a long while before saying, “Yes.”
YinYin was disappointed to realize that even after she returned cleaned, her daddy was still indifferent, not to mention any praise.
Dumpling got changed into a pink palace styled dress. Because there were no children around there, the dress wasn’t so either. Despite that, Dumpling still looked just as gorgeous.
YinYin had never yet worn such a complicated and long dress so she kept awkwardly tug the edges of the cloth in attempts to make it fit.
The young maid was a perfectionist, she begged Dumpling, “Miss, may I please help fix your hair?
Dumpling’s messy hair was already washed clean. She didn’t have much hair anyway, so it was already half-dried.
She reached over her head and said, “No!”
“I want my father to braid my hair!”
The maid smiled bitterly, “Don’t just call him father. He is the Emperor!”
“Father!”
“It’s the emperor!”
Dumpling was shivering in anger. Why everyone wanted to tell her that her father was not her father! She puffed her little white cheeks and said word-by-word, “Sister, father is my father!”
The palace maid, “…”
When the sun was going down, the maid ran to the door of the Royal Study Room to find Dou, “Master Dou, the lady is insisting to see the Emperor, what should I do?
And she added, “Also, where should I arrange her to sleep tonight?”
There were more than enough rooms in the palace. However, they couldn’t just leave a three-year-old by herself.
Dou thought about it then suddenly remembered the Emperor’s light tine, as if this was no big deal, so he said, “The emperor is busy right now. You should just arrange her to sleep in the Jingyuan Palace.”
Jingyuan Palace was not far from the Longgan Palace but it was always vacant and barely anyone goes there.
The palace originally had an owner, but a few years ago, the lady of that palace decided to stop the Emperor in the middle of the night and pull him into her room.
Later, rumors said that the Emperor pulled out a sword and chopped her head off. No one was beside him to witness, but everyone knew it was a painful death and it was just in front of the Jingyuan Palace.
It happened to be the shortest route from the Royal Libary to the Longgan Palace, so the next morning, everyone saw the scene. Since then, no one except for the Emperor dared to go through that Palace.
Of course, Master Dou knew the truth behind the rumors. She was an assassin from a foreign kingdom, so the Emperor just decided to execute her himself and the assassin didn’t deserve a funeral at all, so he just left her body there.
He didn’t even think about that before arranging them to that palace.
After he made his decision, Dou turned around and said, “The Emperor would like peace, don’t bother him with unnecessaries. His Majesty is very busy recently.”
He pointed toward two servants and two maids, “You will serve the young lady from now on.”
Master Dou didn’t pay much attention to do this. If he valued the child, he wouldn’t be so careless to assign her to Jingyuan Palace and only give four servants.
Master Dou knew the Emperor the best which was why he could stay alive in his current position for so long.
After the maid left, the four servants assigned to the lady all concluded that they would have no future by serving an unknown orphan! Never will they be able to be spotted by the Emperor.
So that night, they found themselves four other replacements. An old, slow servant, another thin and weak. A fat maid, the other one was an ugly old lady.
The old maid had some background. When the Emperor was still young, she helped him through some hardships, that was why she survived the political change.
If she was chased out, no one would like to hire an ugly old lady as a maid.
But indeed, she was too old and ugly to the point that it was scary. The Emperor, however, didn’t have enough time to care about every man in his palace, so she was lucky enough already to not be left in the laundry to wash clothes all day.
The laundry was a hard job. The maids had to constantly wash clothes in icy cold water, and a young lady couldn’t even bear the suffering.
After she was told to serve a three-year-old child, she was more than glad to do so. At least that was better than washing clothes.
Dumpling was sitting on the floor with her legs spread apart as the four came in. A head maid led them into the room and introduced, “Miss, these are Mrs. Wan, Maid Qiao, and he is servant Lin…”
She paused for a while, then pointed to the weak servant, and said, “This is nameless.”
Dumpling who just then was wanting to meet his father now got distracted by her curiosity toward the team of four that came on
Dumpling sat on the only carpet in the whole palace. Her cute big eyes were wide open, looking like a little cat.
The four looked at each other, and said cohesively, “Nice to meet you, my young master.”
Because none of them knew what to call Dumpling so they just kindly referred to her as ‘the young master’. YinYin didn’t understand that word, but she didn’t want to make fun of herself again, so she asked the System what the word meant.
System thought for a while, and said with a bit of hesitated, “I think… it means that you are the daughter of your father? Your father is the emperor and the master of the entire palace. He is the big master and so you are the young master. Nothing’s wrong.”
Dumping’s heart hopped with joy, and she announced, “Uncle System, I like this title!”
These uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters called her young master which made YinYin very content. She showed a sweet smile toward them and said nicely, “Hello!”
Even though the four servants all saw their master’s cute greeting, but they pretended that they missed it and immediately transitioned to work.
Jingyuan Palace was left desolate after one had lived in it for a long time. There were spider webs everywhere: on tables, chairs, benches… It would take some serious cleaning to make this whole palace habitable again. The servants first cleaned out a small bedroom so Dumpling can rest for tonight.
The four were all troublesome to some extent. Even though Maid Qiao was fat, but she could do work well. The only thing was that she was quick to be hungry and when she was hungry, she couldn’t move anymore.
The other three, either old, thin, or small, worked as slow as turtles.
After they all finished…
They suddenly noticed that Dumpling was gone!!!!
In front of the Jingyuan Palace:
A bush that Dumpling hid in was shaking restlessly. She stared out into the darkness, and asked, “Uncle System, are you sure that I can find my daddy here?”
The system was also hesitant, “Perhaps?”