BXBX NOVEL Chapter 188 - 188: Inside and Outside the Palace (3)
Chapter 188 - 188: Inside and Outside the Palace (3)
It was already late at night, and the lights in the palace were sparse. There were some sounds of watch splashing coming from the windows on the side of the bedchamber.
Splash-
The large hall was full of mist. In the circular bathing pool in the center, Dongfang Liren was leaning against the edge and stirring the water in front of her with her hands. Her eyes were slightly lost in thought, still thinking about the intimate contact in the afternoon.
The empress dowager was leaning beside her naked, her posture like a lazy noble consort, as she chatted about the banquet today. “How can someone taste the age of a roasted suckling pig? I tasted it too. It was oily and greasy, and I didn’t feel anything special…”
Hongyu was soaking in the pool and massaging the empress dowager1 s back while explaining, “Practice makes perfect. With the Prince of Wu’s heir’s stomach, he can probably eat an entire pig at a time. The more he eats, the more experience he will have…”
During their chat, a palace maid walked over from behind the screen, holding a tray with a hardcover book in her hands. Her gaze was very strange, but she didn’t dare to say anything. She just silently went to the side of the bath. “Your Highness, the book you wanted has been found in the Qilin Pavilion.”
Dongfang Liren raised her hand to pick up the book from the tray. Just as she was about to flip through it, she saw the words ‘The Secret History of the Romantic Empress’ on the cover. She instantly came back to her senses.
The empress dowager was leaning beside her. She just casually turned her head to look, but when she saw it, her gaze stopped on the title of the book, and she blinked her big eyes.
Dongfang Liren quickly covered the title of the book and looked at the palace maid. “How presumptuous! 1 asked you to go to the Qilin Pavilion to get a book. What did you get?”
The palace maid shivered in fear and said aggrievedly, “I asked Eunuch Wang of the Qilin Pavilion to confirm it many times. Eunuch Wang said that this is the only book that meets Your Highness’s requirements, so 1 brought it over…”
Dongfang Liren’s eyes were blank. She thought that there was only a problem with the name, so she opened it and read the content. In the end, the first chapter of the opening chapter was:
The amorous noble heir visited the palace in the middle of the night, and the widowed empress dowager in the phoenix pool met her destiny…
The empress dowager was stunned when she saw these treacherous words. She took the book and pretended to be dignified. “Who is so bold as to write romantic scandals about me… Oh, it’s an empress dowager of Van. That scared me…”
Dongfang Liren was baffled. She thought that the palace maid must have taken the wrong book, but when she flipped to the middle, she quickly found the content that Ye Jingtang had shown her…
This pervert//Dongfang Liren was furious and immediately wanted to confront Ye Jingtang.
But the empress dowager was very interested and flipped the book to the beginning. “This book is quite detailed. It even knows how many branches the ginkgo tree has. The person who wrote it must have been to the Longevity Palace.11
Dongfang Liren read the opening chapter carefully and indeed found that the description of the empress dowager’s palace in the book was very similar to the current Longevity Palace. And the ‘phoenix pool’ in the book was the bathing pool she was lying in…
It seems that it’s really a book related to architecture…
But there are so many books that record the appearance of the capital. Why did he have to choose this one?
Could it be because this book is more detailed…
In order to investigate more, Dongfang Liren leaned beside the empress dowager and read the details carefully.
As for the empress dowager, she clearly wasn’t interested in the long-winded description of buildings. As she read the plot of the empress dowager of Yan breaking through taboo and meeting a man in private, she said with a strange expression, “Eh- Empress Dowager Xuanyang was quite famous in the previous dynasty. I didn’t expect her to be so… so unrestrained in private…”
Dongfang Liren felt that it wasn’t appropriate for rhe empress dowager to see these ‘precedents’. Perhaps she was afraid that the empress dowager would learn from them, so she reminded, “Empress Dowager Xuanyang took part in politics when the emperor of Yan was young and offended many people. This is all dirty water splashed by rebels. It shouldn’t taken seriously…”
The empress dowager shook her head and said, “This book doesn’t look like it’s made up. Look at this stone. 1 used to wonder why it was polished to this extent, but now, 1 found out that Empress Dowager Xuanyang had it made.”
Although the book was written nearly 200 years ago, Great Wei continued to use the Imperial City of the previous dynasty and only renovated it without rebuilding it. As long as things made of precious stones like the bathing pool were maintained well, it wouldn’t be a problem to use them for hundreds of years. It was no different from what was described in the book.
Dongfang Liren followed the empress dowager’s finger and looked at the stone platform in the bathing pool for laying on. She found a semicircular depression on it.
After reading a few paragraphs in the book, the empress dowager leaned against the edge of the bathing pool and slid down a little. She raised her fair legs in the water and assumed a very… very embarrassing posture. She said thoughtfully, “I knew it. So it turns out this is how you sit in it. It’s just right and not uncomfortable at all. It’s just that it’s not easy to relax my legs…”
Dongfang Liren felt that this posture wasn’t right. After some thought, she moved to the front of the empress dowager. According to the knowledge she had learned from the Tears of a Heroine, he put her arms under the crooks of the empress dowager’s legs and supported her on the edge of the bathing pool. She lowered her head and looked at her beautiful and moving empress dowager. “How about this?”
“I see…” The plump and smooth empress dowager was half lying in the pool water with her legs on Liren’s arms. She wanted to say that it was just right, but she immediately reacted. What am 1 doing in this posture…
The bathing pool fell silent.
Dongfang Liren’s face slowly turned red. She quickly stopped this rebellious posture, got up, walked out of the bathing pool, and picked up a bathrobe to cover her exquisite figure. “People, smash this lousy pool and build another one.”
The empress dowager’s face was also red, and her expression was rather strange. She left the bathing pool and wrapped her body in a thin blanket. “An old object from two hundred years ago was smashed and rebuilt for no reason. The internal affairs supervisor will definitely say that I’m not diligent and frugal. It’s better to keep it. This book is really detailed. Let’s go search and see if there’s anything similar…”
Dongfang Liren didn’t know what to say.. She put on her robe and followed the empress dowager around the palace, studying these clues that originated from the previous dynasty…