The Regent’s Little Emperor (4)
In this plane, she was called Bai Wei. Of course, her original name was Bai Weiwei.
The original body was the empress and emperor’s legitimate…prince.
In those days, the empress and the incredibly talented1 and greatly favored Imperial Consort Shu were in a constant struggle for control over the imperial harem.
Although the empress acted as the head of the rear palace, without the emperor’s favor, her family was also in decline. In addition to the many years failing to bear a child, she was already being criticized by both the harem and the court.
At that time, Imperial Consort Shu was pregnant. The emperor began to abandon the empress. The empress, to keep her position, could not simply take this lying down.
To have a child, she took secret medicine that would let her succeed at the expense of her health.
The queen smoothly became pregnant.
Unfortunately, she gave birth to a weak girl.
In order to have this child, the empress lost her ability to have another.
And a princess obviously would not be able to help her keep her position in the harem.
In the face of impending danger, with the help of family and confidants, she turned Bai Weiwei into a false phoenix, and the princess became a prince.
It just so happened that the emperor was seriously ill and the harem was in chaos, so the scheme was covered up just like that.
And so Bai Weiwei became Bai Wei. Because she was the legitimate child of the empress, she became the heir, commonly known as the crown prince.
For 16 years, it was concealed.
But it was not just bad luck here.
Even worse, Xie Yunting rebelled.
Xie Yunting was the enchanting genius of this dynasty.
The bastard son of a fallen family, his ill-treatment by his legal mother2 since youth resulted in his sinister character.
He was a young boy who understood the importance of power. Step by step, he designed a plan to enter school, learn under a famous master, study science at the age of 15, from the first test to champion3.
That is to say, three entry-level exams, three upper-level exams, all first place. He became the first person in this dynasty’s history to be the top scholar for all six imperial examinations4.
This privilege allowed him to prosper and gather his own forces in court.
In addition, the previous emperor was incompetent. He listened to Xie Yunting in all things, allowing him to cover the sky.
Seeing the memories up to here, the corner of Bai Weiwei’s mouth couldn’t help but twitch. How could this be possible in real life?
But in these planes, the targets were like the centers of the world. What almighty halo, their kingly auras covered the entire body?
Why didn’t she have it?
And then, when he became too powerful, the wastewood5 emperor finally felt something was wrong. He tried to clip his wings, even kill him.
But Xie Yunting had already taken control. He joined forces with Imperial Consort Shu, who intended to place her son in power.
With the help of Xie Yunting, Imperial Consort Shu forced the emperor to abdicate.
But Xie Yunting was not aiming for the power of a minister, but rather… the throne.
So Imperial Consort Shu was killed along with the emperor. Her capable son was also kacha’d by Xie Yunting.
The empress had already died of illness, leaving only one weak body, the very young and ill Bai Wei.
Xie Yunting smoothly became regent of the imperial court, his power soaring. He would wait until the situation stabilized, kacha Bai Weiwei, and then he would be in power.
Bai Weiwei wanted to sigh in disbelief. Only at -20, it turns out it was no different from -50. Was this Jiangshan Beauty6?
A power-hungry man like Xie Yunting would simply kill all the women in the world and choose the country.
Bai Weiwei beat up the system: “Trash, are you dead, did we complete the last side task? Where’s my bonus?”
The system coughed, “Complete, asking the host to accept the side task reward, the seductive temperament7.”
Bai Weiwei picked her ear. “Seductive …what was that?”
This side task reward couldn’t be a real thing.
1: 风华绝代: magnificent style unmatched in his/her generation; peerless talent.↩
2: 主母 In ancient times, it was common for nobility to have one official wife and several concubines. Children born to other women (the shu sons and daughters) would refer to the official wife as their legal mother (zhu mu), even though they weren’t biologically related↩
3: 状元: top scorer in the palace examination, a title reserved only for the first place winner of the palace exam (started from the bottom now we here)↩
4: 也就是说小三元大三元全中了，成为本朝历史来第一个科举六元的人。Did my best to figure out what this meant. The imperial exam system consisted of several rankings, with a total of 6. The rankings went from entry-level (county → prefecture → college) → township/province → metropolitan/conference → palace/court. So 3 small wins, 3 big wins, in a sense. This part is a rather loose translation, but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.↩
5: 废柴: loser, good-for-nothing.↩
6: 江山跟美人 There are several media that share this name, but the one I can get information on is the 2008 film, and the plot seems to match. The protagonist Yan Fei’er takes over after her father dies in battle, while a scheming minister plot to take the throne.↩
7: 撩人淫荡: titillate/attract + lewd/lascivious, could potentially be written as sexy and lewd temperament, but it’s hard to take it seriously when I’m writing the translation LOL. Don’t be like me and look it up on Google; my very first suggestion was an r18 site _:(´ཀ`」∠):_ currently lying on the ground in shock even though i really should have known better…↩