The Sickly Seedling Dresses Up As An Unfortunate And Muddled Monarch - Chapter 2
Faced with indecision, quantum mechanics.
Although Qiu Junyao, despite a relatively simple upbringing with almost no setbacks except for illnesses, quickly discerned the murderous intent of the beautiful woman in red before him. Without hesitation, he made a decisive choice—
to feign unconsciousness.
Having just arrived in this world, unfamiliar with everything, he feared that facing these people might lead to panic, exposing his true identity within this new body.
With this in mind, at the moment the woman in red squinted at him, Qiu Junyao rolled his eyes and promptly lay down, achieving the desired effect of hearing a chorus of panicked screams.
He tightly closed his eyes, thinking that once everyone left, he could contemplate and adapt to the environment alone. However, to his surprise, in the following hours, under the calming effect of the court physician’s soothing incense, he fell asleep directly.
Yin Yuan left the court hall only after witnessing Qiu Junyao fall into a deep slumber.
At that moment, she was still in his bright red wedding attire, with golden hairpins adorning her head, producing a delicate jingling sound upon collision. Yet, the irregular rhythm betrayed her inner turmoil and nervousness.
Assisted by the maid accompanying her, Yin Yuan hastily walked to her own sleeping quarters. As the palace doors closed, her previous calm and indifference in front of others swiftly receded, replaced by evident restlessness and anxiety.
In the vast, empty palace, drained of all energy, she sat on a chair like a lost soul. When she lifted her gaze, all she saw was dripping blood—curtains, carpets, window frames, even the candles on the table were gilded in vivid red, resembling burning tears, symbolizing the grand ceremony that had just taken place in the court.
Seeing this, Yin Yuan couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh, a laughter tinged with bitterness and unwillingness.She forcefully twisted the wedding handkerchief in her hands, shoulders trembling nervously, causing her attendant to scrutinize her, almost suspecting that her master had gone mad.
Before Yin Yuan could finish her laughter, just as he was about to succumb to the overwhelming emotions, the medicine bottle in her sleeve suddenly slipped off as she raised her hand. It clanged and rolled on the floor for a while before finally coming to a stop.
Upon recognizing the medicine bottle, the maid turned incredibly pale in an instant. With a thud, she knelt to the ground, her head bowing to the floor, trembling like a sieve. Her voice, filled with trembling, pleaded:
“Master!”
She raised her head, teary-eyed and unable to hide the bulging veins on her forehead, and exclaimed in a shaky voice:
“You… You’ve made a mistake!”
“What’s there to fear?” Yin Yuan glanced at her. Though her voice remained as cold as ever, her actions on the table betrayed the unrest in her heart. Through gritted teeth, she said:
“The old emperor, always indulging in alchemy, is already in his final years. I merely added some medicine to his wine, giving him a swift end.”
“If the court physician discovers the poisoning of the emperor, how will we explain it?”
Huan Chen didn’t expect her master’s courage to reach such an extent, but she was Yin Yuan’s person. If Yin Yuan was discovered, she couldn’t escape death either, so she had to grit her teeth and help Yin Yuan conceal it:
“Has the Young Master thought about an escape plan?”
“Let’s put away this bootle first.” Yin Yuan, who had been calm and composed for over a decade, was visibly shaken, completely forcing composure:
“Don’t worry, I bought this medicine from a retired martial artist in Wuxian, dozens of miles away from the capital. Even if they investigate the head of the medicine shop in the capital thoroughly, they won’t trace it back to me.”
“Moreover, the elixirs he usually takes also contain poison. When the time comes, using some means to shift the blame onto those Daoists who spread misleading rumors won’t be difficult.”
Yin Yuan took a deep breath, trying hard to calm herself without revealing anything to outsiders, but her eyes reflected determination:
“For many years, the dog emperor neglected state affairs, indulging in alchemy, leading to an empty treasury. The people have long been resentful of him. What I’m doing is considered ridding the country of harm.”
“…I don’t understand these matters.” Huan Chen knelt on the ground, quickly crawled over to collect the bottle at Yin Yuan’s feet, and then hurriedly tried to destroy it.
Before leaving, she turned back, tears streaming down her face, and asked Yin Yuan:
“Young Master, won’t we really be discovered?”
“No.” Yin Yuan asserted firmly:
“With this elixir, he will undoubtedly die.”
After speaking, urgent footsteps suddenly echoed from the palace door. Ming Fu’s sharp voice came through the crack, accompanied by a knocking sound:
“Master!”
Ming Fu shouted:
“The Emperor has awakened!”
Yin Yuan: “…”
Huan Chen: “…”
Huan Chen’s legs went weak, almost kneeling on the ground, looking at Yin Yuan with despair:
“You said he would undoubtedly die, didn’t you?”
Yin Yuan: “…”
She tightened the handkerchief in her hand, suspicious and puzzled:
“Could it be that the martial artist in Wuxian sold me fake medicine?”
Meanwhile, on the other side, Qiu Jun, who had taken the fake medicine, gradually woke up a few hours after falling into a deep sleep.
When he woke up, the court physician was still by his bedside, checking his pulse. Seeing him open his eyes, the physician exclaimed with joy:
“Your Majesty, you’ve awakened!”
Qiu Jun blinked and found himself still in this unfamiliar place. Unable to hold back a headache, he covered his head and let out a weak moan, uttering the classic lines of a protagonist in a time-travel drama:
“Where am I?”
“Your Majesty, you are currently in the Hall of Diligence in Government Affairs.”
Thinking that the medicine’s effects had erased his memory, the court physician kindly reminded:
“You have slept for two hours.”
“…. Who are you?”
Qiu Junyao glanced at the elderly physician with graying beard, whose legs were thinner than his arms. The initial wariness and vigilance in Qiu Junyao’s heart gradually subsided, but he still couldn’t immediately adapt to the unfamiliar environment.
Slowly deducing his identity and situation from the attitudes and addresses of those around him since he arrived, Qiu Junyao had initially wanted to voice his doubts straightforwardly. However, he dared not recklessly reveal the fact of his time travel. Instead, he pretended to be affected by the medication, putting on a drowsy appearance:
“Who am I again?”
Upon hearing this, the court physician turned pale, knocking his head on the floor loudly while crying out:
“Oh, Your Majesty~ Your Majesty!”
The old physician’s cries seemed genuine, but there were no tears, making it look overly theatrical.
“Stop the mourning.”
Qiu Junyao, originally pretending to have a headache, was now genuinely bothered by the commotion.
Being a conscientious and friendly young man of the 21st century, seeing a sixty-year-old man kneeling in front of him and knocking his head—though the acting was poor, and the sorrow was fake—touched Qiu Junyao’s conscience in a peculiar way. Rubbing his temples, he was helped up by a quick-handed eunuch nearby.
Qiu Junyao already had a rough idea of the identity he had taken over in this world, but he needed further confirmation. He wasn’t someone who liked to evade knowing the truth when it was right in front of him. No longer feigning unconsciousness, he chose to accept the situation. He asked the physician to stand and whispered:
“I have a bit of a headache, and I can’t remember many things. Later, I’ll ask you some questions. Just answer without asking why, can you do that?”
“Yes.” Actually, the physician wouldn’t speak out of turn even if Qiu Junyao didn’t say much.
However, Qiu Junyao’s approachable appearance made the physician somewhat suspicious. After all, this absent-minded emperor usually regained consciousness through rehab by having a vase lifted from the bedside and smashed onto his head, followed by a scolding.
Thinking about this, the physician shuddered, touched his own head with lingering fear, nodded cautiously, and said, “Your Majesty, please ask.”
“The first question,” Qiu Junyao pointed to himself, “Who am I? And what is my identity?”
“You are the seventh monarch of the Grand Dynasty.”
The physician hadn’t expected Qiu Junyao’s mind to be so thoroughly damaged that he couldn’t even remember his own name. He felt a bit conflicted when directly addressing Qiu Junyao’s name, but encouraged by Qiu Junyao’s gaze, he continued hesitantly:
“Your name is Qiu Junyao.”
Qiu Junyao didn’t expect the name of this body to be the same as his own, raising an unexpected eyebrow.
The playful and youthful gesture, somewhat out of place on a lifeless body, suddenly made the court physician feel something unusual. However, his thoughts were quickly disrupted by Qiu Junyao’s words:
“So, who is the person sitting next to me today?”
“It’s your newly married empress, Yin Yuan.”
“Yin… Yuan?” Qiu Junyao’s sensitive nerves were touched by these two words, sensing that something significant was amiss. The body that had been lazily leaning against the bedside suddenly straightened up, and his expression gradually became serious:
“Which Yin and which Yuan?”
“The attracting Yin, and the paired Yuan.”
The eunuch honestly replied, “She is the second young lady of the Yin family.”
No way…
Qiu Junyao’s expression froze upon hearing this, and for a moment, he stood there like he had been struck by lightning, struggling to digest this fact.
In the novel he had read before coming here, the protagonist was called Yin Yuan!
In the story, Yin Yuan and Yin Yuan were originally a pair of twins. After the death of the current queen, the original host planned to marry the young and beautiful Yin Yuan, but Yin Yuan vowed not to comply. On the day before the grand wedding, she packed her belongings and eloped with a favored servant.
To avoid the emperor’s wrath and the order to execute the Yin family for disobedience, Yin Yuan reluctantly had to dress in women’s clothing and replace his sister in the phoenix carriage.
In the novel’s depiction, the original host, filled with desire upon seeing the beauty under the lamp, wanted to experience the bliss of the bridal chamber but fainted due to excessive excitement. He remained unconscious for seven days.
During these seven days, several princes, intrigued by the beautiful young woman, came to attend to his illness. Resulting from their encounters with the charming young empress, they resorted to various tricks and successfully plotted against the original host when he was 35 years old.
Looking at the timeline of the royal wedding, the age Qiu Junyao had come to, just turned 32, was still a few years away from the plot’s climax.
Qiu Junyao didn’t expect to encounter such a situation right after escaping danger. His emotions were complex, but there was always a strong desire to survive.
Thinking about this, Qiu Junyao, who had calculated that he had three years left before this body died, wanted to live well.
With these thoughts in mind, Qiu Junyao, who had now understood the situation, gradually calmed down amid the chaos, but his complexion remained unsightly.
Observing Qiu Junyao’s fluctuating emotions, the court physician couldn’t quite fathom what was on Qiu Junyao’s mind and chose not to speak for the time being.
However, at this moment, there suddenly came a commotion from the doorway. It seemed like someone was talking. After a while, the guard who had been standing there pushed open the door and walked in, kneeling down with a salute to Qiu Junyao, saying:
“Your Majesty.”
He continued, “Several princes heard that Your Majesty has regained consciousness. They are currently waiting outside the hall, kneeling and requesting to attend to Your Majesty’s illness. Should I allow them to enter?”
Attend to illness?!
Wasn’t this the beginning plotline where his sons and his empress first caught sight of each other in the novel?!
Realizing this, Qiu Junyao’s face turned green, instantly feeling like he was facing a major crisis:
“No need!”
Frantically waving his hands to express a polite refusal, he accidentally knocked over the vase by the bedside with great force, creating a loud crashing sound. The palace maids and eunuchs in the hall dared not even breathe, kneeling by Qiu Junyao’s bedside without daring to make a sound, only listening to their emperor’s outburst:
“Send them all away!!!!”
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