Chapter 46: Chapter 46: If you can’t beat them up, then tear down the house

“Open the doors!” Ning Xiaoyao said as she knocked on the gates. A young eunuch ran like the wind to the empress dowager and Grand Preceptor, who were currently together in a room. Because he was too nervous, he ended up rolling and crawling his way there as well.

The little gyrfalcon flew up for a look before returning to Ning Xiaoyao. “Xiaoyao, someone’s gone off to report to the empress dowager.”

How could they search for the Imperial Jade Seal if the Xie father and mother pair had time to prepare in advance? Ning Xiaoyao signaled Big Boss Black and the little gyrfalcon to split up before murmuring, “You guys go find Grandpa Ash. I’ll go in and attract their attention. We’ll meet up again at the Imperial Palace.”

Big Boss Black brushed his tail against Ning Xiaoyao’s face before leaping to the ground. Then he followed the perimeter of the palace walls and headed south. The gyrfalcon circled around Ning Xiaoyao’s head before flying into the palace.

“Open the doors!” Ning Xiaoyao began to pound at the gates again once she saw her companions off.

A gatekeeper eunuch ran to the gates then and said, “Your, Your Majesty?”

“I’ve yelled for half the day now,” Ning Xiaoyao said, “Didn’t any of you hear? How many other ‘Your Majesties’ are there in this palace?”

The eunuch in charge said, “A servant’s gone to report to Esteemed Empress Dowager. Since Your Majesty suddenly showed up, the servants...”

“Shoot!” Ning Xiaoyao shouted. “I’m here to see my mom, do I need to make a phone call for that?”

The eunuchs behind the gates fell silent. What was ‘making a phone call?’ And also, ‘I’m here to see my mom?’ Your Majesty, would you believe it yourself if you heard those words? The empress dowager’s people had just been exterminated recently!

“Are you guys opening the gates or not?” Ning Xiaoyao asked.

Without Empress Dowager Xie’s command, who would dare to open the door? The eunuch in charge bowed his head and bent forward as he shouted towards the door, “Your Majesty, may Your Majesty please wait shortly, Esteemed Empress Dowager...”

Ning Xiaoyao raised her foot and viciously kicked the gates.

BANG!

Following the loud noise, dust rose from four sides. Some people jumped up into the air with a shrill cry, while others were transfixed with fear. Ning Xiaoyao had kicked the empress dowager’s gates straight to the ground. There was no time for the head eunuch to run away, so he was crushed beneath the doors with a few other eunuchs. He was even crying for help. Ning Xiaoyao wasn’t someone who ignored people in trouble, and raised her foot for another kick. The gates were sent flying towards the stairs outside the door where there was nobody else. The black copper gates went tumbling down a few dozen steps before breaking into pieces, completely ruined. Nobody in the empress dowager’s palace cried out this time, too stunned by the sight. His Majesty’s actually an exceptional expert, isn’t he? That had to be it?!

Ning Xiaoyao knelt down and touched the fallen people, discovering in the process that they had been quite fortunate. The toppled gates hadn’t caused them any internal injuries. Since their injuries weren’t life-threatening, Ning Xiaoyao didn’t help heal them. She still had to deal with a group beating later, so she had to preserve her strength.

“Go see a doctor; have the empress dowager pay for your medical expenses,” Ning Xiaoyao left them with another unintelligible sentence before running into the palace. It was impossible for Empress Dowager Xie to miss the loud, repeated commotion at the gates from her side chambers. She lost it right then and there as she slapped her hand against the tea table and shouted.

“What does that person want to do? Doesn’t that person know this is the empress dowager’s palace?!”

Currently, all the doctors they’d brought from outside the palace were present. The Grand Preceptor hastily rose to his feet and said, “Esteemed Empress Dowager, please calm your anger. Perhaps His Majesty...perhaps he was eager because he was thinking of his mother.”

Empress Dowager Xie kept banging the tea table, completely out of her usual poise. “Someone come, go ask His Majesty--ask just what he’s planning?!”

“....” replied all the eunuchs and court ladies in the room. Who would dare ask His Majesty such a question? His Majesty might not commit matricide, but it’d be as easy as killing ants to get rid of servants like them.

“Esteemed Empress Dowager,” Grand Preceptor Xie said calmly. “This subject will take the doctors and retreat.” It was possible that Ning Yu was aiming for these outside doctors. After all, they were neither ministers of the court or imperial physicians. If Ning Yu was truly venomous, she could accuse the empress dowager of meeting with outside men, a crime that would make their lives more difficult. But before the empress dowager could even react to the Grand Preceptor’s words, Ning Xiaoyao’s voice sounded from outside.

“Where’s my mom?”

It was a very nice voice, but lacked the soft and gentle air of a typical girl. Grand Preceptor Xie had long gotten used to this voice, but the words it was saying were foreign to him. Empress Dowager Xie only felt tormented. Did she let this idiot in? She wanted to shout for her to stay out, but her reasoning was still intact. By the time the words reached her lips, she’d changed them to say, “Who is that? Someone go and see.”

“.....” said the doctors. Just then, the empress dowager had been shouting about His Majesty coming over. Now she didn’t know who it was? She really knew how to act. Grand Preceptor Xie waved a hand at the doctors, indicating that they should go with him. The eunuch who’d received orders from the empress dowager didn’t even have time to turn around before Ning Xiaoyao had already arrived at the room.

She pushed open the door and said, “It’s me, Ning Xiao--Ning Yu, ah.”

Empress Dowager Xie wanted to tell her to scram, but she still held herself back. Ning Xiaoyao entered the room and glanced at the doctors standing behind Grand Preceptor Xie. “Oh, these are my old ma’s...”

“Imperial Mother” Wifey Magpie cried from outside the window. What was with this ‘my mom,’ ‘my old ma?’ She was going to die from impatience!

Ning Xiaoyao pursed her lips and switched to say, “Are these your friends, Imperial Mother?”

This was the first complete sentence Ning Xiaoyao had said upon entering the room. Following that, all the doctors fell to their knees. They were outsider males, so how could they dare make friends with the reigning empress dowager? Did His Majesty want to cook up charges against them and put them and their families to death with the nine familial exterminations?

“Why are you guys all kneeling?” Ning Xiaoyao stood with her hands behind her back, looking at the doctors. Where were their professional ethics? How dare they call someone sick when she wasn’t ill at all?

“This commoner calls on Your Majesty,” the doctors bowed.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Ning Xiaoyao waved a hand. “You’re all my Imperial Mother’s friends, so there’s no need to kneel. In the future, drop by the palace often and chat a bit with my Imperial Mother. She’s already lonely by herself, and now that my Imperial Father’s dead too...”

“Your Majesty!” Before Ning Xiaoyao could finish, Empress Dowager Xie gave out a shrill cry. This idiot wanted to hound her to death! Abominable wretch!

Grand Preceptor Xie managed to open his mouth with difficulty. “Your Majesty, they are doctors brought into the palace by this subject.”

Only now did Ning Xiaoyao spare Grand Preceptor Xie a glance, secretly resenting the fact that she wasn’t tall enough to look down on him disdainfully. “There are imperial physicians in the palace, so what are you bringing these doctors in for? These really aren’t my Imperial Mother’s friends?”

“Your Majesty, you must be jesting, right?” Grand Preceptor Xie couldn’t sit still either and stood up to loudly question Ning Xiaoyao.

Empress Dowager Xie stood up as well, while Ning Xiaoyao found an old-fashioned wooden armchair and sat down. “Why would I joke if I had nothing else to do? If they’re not friends, then they’re not friends. We might be strangers before today, but we can be friends the days afterwards.”

“.....” said everyone inside and outside the room. So this person still wanted the empress dowager dead! Meeting with outsider males at the empress dowager’s palace, then becoming their friends? Was the empress dowager a red apricot seed who had left the palace walls to have an affair?[1. red apricot seed...have an affair (一支红杏出了宫墙) - yizhi hongxing chule gongqiang, an analogy used to explain an adulterous woman (though usually regular courtyard walls are used in place of palace ones) by describing her as a beautiful scenery in Spring that can’t be bothered to contain herself within four walls. Just as how the spring scenery spills over the walls to the world beyond (in this case, represented by the sole red apricot seed falling out), the adulterous woman leaves the borders of her own home to sleep in the bed of others]

Empress Dowager Xie raised her hand to point at the exit, before telling Ning Xiaoyao, “You get out.”

Ning Xiaoyao said, “Will it be easier for you to make friends if I leave?”

None of the people inside and outside of the room dared to breathe at her words. Empress Dowager Xie strode forward a few steps to stand before Ning Xiaoyao, raising a hand in preparation to slap her.

“Empress Dowager Xie,” Grand Preceptor Xie exclaimed. That scoundrel Ning Yu deserved a spanking, but the Grand Preceptor was convinced that the empress dowager wouldn’t be able to best her. (Author: o(╯□╰)o )

Empress Dowager Xie’s hand froze stiffly in mid-air. Grand Preceptor Xie said respectfully to Ning Xiaoyao, “Your Majesty, why don’t we have these doctors withdraw first.”

“Withdraw?” Ning Xiaoyao replied. “Didn’t I supposedly lose my senses? Tell me, when did I get such an illness?”

Grand Preceptor Xie’s head whipped back to look at Ning Xiaoyao. Ning Yu had spies in the Grand Preceptor’s estate?! All of the doctors had started to tremble as they knelt on the ground.

“Speak!” Ning Xiaoyao raised a hand and slapped the tea table. It was the same one that Empress Dowager Xie had been hitting, but this time it narrowly avoided breaking to pieces beneath Ning Xiaoyao’s hand. The doctors all stole silent looks at Grand Preceptor Xie as if to say, help us, ah!

Grand Preceptor Xie grit his teeth and replied, “Your Majesty did catch a serious illness when you were young.”

“How could someone crazy become the emperor? I might as well resign from the position,” Ning Xiaoyao reached out to grab a pastry from the tea table and started to eat. Empress Dowager Xie looked expressionless, but her mind couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t poison those pastries?

Grand Preceptor Xie was forcing himself to endure so he could speak nicely to Ning Xiaoyao. “Your Majesty was mandated to be the Son of Heaven, so how can you keep speaking of resigning from your position? A family needs a head, just as a country needs a sovereign, ah, Your Majesty!”

“Then what did you bring all these people here for?” Ning Xiaoyao didn’t want to hear any of Grand Preceptor Xie’s nonsense right now. She pointed at the doctors and asked, “Kill them to silence the witnesses?”

One of the doctors collapsed on the floor, having fainted from fright. Ning Xiaoyao was all smiles as she looked at the empress dowager. “That’s all the guts he has, and he still wants to be Imperial Mother’s friend?”

The chord called Reason finally snapped in Empress Dowager Xie’s head. Without a word, she threw herself at Ning Xiaoyao, who leapt to her feet and smashed her chair. If she was going to cause trouble, how couldn’t she come to blows? She was waiting for this very moment! The wooden window used to partition off the room for warmth was hit by the Grand Preceptor’s chair and sent flying out with it, carved patterns and all.

“Esteemed Empress Dowager!” Grand Preceptor Xie rushed forward to protect his daughter. Ning Xiaoyao waved a fist and punched the wall. If she couldn’t hit her mother, she could at least wreck the house, right?

By now, Lou Zigui had brought Shadowgale and the rest of the Dragon Guards to the foot of the stairs leading to the empress dowager’s palace. His shoe stepped right onto a fragment of the shattered gates. All of them looked up the steps simultaneously. Shadowgale’s lips trembled before he said, “His Majesty tore down the empress dowager’s palace gates too.”

RrrrrRRRRUMBLE--

The sound of a building collapsing came from the empress dowager’s palace, causing the floor beneath their feet to quake. Shadowrain was alarmed. “Is His, His Majesty planning to tear down the empress dowager’s palace?” Is the empress dowager still alive right now?

Lou Zigui quickly made his way up the steps. Killing one’s mother was prohibited. Right now, he only had one thought in his mind. He could kill Empress Dowager Xie, and was bound one day to murder that poisonous widow, but he would never let that woman’s blood stain Ning Xiaoyao’s hands.

By now, Oil Jar had rushed to the window at the southern corner of the empress dowager’s palace and met up with Big Boss Black, who was getting ready to jump inside. “Hurry,” he said, “Xiaoyao’s lifted the roof off the empress dowager’s side chambers. Everyone’s gone to see the show.” (Author: Those people are going to save their mistress. If you don’t know what’s going on, don’t speak nonsense, ah~)

Big Boss Black jumped into the empress dowager’s bedroom. Grandpa Ash was already waiting on the bed, and raised a paw to point at the bed boards. “The Imperial Jade Seal’s hidden in a secret compartment down there.” Then he pointed at the second carved wooden flower on the bed railings and said, “Press that, and you’ll open the compartment.”

Original Chapter Teaser:[expand]

“Are you guys opening the gates or not?” Ning Xiaoyao asked.

Ning Xiaoyao: 'Cause you know, I'm not the most patient person in the world!

Eunuch #1: Y-Your Majesty, p-p-please have mercy...!

Eunuch #2: W-we really can't...

Ning Xiaoyao: *sniffs* And also, what's that smell?!

Ning Xiaoyao: Didn't my mom ever bother to toilet-train you guys?

Eunuch #1, #2: (Are those even human words?! Your Majesty, you're savage!)

[/expand]