Chapter 4: Imperial Dr. Yen, Ren the Head Eunuch

"They're at it again." Ren's handsome face was suffused in gloominess. He had almond-shaped eyes, delicate features that could be mistaken as a woman. His hair was wrapped up in a silk cloth, with the rest flowing down his back. It is improper for the flowers of the palace to raise a commotion in such a place. It is one of his jobs to bring that to a close. While he was in the middle of dispersing the crowd, there was only one person who walked over with an air of disinterest. She was an average maidservant with dark birth-marks on her face that densely covered her one-side of her cheek. Though she didn't have features that stood out, she left him the impression of one who was talking to herself without noticing him.

He didn't expect there would be any more to it. The talks on the crown prince's passing came about not even a month after. The sobbing Consort Jie was skinnier than she had been a couple of days ago. Her beautiful features. Are being ravaged by the same illness as her son. As for Imperial Princess Wuying and Consort Gina condition's improved after an hour of poor health. Deep thought soured through Ren as he left the room.

Consort Gina gently took her daughter back into her arms and went to put her to sleep in the basket. The baby pushed the hot blanket aside and babbled happily as she looked at the visitor.

"You have something you want to ask." It appears that the wise consort had sensed Ren's anticipation.

"How did the Imperial Princess recover?"

At the point-blank question, Consort Gina let out a small laugh and took out a piece of cloth from her chest. There were clumsy words written on the ripped piece of fabric. It wasn't that the words were written messily. The blotted text was hard to read because it had been written with plant juice.

The face powder is poison.

"Was it the face powder?" he said

"Indeed."

Consort Gina entrusted the princess to the wet nurse and took out something from a drawer.

It was a ceramic container wrapped in cloth. She lifted the lid, and white powder wafted out.

"The face powder?" he asked.

"Indeed, this is the face powder."

He pinched the white powder wondering what could be in it. Come to think of it, and Consort Gina didn't use the face powder as she originally had beautiful skin. Consort Jie heavily covered her face to hide her bad complexion.

"Ignorance is a sin. We should take more care in what the infants are putting into their mouths."

"I agree with that," she said. As a result, four of the emperor's children were lost. If they included those still in their mother's wombs, there might be more affected.

"I want to inform this to Consort Jie as well, but I think that anything I say will backfire," she added. Consort Jie was still coating her bad skin complexion with the face powder. All without knowing it was poison. Ren looked at the piece of unbleached cloth. He had a mysterious feeling that he had seen this before.

The dirty words also looked like it was to obscure the handwriting. However, where had he seen this feminine script? "Who could have done this?" he asked.

Consort Gina replied. "It was the day I got the doctor to look at my daughter. After all, this had been left by the window after I troubled you. It was tied to an azalea branch."

"The palace doctor wouldn't do such a roundabout thing," he said as he thought about who could have written this note. The commotion from that time. Come to think of it, and he recalled an unconcerned maid from the group of onlookers. What had she been muttering about?

"Indeed. It seemed he didn't know how to treat the crown prince even till the end." Consort Gina said while Ren was in his thoughts. What did she say again? "What can I use to write?" Suddenly, everything in his head clicked. He burst out with an evil snicker. A beautiful smile, like a celestial maiden's, appeared. "Consort Gina. The owner of those words, what shall we do when we find them?"

"Of course, they are our benefactor. I want to give my thanks to them," she said.

"I understand. Please wait for a bit."

"I await your good news then."

The crown prince's passing was known when the black bands were delivered during dinner.

Signifying mourning, it was to be worn for seven days. The meals at those times, which hardly had meat even at the best of times, had none at all, so there were those who frequently pursed their lips. A lowly maidservant had two meals a day, consisting of cereal and soup. Once in a while as a treat, there would be one vegetable dish. The portion sizes were enough for the overly skinny Yen, but there were many times she thought it was lacking. She missed her days of eating poison. Then she thought about Noah's daughter Remedy, who was also medically talented. But, had a strange desire and love for eating poison. She never had any idea that she would one day be addicted to eating toxins like Remedy. But this life a gave a taste for it that she never knew she had

There were apparent things when the maids were all lumped together. If there were those who were born as peasants, there would be town girls too. Though their numbers were few, there were also the daughters of officials. Although with officials as their parents, they should be treated somewhat better, even so, when it came to why they were working here, there was also the question of how the person was raised. Those who could not read or write have no way of becoming consorts with rooms.

Consort Jie and her maids had used the white face powder lavishly. It was a high-class item that cannot be obtained by commoners. However, that face powder contains mercury, and it was commonly used during this era. Mercury poison wasn't caught until later

That was why she broke off a short branch, wrote a simple message, and left it at the two consorts' places. Well, she didn't think that they would believe the warning from a lowly maidservant who had no writing materials. When the mourning broke, the time when the black bands could no longer be seen, she heard a rumor about Consort Gina. Apparently, with the crown prince lost, the grieving emperor was affectionate to the surviving imperial princess. She heard nothing about him going to Consort Jie who had lost their child.

Yen gulped down the soup that had small bits of fish in it and headed to her work station where she was to tidy up the tableware.