The Empress Dowager Has It Tough, and the Empress Sighs

Coming next: "She Is Outrageous," a faux mother-daughter story.

Blurb:

After three emperors died in succession, the Empress Dowager supported Prince Jing, a son of humble birth, as a puppet emperor.

Three months after his accession, the emperor made the youngest daughter of the Great General his empress.

On their wedding night, someone drugged the emperor, and he took a palace maid to his bed right in front of the empress, frightening the young empress into curling up on the bed.

The Empress Dowager took the empress away and brought her back to her own chambers to comfort her.

The empress had an extraordinary ability: she could see people's desires. When she watched the emperor with the palace maid, she saw ring after ring of yellow bubbles floating above his head.

But above the Empress Dowager, who had come to comfort her, there were only rings of pink bubbles.

The Empress Dowager was pure of heart and desire.

Later, the emperor sent beautiful women to the Empress Dowager to curry favor with her. The empress could clearly see that the bubbles above her head were still pink.

The Empress Dowager was celibate and had no interest in beautiful women.

The empress glanced at herself in the bronze mirror and wondered how she could please the Empress Dowager, who held power over the court yet was so pure of heart and desire.

When she lay down beside the Empress Dowager, she cried.

The bubbles above the Empress Dowager's head had turned yellow!

The Empress Dowager's chastity was a lie!

After that, the empress saw a ring of yellow bubbles above the Empress Dowager's head every day...

* Both are each other's first and only.

* Before the empress was deposed, they had no feelings for each other.

Theme: Charge forward without hesitation.