After Becoming a Noble Consort, I Opened a Cram School in the Imperial Harem

Rong Guan, a top homeroom teacher known as a relentless study machine, lived up to everyone’s expectations by dropping dead at her desk. Then, in a twist of fate, she transmigrated into the neglected Noble Consort of the Nan Zhao Kingdom! With the empress’s seat vacant, Noble Consort Rong Guan was put in charge of the six inner palaces. Looking at the roomful of young girls who had come to pay their respects, Rong Guan saw the high school class she’d taught before she died. The girls never studied or worked hard. Their goals weren’t Tsinghua or Peking University: all they cared about was scheming and fighting for the emperor’s favor. Rong Guan was furious. It looked like she’d have to bring out the Hengshui Method. Consort Jing spent all day singing and dancing. “Make her study the Four Books. I’ll quiz her on the Great Learning!” Lady Luo planned to poison Concubine Liu’s food. “No meals until you’ve finished memorizing Ethics and the Rule of Law!” Lady Xia was sneaking soup to the emperor again. “Take her off to practice calligraphy! How can she be sending soup with handwriting like chicken scratches?” Under Rong Guan’s relentless efforts to push them to succeed, the entire imperial harem flourished, studying and striving until dawn. Practice exercises every class, weekly tests, monthly exams. No one in the harem had any time to fight for the emperor’s favor; they wished they could recite their books even while walking. At last, with nothing better to do, the emperor remembered that he had a whole harem of beautiful women. The moment he stepped inside, the Noble Consort tore into him. “Only sixty points on state policy? Has your brain been steeped in soup?” “Twenty points in criminal law? We might as well let Nan Zhao perish!” “You know nothing when asked about the Four Books and Five Classics! You’re the worst class I’ve ever taught!” They say the emperor cried all night in Jingren Palace. Everyone said Noble Consort Rong had gone mad. Yet under her madness, Nan Zhao, a kingdom on the brink of collapse, somehow came back to life.