Chapter 495: Krypton-Gold Palace Struggle System (30)

The Old Matriarch grew anxious upon hearing this and hurriedly instructed the head maid to run over to the Third Branch: "Go! Call your Third Master over and tell him I have an urgent matter to discuss with him."

The maid curtsied, but before she had even walked out of Ju'an Tang after receiving the errand, she saw the errand boy who worked for Third Master Xie coming over with a beaming face, saying that the Third Master had caught the Emperor's eye and received a pile of rewards, and he had come specifically to bring the good news to the Old Matriarch.

"!!!"

Although the Old Matriarch was puzzled, this was a joyous occasion that brought glory to the family, so she was naturally happy; with a wave of her hand, she distributed reward money to the errand boy who brought the news and the servants attending in the courtyard.

The First Madam and Second Madam's moods were not quite as pleasant.

First Madam: Did the Emperor get the wrong person? Xie Ping's biological father is the First Master, not the Third Master!

Second Madam: What kind of dog-shit luck did the Third have?! He's just a minor sixth-rank official with no real power, yet he can still receive rewards from the Emperor.

Lao San Branch was unaware of the jealousy from the First and Second Branches; the whole family was excited, surrounding the rewards from the palace.

They had kept a small portion of the water and coal brought back from the pirate island to test the "Steam Engine" mentioned in the Saintess's letter, while the rest was presented to the imperial court for the Ministry of Works to use in smelting.

Originally, they had intended to present it through the Fourth Prince.

But the current Third Master Xie was no longer a commoner; although his official rank was small, he was a legitimate official of the imperial court, and it was better to have less private contact with the princes.

Sure enough, when the Emperor heard that the merchant ship of the Xie Family Third Branch had discovered water and coal while taking shelter from wind and waves at a small island on the high seas, and that they had spared no effort to bring back the bulk of the water and coal to hand over to the court—even at the cost of giving up their trip to Nanyang to stock up on goods—the Dragon Heart was greatly pleased.

He not only praised him during the morning court, where Third Master Xie was not yet qualified to participate, but also sent palace servants to deliver a whole array of rewards to compensate for the losses the Xie Family Merchant Ship suffered on this southward voyage.

Not to mention how generous the rewards were, after this incident, Third Master Xie was no longer the insignificant "transparent" person in the Bureau of Forestry and Crafts, or even the Ministry of Works.

Almost everyone recognized him. Even if they hadn't met face-to-face, they had definitely heard his great name.

His superiors were amiable when they saw him, often calling him to participate in important discussions and inviting him to eat and drink during his days off.

Third Master Xie regained his motivation to sign in diligently; not only was he thriving in the Ministry of Works, but he was also frequently poached—half-jokingly and half-seriously—by officials from other ministries.

"Master Xie, I hear your family's merchant ships often run to Nanyang. Could I invite Master Xie to my Ministry of Rites to chat about the culture and etiquette of Nanyang, so that when they come to our Daye to pay tribute, they don't make any jokes?"

"Master Xie, are you interested in coming to sit at my Ministry of Revenue? I hear that in Nanyang, it is summer all year round; how is the grain yield there?"

"Master Xie,..."

Third Master Xie: "..."

How would he know these things? He had never been to Nanyang.

Upon returning to the manor, he couldn't help but complain a few times.

Hearing about grain yields, Xie Yang thought of several high-yield crops introduced from South America—corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes; they were first brought to the Philippines for cultivation by Spanish navigators. She could keep an eye out next time she went; perhaps they were already there.

If she had the chance, she would rather go to South America to see for herself.

Ancient South America was not only the center of agricultural origin but also a paradise for high-yield crops!

However, there was no rush for this; she would wait until she had recovered the Palace Struggle System first. After all, the Task was what mattered.

Xie Ping had been extremely annoyed lately.

The Palace Struggle System's appetite was growing larger and larger.

This upgrade actually required one hundred thousand taels of silver or an equivalent amount of gold.

If she didn't upgrade, she had initially thought it just meant she wouldn't be able to buy the dazzling array of magical pills in the System Mall.

She thought, if I can't buy them, then I won't; anyway, she now had a son, the Emperor's favor, and her rank had been raised.

Relying on her beauty and figure, she could entice the Emperor to come and stay with her every month, and the number of times she was favored was catching up to the Imperial Noble Consort. Rising from a Concubine to a Consort was just a matter of time.

But she never expected that after this Palace Struggle System wasn't upgraded, the experience points she had gained would actually start to drop.

When it dropped to a certain value, her beauty regressed, and her figure lost its shape.

As it dropped further, her two imperial sons met with accidents one after another; although it was only headaches, fevers, or falling and scraping their skin, that was enough to terrify her.

Only then did she realize: this system, which claimed to come from a distant, magical land and could help her win in the palace struggles, was no different from a pirate ship.

Once on this pirate ship, she needed a constant stream of gold and silver to recharge it.

It was like a greedy, bottomless pit; the more gold and treasures it swallowed, the larger its appetite became.

Her maiden family had already sent a letter saying they were unable to provide the money she needed for her expenses, and she herself didn't even have an extra tael of silver.

For her daily expenses, she used the tea, candles, and black coal from her allotted portions.

Even so, it couldn't stop the Palace Struggle System's experience points from falling day by day.

Watching the experience points drop lower and lower, in the mirror, her delicate, fair skin seemed to lose its nourishment and gradually became rough; her jet-black, beautiful hair also began to appear dry and split; her slender waist that could be held in one hand, her curvaceous figure, and her captivating, charming eyes either disappeared or dimmed, as if she had returned to before she bound the system...

Xie Ping was not reconciled.

But where could she get silver?

She had thought about going to other palaces to pilfer valuable things under the guise of visiting her sisters.

But which woman in the inner palace didn't have eight hundred schemes in her heart? They were already guarding against her; how would they give her a chance to act alone?

The Emperor's bedchamber was even more impossible.

In the end, in a moment of impulse, she held her youngest son and, under the pretext of taking him to play with his brothers and sisters, pilfered several gold and silver ornaments from the residences of the young princes and princesses.

It was just that the quantity was small, and they were small items; even after "krypton-golding" them to the system, it didn't meet the upgrade requirements.

Instead, her abnormal behavior was discovered by a prince's wet nurse, who secretly told her master, setting a trap to catch her in the act.

Then, Xie Ping was grounded by the Emperor.

She was forbidden from leaving her bedchamber for three months.

And three months later, because Xie Ping's experience points had fallen all the way, she not only lost the beauty and figure piled up by pills but also almost lost the eldest son she had conceived using the Childbearing Pill.

The child was mischievous and insisted on teasing a lynx in Maer Fang that had not yet been tamed, and he was bitten by the irritable lynx until he was covered in blood.

His life was saved, but he lost an ear, which meant he was completely out of the running for the throne.

Xie Ping's youngest son also had his back burned by an overturned candle stand due to the wet nurse's negligence.

Although the surface wounds were healed using burn ointment from the Imperial Hospital, the young heart was left with a fear of candlelight from then on.

Wherever he went, there could be no firelight.

This meant that this prince was ruined.

At first, the Emperor would often come to sit in Xie Ping's bedchamber out of pity for the two children.

Even when he punished everyone in her palace, he did not vent his anger on her.

But as the experience points of the Palace Struggle System continued to drop, Xie Ping developed appearance anxiety.

In fact, she was quite good-looking herself, otherwise she would not have been selected to enter the palace.

It was just that after having possessed a more beautiful face and a more graceful figure, she could no longer accept her original self.

What's more, she had invested so much gold and Silver.

She was not reconciled.