vstars Chapter 223 Fatal Foreshadowing Shift: From the 7th Prince to the 3rd Prince, Ultimately Pointing to
Chapter 223 Fatal Foreshadowing Shift: From the 7th Prince to the 3rd Prince, Ultimately Pointing to
Xiao Si once again transmigrated into the world where Sanlang Zi'an lived, only to find that she was not an empress in this life, but rather a rootless duckweed, wandering in the vast world, unable to find her identity again.
In contrast, Zi An's identity shines like the brightest star in the night sky, clear and dazzling. In his past life, as the seventh son Zi An, his fate took a sudden turn into a tragic abyss, where he was ruthlessly betrayed by his wife and daughter, and a bowl of poisoned soup ended his life.
In this life, he transformed into the Third Emperor, clad in a dragon robe and ruling the world, exuding imperial majesty and arrogance in every gesture.
As an anonymous official in the Imperial Observatory, Xiao Si spun around Zi An like a little top all day long. Lately, her head seemed to be filled with a little motor, her mind completely focused on exonerating her beloved granddaughter Anle from her previous life. She was so determined that she wouldn't give up until she did it perfectly.
"If you ask me, Anle doesn't seem like the kind of girl who would do something so wicked to her own father. Why, you ask? Let me tell you the ins and outs of it."
In the historical records preserved in the future, it is mentioned for the first time that Emperor Zhongzong of Tang, Li Xian, was poisoned to death by Empress Wei. This matter is like a carefully orchestrated farce, which actually emerged in a coup against Empress Wei more than half a month after Zhongzong's death.
"Don't you think this is strange? I admit that the coup was filled with the smell of gunpowder, and there was a tense atmosphere of military mobilization everywhere. Emperor Zhongzong had just passed away, only eighteen days ago. Don't you know that, Sanlang Zian, you and Princess Taiping quickly joined forces to stage a coup? It's obvious that it was planned in advance."
Sanlang Zian, realizing he couldn't hide it from the little girl any longer, said, "Hehe, so you don't get paid for nothing at the Imperial Observatory! Mine was just a matter of fate; the game just happened to get to that point, and I couldn't exactly flip the table, could I?"
Sanlang Zian clearly remembers that at the time, a general who was involved in a coup shouted loudly to his soldiers: "The empress poisoned the emperor! Today we must deal with this poisonous woman and avenge the late emperor!"
"Listen to this, it sounds appealing at first, but think about it carefully, isn't this just using the Empress and Princess poisoning Emperor Zhongzong as an excuse to justify your coup?!"
Sanlang Zian said, "Don't you think it would be too naive for the ministers to believe this and take it as the truth?"
"Yes, it's just as unreliable as treating rumors from the streets as irrefutable evidence!"
Xiao Si took out a long scroll written in clerical script, the first page of which read: "A Guide to Historical Gossip: The Story of Princess Anle Taking the Blame".
Xiao Si slapped her copy of the "Old Sugar Book" she had been practicing calligraphy with, much like a gossip-loving person on the subway reading a tabloid: "Shocking! There's no record of poisoning in 'The Biography of Princess Anle'! What happened to the promised 'poison princess of the year'?! Sima Guang gave her a definitive account in 'Zizhi Tongjian,' but he didn't even provide a complete chain of evidence. This generation of historians is so careless!"
She flipped through the loose pages with a rustling sound: "Look at this collection of scandals, it's like a compilation of celebrity scandals—wanting to be the Crown Princess? Note it down! Renovating Kunchi? Note it down! Even Princess Anle's house renovation exceeding regulations gets a big fuss!! But the bombshell scandal of poisoning her own father is nowhere to be found!" She suddenly lowered her voice mysteriously: "Could it be that the historians from a thousand years ago suddenly all switched careers to become positive-energy bloggers and started emphasizing 'virtue'?"
Sanlang Zian stared blankly at the severed heads of his wife and daughter from his past life that he had seen a few days ago. It was supposed to be a revenge plot after rebirth, and he felt he had accomplished it quite well. But now, hearing Xiao Si's words, he suddenly realized, "Am I being fooled by some unofficial history and become a complete idiot in this life?!" The satisfying plot of the novel where he swiftly and decisively killed his enemies a few days ago had suddenly turned into a scene from "Today's Talk." "Stop talking. I don't want to be someone who can't even live a normal life after being reborn. Now you should help me study the survival strategies of emperors. I've discovered that the five elements' mutual restraint is really deadly!"
Xiao Si quickly pulled out a Five Elements Compass: "Zi An, I've discovered that you, young man, are destined to be a time-traveling emperor, while Qu Youjiu is the true persona of a Tang Dynasty scholar and poet. Your destiny needs to be explained by metaphysics!"
Emperors, generally speaking, belong to the fire element, much like constantly trending on Weibo – seemingly glamorous, but actually besieged daily by various forces' online trolls. Managing state affairs is like grinding a game and spending a fortune!
"speak English!"
"Haha, that's definitely your blind spot. Let Xiao Si from the Imperial Observatory give you a little lesson. Grinding and spending money have always been the two major pain points of future time-travel online games, used to describe the time and money invested in a game."
"You'll find that there are no permanent emperors and ever-changing prime ministers, so emperors often invest a huge amount of time. In the future, such players would be jokingly called 'grind kings'! When the average time investment of players in a game reaches a high level, this type of game is defined as having a high grind level, such as the Tang Dynasty you traveled to!"
"Ah, I think I have a bit of a futuristic vibe here. Does 'krypton' refer to 'payment fees'?"
"That's right. 'Pay-to-win' refers to the amount of money required to reach a high level of player strength in a game. In a game that requires a lot of spending, players who use their wealth to reach the top level of their accounts are called 'whales' (or 'rich players'), and they're considered to have a 'heavy-earth' destiny!"
"Sanlang, you're definitely the biggest spender in the Tang Dynasty!" Xiao Si twirled her scalpel as she complained, "It's just that the 'Prosperous Era' skin is gilded; the national treasury can't withstand An Lushan's critical hits. If you ask me, you're quite the local tyrant..."
"Earth? I am a VIP of the Five Elements, possessing immense wealth!"
Xiao Si fastened a custom-made waist tag to the dragon robe: "I think this waist tag will be useful. It's an auspicious omen of the Earth element, certified by the Records of the Grand Historian, originally belonging to the collector of the complete map of the Central Plains core area, the agricultural infrastructure maniac..."
"You're really not a local tyrant!"
"Who is it? Should I try time travel another day?"
"Dream on, it seems we're stuck in the Tang Dynasty."
"Who's this local tyrant?"
"Have some basic historical knowledge, okay? It has to be the Yellow Emperor! He's considered a typical representative of the element Earth in the Five Elements theory. According to the 'Annals of the Five Emperors,' he possessed auspicious signs associated with the virtue of Earth, hence the title Yellow Emperor. In the Five Elements theory, the center belongs to Earth, and the tribal alliance led by the Yellow Emperor was located in the core area of the Central Plains, where auspicious omens related to the Earth element were present. The color of Earth is yellow, so he was revered as the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor attached great importance to agricultural development, and among his many achievements, promoting agricultural progress was a key link. Agriculture is closely linked to the land, which also indirectly confirms his deep connection with the Earth element."
"Wow, no wonder he's the founding emperor of the farming-style nation!"
Xiao Si suddenly pulled out the Imperial Observatory's tablet and swiped it a couple of times: "But your health system is terrible! Staying up all night to compile memorials is like getting a 100-day login bonus, and taking elixirs is like installing a rogue plugin on your internal organs—" The elixir bottle slammed onto the sandalwood table: "Heavy metal gift pack, buy one get seven orifices bleeding free, absolutely effective!"
"I'll change the wine list to non-alcoholic special edition right away!" Sanlang Zian immediately cowered as if his ear had been grabbed by the imperial concubine.
"That's right! Cold wine damages the liver like buying skincare products with Alipay, while hot wine evaporates the alcohol like rational consumption—" Xiao Si suddenly flipped open the holographic medical record: "Let's get down to business! Your family's genetic disease package could be made into several TV series in the future!"
The yellowed scroll unfurled with a whoosh: Emperor Gaozu's buff stacked with Qi Swiftness, Emperor Taizong's debuff inflicted with Wind Swiftness, and Emperor Gaozong's triple attack of dizziness. Little Si slammed her fist on the table in anguish: "The entire Li imperial family's cardiovascular system is as fragile as Tang Dynasty tri-colored pottery! You only lived to fifty-five in your previous life; you should thank that braised pork fat didn't evolve into gutter oil!"
"So I was tricked by the Health Preservation Account?" Sanlang Zi'an's pupils suddenly dilated: "The poisoning mentioned in the history books..."
"Sigh, even unofficial histories aren't as accurate. We still don't have the surveillance footage to prove the truth!" Little Si pulled up data similar to that of the Underworld: "Unless we hack into the Underworld's surveillance system and retrieve the playback footage from the Imperial Kitchen on [date]—but that requires special approval from the Jade Emperor and iris verification from Buddha—should we go through the proper channels or find a scalper?"
Sanlang Zian: "Forget it, they can take me in later when they discover the bug that allows me to travel back and forth between worlds."
Xiao Si nodded, thinking to herself, "What kind of political drama is this? It turns out it's all just a 'special research report from Yangshengtang'—'On How High Salt and High Fat Can Rewrite the Course of History'..."
Xiao Si twirled her calligraphy brush and said quietly, "If you ask me, don't try to make it in officialdom without a cheat code. Being an empress in your past life was even more stressful than working for a major internet company. Major corporations parachute in CEOs, pushing them to meet KPIs to recreate the historical timeline, afraid the butterfly effect will cause a time-space collapse..."
"Power is like an aphrodisiac; the coronation ceremony is more intoxicating than shopping. And once you gain the status, you realize the dragon throne is a time for endless clocking in and out, and the memorials are always piling up... Now that I think about it, I might as well start a Buddhist-style live stream at Ganye Temple... It could even heal the spiritual wounds of the masses."
Xiao Si suddenly leaned closer to Zi An and lowered her voice: "History books say my strategies are heaven-defying? That's all hindsight. She became empress, so everything became extraordinary measures. If it were really that effective, later generations would have mass-produced skill figurines long ago! In the end, we're all just working people. The difference is that you guys grind for projects, while I grind for the course of history."
Sanlang Zi'an flicked his gilded sleeves, and the candlelight in the entire hall dimmed instantly: "I possess the top-tier equipment arsenal of the Chang'an server, yet you say I'm not worthy to be a local tyrant?"
Xiao Si's fingertips lit up a holographic star map, and An Lushan's portrait flickered in the dark blue data stream: "Would any whales dare to place a bet? If the 'Rainbow Feather Robe Downloadable Content' feature is unlocked ahead of time—"
Do you also know the full name of the downloadable content in DCL?
"Haha, I just looked it up. I've been so bored lately, so I'm memorizing some vocabulary."
Zi'an hurriedly flipped the screen over: "Sigh, we've already transmigrated, what's the point of memorizing vocabulary? It's useless. I'm more looking forward to seeing the Imperial Concubine's magnificent figure and face!"
Little Si chuckled: "Forget it, unless you happen to want to bury a stunningly beautiful peach blossom skin interface at Mawei Slope..."
At this moment, however, blood-red battle reports poured down like a waterfall!