Your Majesty, please do not disturb, the empress only wants to engage in business

Chapter 184 Everything is ready
Listening to Yao Jinse's mutterings, Bai Tan felt that her mistress was being overly suspicious and thoughtful.

My lady, you're scheming so much every day; it must be taking a toll on your spirit.

So she took Yao Jinse's arm and walked into the house, saying, "Your Highness, please don't think about these things anymore. In terms of age, Your Highness is not much older than Consort Qiao and the others! Actually, now is a good time. Didn't you tell us before that being by the side of the Imperial Concubine means we have to be patient? Your Highness should wait and see."

That's true. Yao Jinse nodded and then thought that it was most reassuring to have the future in her own hands.

Although Yao Jinse didn't really care about age, she quickly came to her senses after hearing this. Having lived two lives, she often acted in a way that was too old-fashioned.

In reality, the oldest concubines in the harem, the Empress and Consort Zhuang, are only in their thirties. Further down the line, Consort Rong, Consort Zhao, along with Yao Jinse and Consort Chen, are all in their twenties.

Xie Yun'an had indeed been plotting for the throne for many years, and he had been biding his time for a long time. However, the most significant changes occurred during the last two years of the late emperor's reign.

It's just that so much has happened in the past two years, so it gives people the illusion that a long time has passed. But in reality, everyone is still young and has a long life ahead of them.

Thinking about it this way, Yao Jinse suddenly felt much lighter.

All this scheming and calculating actually drained her own energy. In fact, in less than a year, Yao Jinse hadn't read many storybooks at all; she spent most of her time reading medical books.

The bits and pieces she learned in her previous life, along with some records in medical books and ancient texts, and the advice she received from imperial physicians when she had headaches or fevers, had given her a considerable amount of knowledge in this area.

Although Yao Jinse wouldn't dare say she could diagnose life or death by feeling a pulse, she can still offer some opinions on her family's health practices.

Living is a very demanding thing. It requires careful maintenance to keep one's body healthy, and often one must also be wary of unexpected situations.

Like the Imperial Concubine, she had a good foundation from childhood, but she didn't stick to exercising. After marrying into the royal family, she began to live a life of luxury in the inner courtyard, making it difficult for her health to recover.

Add to that the medicines she drank... It can only be said that the imperial physicians and Xie Yun'an put a lot of effort into these medicines. Xie Yun'an's affection for Consort Rong is genuine, but his wariness is also real.

Now, in order for the Consort to have a child, Yao Jinse not only helped to fetch a doctor from outside, but also offered some advice and shared some of her experience in childbirth with the Consort. The core message was that the Consort should no longer live such a delicate life and should return to the state she was in before, where she could both strengthen her body and receive appropriate treatment.

And all of this... was done in places where outsiders could see it.

The main thing is those medicines, prescriptions given by the imperial physicians of the Imperial Hospital. That female physician had seen them before, borrowed the prescriptions, and rewrote a new prescription. I don't know how effective these medicines will be after taking them.

Although Yao Jinse was wholeheartedly for the good of Consort Rong in this matter, the matter of having a child was so important to Consort Rong that even Yao Jinse had to be treated with some caution by her at this point.

However, the medicine should still be effective; at least these past few days, when Yao Jinse saw the Imperial Concubine, she could more or less see that the Imperial Concubine's complexion had improved. It's just that the Imperial Concubine's belly still showed no signs of pregnancy.

It was common for the emperor to stay overnight in the concubine's palace, but it was also common knowledge that the concubine was not pregnant.

Yao Jinse could guess some of Xie Yun'an's thoughts—Consort Rong was obsessed with having children. If there were too many pregnant concubines in the palace, it would not only be a blow to Consort Rong, but might even provoke her to do something she shouldn't.

Xie Yun'an now intends to gradually stop taking care of the unhealthy parts of the Consort's medicine after he has finished dealing with the Duke's mansion. Therefore, in the original novel, the Consort did have a child, but in the end, the child was lost.

Before this incident, it was best for the other concubines, besides Consort Rong, not to be pregnant.

Living in Consort Rong's palace would not only demonstrate Consort Rong's unparalleled favor and prevent her from feeling jealous of the other concubines, but also eliminate the trouble of other concubines being pregnant in the harem, since Consort Rong was incapable of conceiving anyway, a fact Xie Yun'an was well aware of.

Yao Jinse even suspected that Xie Yun'an's fear of Qi Meiren's pregnancy might be partly due to Consort Rong's unparalleled favor with the emperor.

After all, Consort Qi was a newcomer to the palace, and she became pregnant after serving the emperor only once. If this happened a few more times, it would not be a good thing for the peace of the harem.

Xie Yun'an considered himself strong and healthy, and was in his prime. Naturally, he would not consider the possibility of his descendants dying out. He would probably only worry that the late emperor had only a few children, and they had already fought so fiercely for the throne.

He will have more children than the late emperor, and who knows how badly the fratricidal strife will escalate.

However, these things have nothing to do with Yao Jinse now. The harem is currently peaceful and orderly under the rule of the Empress and the concubines.

Aside from the fact that both the Imperial Concubine and the Empress were recuperating in preparation for having a child, there wasn't even a hint of new fun.

Some of the newly arrived concubines, especially the older ones, found it difficult to stay still in their own courtyards.

In the spring, when the flowers are in full bloom, these young girls would often run into the Imperial Garden to fly kites, hoping they might even run into the Emperor, but most of the time they were just playing.

The emperor never came to the inner palace, and the empress above him was quite strict in her control, so there was no possibility of jealousy or rivalry among them, making life naturally quite boring.

Of course, some people enjoy this kind of boring life. After all, in the harem, living peacefully is definitely a good thing.

However, for Empress Dowager Xu, happy days were just around the corner.

More than a month passed, and the messengers sent out to deliver messages returned one after another, all bringing back news that their old friends would definitely appear on time. So now, the Empress Dowager had everything ready and was just waiting to start showing off.