Chapter 23: Sneaking Into the Palace

Bai Luochu woke up with a start and abruptly sat up from her bed.

Bai Luochu felt that her back was drenched in cold sweat. The feeling of doubt in her heart was so great her face distorted. She didn’t know why the image of the person popped up in her head.

No matter how much she thought about it, nothing would change. In the end, Bai Luochu simply decided to forget about it. Before long, Bai Luochu calmed down the waves in her heart as she raised her head to look at the sky where the first rays of sunlight broke through the screen of night. Her cultivation session started once again.

Her cultivation session lasted all the way till Zi Su entered to help her freshen up. After she ate, Bai Luochu wrote down the names of several poisonous plants and tools she required for tempering poison before passing them all to Zi Su.

Taking the list from Bai Luochu, Zi Su realized that the name of each item was stranger than the last. She didn’t understand what she was looking at and a feeling of doubt formed in her heart. She hurriedly asked, “Young Lady, why do you need these things? All of these items look extremely strange. Don’t use them just because you want to speed up your cultivation, alright? What if you fall sick after eating them?”

Looking at Zi Su who had a frown on her face as she struggled to persuade her, Bai Luochu helplessly laughed and explained, “I didn’t get the names of these items from some random unknown doctor.... These items are all poison herbs and tools for tempering them. Now that I can venture out of the residence, I have to prepare some items to protect myself. With my current strength, there is obviously no way for me to protect myself from the experts located in the capital city. However, even if I can’t defeat them, I can still make use of these items to escape, right? Little lass, don’t worry!”

In fact, Bai Luochu was speaking the truth… Or it would be more appropriate to say that half of it was true. She might have been an evil dao witch in her past life, but she had always acted with the policy of ‘if no one offends me, I won’t offend others’. As of now, her strength was insufficient to protect herself and the idea of provoking others didn’t even make itself into her mind. Obtaining these items to make something to protect herself wasn’t really a lie.

As for the part where she lied, it was naturally about the part about where she was going. The reason why she needed to protect herself from experts was something she cooked up on the spot as well. Sensitive information shouldn’t be shared with Zi Su.

She couldn’t possibly tell Zi Su that she was going to sneak into the palace to attend the Empress Dowager’s birthday banquet...

If that were to happen, Bai Luochu wouldn’t be able to think of anymore reasons she could use. Curiosity wasn’t a compelling enough reason and if she really were to say that she wanted to take a look at an enemy she made in her past life, Zi Su would definitely think that Bai Luochu had cultivated herself into a retard.

After all, reincarnation was a foreign concept and no one would believe her.

Maybe it was because Bai Luochu had been behaving herself for this period of time. Zi Su simply took her word for it and she even praised Bai Luochu. “Young Lady is truly meticulous. Our First Prince’s residence is a huge target for people with malicious intent. If someone truly had intentions to harm the Young Lady, things would really become troublesome. Young Lady’s plan is rather good in this case...”

Zi Su kept the list after singing her praises. She then bid farewell to Bai Luochu and quickly went out to prepare the items requested by the Young Lady.

When Bai Luochu saw how happily Zi Su left, she couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty. Bai Luochu felt that she had let down the little lady’s trust. At the same time, she had secretly decided that if her infiltration into the palace wasn’t successful, she would bear all the responsibility in order to protect Zi Su.

There was truly no other way and Bai Luochu racked her brains for a long time before coming up with this method. Her strength was far inferior compared to her past self. She might be able to rely on her unpredictable movement skills like before but without sufficient strength, she couldn’t even utilize 30% of it. In the situation where she was fully prepared, she would be able to travel in the streets and alleys, avoiding detection by anyone.

Of course, the ‘people’ Bai Luochu was talking about were those who were of similar cultivation level to herself. Either that or they were only slightly stronger but possessed weak spiritual energy. If Bai Luochu were to really meet a true expert, her current movement skills wouldn’t be of use at all.

In her heart, the desire to find out more about her enemy in her previous life burned bright. However, she had no other choice as she was merely a servant who had a past as a slave. If the First Prince was truly in the residence, it was possible for her to follow him into the palace as a personal servant...

However, until now, she had yet to even see the First Prince’s shadow and it was truly wistful thinking if she wanted the First Prince to bring her into the palace. She didn’t possess any foundation in the capital city and she couldn’t possibly go around begging for people to bring her into the palace. In the end, she had no other choice but to choose such a difficult method.

Bai Luochu had gotten Zi Su to quickly prepare those items as they were essential for her to arrange a route of escape for herself. If she was really discovered, she would use the silver needles coated with a strong and modified paralysis poison to stop her pursuer.

Zi Su knew that these items were urgently required by Bai Luochu and took less than one hour to gather all of the items on the list. Bai Luochu didn’t want Zi Su to see how she was going to temper the poison and forced Zi Su to return to her quarters.

With the tools from the First Prince’s residence, the conditions she had were far superior to when she was in the prison cell of the Bestial Battle Arena. Bai Luochu’s poison tempering speed was much faster than before. After she finished tempering the poison, Bai Luochu cultivated without a care in the world as she wanted to increase her strength as fast as she could before the birthday banquet.

Three days passed in a flash. On the day of the banquet, when the sun had fully set and it was completely dark, the sky seemed to be lightly enveloped by a soft gauze. Bai Luochu came up with a reason to leave the residence as she said that she wanted to ‘take a stroll’ through the street bazaar. She wanted to experience the bazaar at its liveliest as it was the ‘Empress Dowager’s birthday’. After sending Zi Su away, she carefully attached the dagger and silver needles on her waist belt.

After making sure that she had brought all the things she required, she took her waist token and walked out of the First Prince’s residence. In order to avoid suspicion from the guards, she intentionally took a detour towards the bazaar. She followed the direction where most of the carriages were heading and departed for the imperial palace.

In Bai Luochu’s previous life, there was only cultivation and medicine refining on her mind. The only thing she did that made her popular was her love affair with Lu Wenshu. When she finally died a tragic death, her inheritance was taken away and her disciples disbanded in misery.

In her previous life, she was an evil dao witch and since those haughty imperial members would look at these so-called evil dao members with disdain, they would never invite her to be a guest in their imperial palace. Therefore, Bai Luochu wasn’t just unfamiliar with the imperial palace of the Cloud Water Nation... She didn’t even know where the imperial palace was located.

Fortunately, the city was filled with so many aristocratic families that if a bird pooped in the sky, the dropping was probably going to land on a descendant of a random aristocratic family. Today was the Empress Dowager’s birthday banquet and all the influential families in the city were going to attend it. Bai Luochu simply had to follow the direction where these luxurious carriages were heading and she would definitely arrive at the imperial palace.

The cheerful atmosphere of the Empress Dowager’s birthday banquet had extended all the way to the borders of the Cloud Water Nation’s capital city. Even the bazaar was much livelier than usual.

People crowded around all the booths and it was truly a flourishing and bustling scene.