The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 1

She must have been much admired for her beauty in those halcyon days before she had arrived at the palace, but when she got here, she discovered she had known as much about the outside world as a frog who had spent its life in a well.

“My sincere apologies,” Maomao said. “I couldn’t think of compensation that would be worthy of you, Master Jinshi.”
Would’ve been rude to give a eunuch an invitation to a brothel, right?

The fact that the Emperor had asked this of a young girl like Maomao meant either that he knew perfectly well that the doctor of the rear palace could not be relied upon, or that he didn’t care if either or both of them died.

Maomao was a relatively objective thinker for a girl of seventeen, but she had a few qualities that continually dogged her. For one, curiosity; and for another, a hunger for knowledge. And then there was her budding sense of justice.

It was always possible he was the current emperor’s guardian, but considering Jinshi looked to be about twenty years old, it was hard to imagine. Maybe he was the son of the Emperor or something, but then why become a eunuch?

A few days hence, Maomao would uncover a mysterious and terrible truth concerning the deaths of several infants in the rear palace. Some said it was a curse laid upon any concubine who dared to produce an hei

What I wouldn’t give for some good street-stall meat skewers.

Jinshi saw one person walking along as if the uproar didn’t concern her. She was a petite girl with freckles peppering her nose and cheeks. There was nothing else distinctive about her, except that she paid no heed at all to Jinshi as she walked along muttering to herself.

And that could well have been the end of it.

“There are hundreds, even thousands of kinds of flowers in the world, but who would dare say whether the peony or the iris is the more beautiful?”

so terrifying as a woman’s smile