My eunuch An is a yandere

Bai Ningwei enjoyed the allowance of a concubine, and except for the lack of corresponding ceremonial guards and servants, her life behind closed doors was pretty good.

But it's only good behind closed doors.

The Empress Dowager's birthday is in two days. Thinking that the Emperor is reborn, and that the Empress is trying to win him over but is also wary of him at the same time, he has to take the matter of currying favor with the Empress Dowager seriously.

Speaking of the Empress Dowager, Bai Ningwei sighed again. The Empress Dowager was your Majesty's biological mother, and his original intended daughter-in-law was her niece. Unfortunately, the late Emperor had different ideas and chose the current Empress as his consort.

The relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, which has always been a difficult problem, was a deadlock from the very beginning.

It can be said that no matter who becomes the queen, as long as he or she is not from the empress dowager's family, it is impossible for him or her to be favored by the empress dowager.

The emperor was indeed the empress dowager's son; on this point, the mother and son were remarkably consistent. The emperor disliked any woman chosen by her mother's clan, regardless of her talent or appearance.

The empress dowager was so angry that she quarreled with the emperor many times over this matter. After so many years, the love between mother and son was almost gone.

In the previous life, he had tried to repair the relationship between the Queen Mother and the Emperor, but it didn't work. Instead, it made the Queen Mother hate him even more.

So in this life, Bai Ningwei had no intention of relying on the Queen Mother from the beginning. After all, this old woman was difficult to please.

The Queen Mother had two things in mind: her son's ascension to the throne. If this happened, she would become the most honored woman in the world, and no woman would be able to surpass her.

The other was to preserve the eternal prosperity and wealth of his mother's family. This was a difficult matter for the emperor, as he did not want to be constrained by his so-called maternal family. Besides his grandfather and two elderly uncles, the rest of his maternal family consisted of incompetent, second-generation heirs who were ill-equipped to take on such a responsibility. The emperor declared it impossible to allow such people to serve as officials.

Bai Ningwei couldn't solve the problem that the emperor didn't want to solve, so she had to find another way.

She thought that the empress dowager would not refuse the longevity set. The empress dowager in the previous life died four years after the emperor's death at the age of 62, which shows how well she took care of herself.

So this time she drew a book of the ninth set of radio exercises as a birthday gift.

It doesn’t matter if the Queen Mother doesn’t like her. She is just a little beauty and the Queen Mother won’t bother with her.

If she wins the favor of the Empress Dowager, she will definitely be summoned to the Cining Palace to personally demonstrate and teach.

In fact, the Great Dao Dynasty also had health-preserving exercises such as the Five Animal Frolics and Eight Section Brocade, but these exercises were either too difficult or the movements were not elegant for women in seclusion. Therefore, very few women learned them.

In the eyes of the Empress Dowager, the only thing about radio gymnastics that was not dignified was the jumping exercises; everything else was acceptable.

After all, in her previous life, she would do this radio exercise from time to time. After becoming a concubine, this radio exercise became secretly popular in the harem.

Gualv looked at the birthday gift prepared by his master and asked with some concern.

"Master, will the Queen Mother like it?"

Now the master is the head of the beauties. Although his position is not high, his reputation is not small. If he is provoked by someone with ulterior motives, I am afraid that his beauties will suffer.

"Hard to say."

Bai Ningwei's answer was uncertain. The only thing she could guarantee was that the Queen Mother would be able to see her gift.

Thinking back to my previous life, when I first heard that I was going to attend a birthday party, I was anxious for a long time because I didn’t have any talents.

It was Gualü who reminded her in confusion why she didn't make an embroidery to express her feelings. Only then did she know that the birthday banquets of the three giants in the palace were celebrated by the whole country. On the day of the birthday banquet, not only the concubines, but also the foreign ministers and ladies from outside the palace came to celebrate together.

There was no such thing as a concubine performing at a birthday banquet. After all, the emperor's talents were only for his enjoyment. Showing them in public would be a disgrace to the royal family.

This made Bai Ningwei breathe a sigh of relief. Before she traveled through time, she was just an ordinary student raised by an ordinary family. She couldn't think of anything else to perform besides reciting poetry.

The poems she could recite were not appropriate for occasions like birthday banquets. She couldn't recite "Your Majesty, may you live a long life" while others were saying "May you not see the mirror in the hall, but may you be sad about your white hair."

"Song of Water Melody" is a rare song, and it is only suitable to show off on the Mid-Autumn Festival.

So, in her previous life, she had drawn a simple portrait of the Empress Dowager. Her drawing skills were honed from drawing comics. Besides being able to draw a 30% resemblance to the original, she had no other painting skills. It was only through the perspective and coloring and lighting that were not available in the Great Qin Dynasty that her work stood out, earning the Empress Dowager a compliment: "Not bad."

And then there was nothing more, not even a reward.

However, the large head portrait was finally taken away by the people in the art academy. Within a few years, word spread that a new school of painting had emerged. The people and objects in the paintings were so lifelike that they seemed as if the real objects were right in front of you.

Recovering her thoughts, Bai Ningwei was not sure whether her birthday gift could be favored by the Queen Mother.

But she didn't need to worry too much about it, because the birthday party would be here soon.

Sitting in a corner of the banquet, Bai Ningwei ate the dishes served to her, and looked through the tables and chairs in the front row at the newly rehearsed songs and dances of the Jiaofangsi, enjoying the rare liveliness and thinking about the food of the high-ranking concubines.

The palace system was strict; even at a palace banquet, dishes were served strictly according to rank. Looking at the plating of the Emperor and Empress and the four concubines, Bai Ningwei sighed. The treatment of the imperial concubines was still somewhat inferior; her table didn't have eight plates and twelve bowls. Not to mention the disparity in variety and quality.

The birthday banquet ended with the gift-presenting session. The gifts from the concubines were handed in early and piled together. The empress dowager would pick out a few that she was interested in and just glance at them.

Bai Ningwei's album looked particularly small among the other birthday gifts. But precisely because of its small size, it was placed on top of all the gifts.

Birthday banquets were held every year, and the Queen Mother had grown accustomed to them. Looking at the mountain of gifts below the stage, she uninterestedly tapped the album on top.

"That looks like a booklet. Take it and have a look."

A young eunuch came forward and handed over the booklet. Nanny Liang, who was beside the empress dowager, took it and opened it. After flipping through more than ten pages with the empress dowager, the empress dowager expressed her doubts.

"What does it mean?"

Nanny Liang turned to the back of the booklet and saw that it said "a gift from Lady Hui".

"Where is Huimei? What happened to your booklet?"

Hearing the Queen Mother's question, Bai Ningwei stood up from the back row, walked to the bottom of the Danbi, saluted and said.

"Your Majesty, the book I presented needs to be read quickly to appreciate its beauty."

Nanny Liang quickly flipped through it twice and vaguely understood the beauty of what Lady Hui said, but she still didn't fully understand it.

"Why don't you let me demonstrate it?"

Seeing that Nanny Liang was at a loss, Bai Ningwei spoke again.

Only with the Queen Mother's approval did Bai Ningwei walk to Nanny Liang's side, hold the booklet in an arch shape, and move the pages evenly, making the little figures in the booklet move as if alive.

It turned out that Bai Ningwei had actually drawn gymnastics into a hand-drawn animation. No wonder the Queen Mother couldn't understand what was being drawn after reading more than a dozen pages.