The Dowager Duchess was taken aback, she was sure that the young girl would not agree, but to her surprise, she compromised. “Fine, just two.”
“Three…” The Dowager Duchess held up three fingers tentatively.
Lu Liangwei silently marveled at her persistence but refused to give in. “No, just two. If you keep pushing your luck, you won’t be getting even one.”
Defeated, the Dowager Duchess put on a sheepish expression. “Very well, then I’ll have another two.”
The Dowager Duchess’s eyes lit up immediately when Lu Liangwei passed the glutinous rice dumplings to her. Without waiting for Lu Liangwei to help her this time, she peeled off the bamboo leaves in a flash and dug into the glutinous rice dumplings.
Lu Liangwei was shocked. “Please eat slower…”
The Dowager Duchess was finally satisfied after wolfing down the two glutinous rice dumplings.
To prevent her from getting a stomach ache, Lu Liangwei specifically prepared some medicine that aided digestion and passed it to Aunt Lan.
Lu Tingchen had said that he wanted to bring a few glutinous rice dumplings to the palace for the Emperor, so Lu Liangwei had to make some more.
After getting ready, the family set off for the palace in the evening to attend the banquet.
It was the early part of the summer, and the banquet was set up in the waterside pavilion next to the imperial garden.
There were not many guests, but those invited were all important figures in the imperial court.
Despite that, when these prominent people saw that the Dowager Duchess had come, they all got up from their seats to greet her.
The Dowager Duchess did not put on airs or acted excessively friendly, maintaining a perfect balance between the two.
The Emperor had yet to arrive, so everyone was behaving more casually.
For some time, lively chatter filled the waterside pavilion. People gathered in groups of three to five, talking among themselves.
Lu Liangwei was sitting quietly beside the Dowager Duchess, but she could still hear someone talking about the Eastern Palace’s affairs.
Lu Liangwei raised her eyebrows.
She had already heard from Zhu Yu about the Eastern Palace taking in a few more women.
That girl seemed to have something against the Eastern Palace. Every day, she would go out of her way to collect gossip on the Eastern Palace, then pick out all the news tidbits about Lu Yunshuang’s misfortune to tell her.
For example, she would tell Lu Liangwei trivial stuff like Lu Yunshuang being publicly embarrassed by Beauty Chen, a newcomer.
Somehow, Zhu Yu knew just about everything about the goings-on in the Eastern Palace. The source of her information was a mystery.
Although she had already known about Long Chi taking in concubines, she felt strange to hear it again from someone else.
In the original plot, Long Chi’s only woman was Lu Yunshuang, and he had never taken in any concubines. However, the way things were happening now was obviously deviating further and further from the original story.
Long Chi had gotten himself concubines. Several of them at once, in fact.
Why was this happening?
Could it be the butterfly effect?
In the original story, the original Lu Liangwei was just cannon fodder and died as soon as she made her debut.
Now, because of her arrival, many things had changed. Once a butterfly flapped its wings, it was bound to trigger a series of changes.
Moreover, now that Long Yang had been cured of the poison, he would survive the year. In fact, if he nursed his health properly, he could even live a long life. Long Chi’s position as the Heir Apparent would no longer be the same, and there was no telling now if he would ever succeed to the throne…
Lu Liangwei was lost in her thoughts when she suddenly heard a mocking voice. “No matter how good you pretend to be, you still can’t change your vile nature. Do you think nobody here knows that?”
Lu Liangwei raised her head, meeting the blatant look of contempt on a girl’s face.
She paused for a while. Was this not Ji Lingxiu whom she had met once outside the palace gates last time?
After a momentary pause, she said, “It’s not shameful to know how to hide your shortcomings. On the contrary, you’ll become a laughing stock if you expose them willingly. Miss Ji, don’t you agree?”