"Your subject, Fu Yingzhi, pays her respects to the Emperor, and wishes Your Majesty ten thousand years of peace and prosperity."
The moment Fu Yingzhi saw that bright yellow figure step into the hall, she immediately gathered her skirts and hurried forward, bowing gracefully at a distance of three paces from the throne. She performed the ritual with deliberate slowness, ensuring the arc of her sleeves and the angle of her waist were perfectly measured—conveying both the reverence of a subject and the decorum of a noblewoman.
Even as she went through the motions of the conventional greeting, her peripheral vision swept across the room. She noticed the Empress, upon seeing the newcomer, curl her lip in a mocking sneer, her fingers clenching into fists beneath her gold-embroidered phoenix robes. Grand Tutor Sun sat in the shadows, his wrinkled face unreadable. And the Emperor...
Chapter 115