The place was so thick with the odors of makeup and perfume as to turn the stomach, and even more full of the thin, forced smiles of the court ladies in their beautiful dresses. Else, she would never in her life have wished to have anything to do with the hougong, the “rear palace”: the residence of the Imperial women. To Maomao, it was a moot question, for now she found herself caught up in their schemes, regardless of the reason. Sometimes the young ladies were offered in lieu of someone’s own daughter. What did the kidnappers do with the nubile young women they captured? Sometimes they sold the girls to the eunuchs, putting the proceeds toward a night of drinking for themselves. But Maomao, who had been making her way just fine as an apothecary, thank you very much, saw it solely as so much trouble. There were worse ways to earn a living-if one went to the royal city of one’s own accord. Now, it wasn’t that she wouldn’t be paid, and with a couple years’ work, there was that glimmer of hope that she might even be able to come back to her hometown. They were after women for the royal palace, and in a word, they offered the world’s most forceful and unpleasant marriage proposal. It seemed just the other day she had gone into the woods to gather herbs, and there had met three kidnappers let us call them Villagers One, Two, and Three. She lived in a world that was at once a place of unparalleled, sparkling beauty and a noxious, foul, suffocating cage. Maomao looked up at the overcast sky and sighed.

What I wouldn’t give for some good street-stall meat skewers. Stay up to date On Light Novels by Downloading our mobile AppĬhapter 10: The Unsettling Matter of the Spirit (Part One)Ĭhapter 11: The Unsettling Matter of the Spirit (Part Two)Ĭhapter 18: The Garden Party (Part Three)

The apothecary diaries volume 3