EES - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Slick-Shouldered Minister, or rather, the Minister of Rites, submitted a memorial concerning the imperial examinations.

As everyone knows, formal court memorials are certainly not like the straightforward vernacular that can be explained in a few sentences in a game. However, An Lin had already unexpectedly discovered that she seemed to understand their speech without any obstacles; it was as if a translator were installed in her mind, automatically converting their ornate phrasing into plain language she could comprehend.

"Then let Ministers Zhuo, Liang, and Wang take charge of this round of examinations." An Lin swept her gaze across the hall and selected several officials with the highest [Governance] and [Learning] ratings. "Hold the military examinations after the civil ones conclude. The Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of War should prepare the plans and draft the questions in advance."

The imperial examinations happened to be exactly what An Lin cared about most, and she almost instinctively began to think through them using game logic.

After all, judging by the tropes of the Emperor Simulator, the examinations were practically the only method available in the early stages to recruit talent. Those officials on the court who were merely coasting along were waiting for examination graduates to emerge so they could be replaced.

Therefore, An Lin took a special interest in the matter. After delivering those instructions, she not only allocated funds to the Ministry of Rites responsible for the exams, but she also specifically called out the officials with the highest [Military] and [Martial Strength] ratings in advance, assigning them to oversee the examinations as well.

They say the better the officials' ratings, the higher the probability of producing talented graduates... There was no concrete basis for it; it was more of a kind of metaphysical guesswork An Lin had pieced together herself.

"Your servant accepts the decree!" Several officials whose names had been called stepped forward to receive the order.

...Huh? None of them questioned or objected?

No way. I'm handling state affairs using gaming experience, and really, doesn't anyone find anything wrong with it?

From her elevated seat, she carefully observed the expressions of the row of senior ministers in the middle after she laid out the arrangements. She found that far from showing disagreement, they looked slightly surprised yet nodded in approval.

So, it seemed her arrangement wasn't bad after all?

It seemed... being an emperor wasn't that difficult, huh?

The little person inside An Lin's mind stroked its chin, and a strange confidence suddenly surged.

Although she knew that actually, ruling an empire certainly wasn't like playing around with a simulator. The hardest part of being an emperor was undoubtedly discerning and employing people. These aspects were directly reflected in the simulator's numerical values. With this tool, even tying a pig to the throne would perform better than certain treacherous emperors.

This morning court concluded peacefully enough. By the time An Lin walked out of the Hall of State, the sky was just beginning to lighten. At her previous court session, she had been too busy assessing the situation and scrambling to handle state affairs to think about anything else.

It was only after court, when An Lin returned to the emperor's quarters and the attendants set out breakfast, that she realized how hungry she was.

But, it turned out that even an emperor ate porridge with eggs and pastries for breakfast? That actually fit quite well with the current reality of an empty treasury.

Normally, when she went downstairs to buy breakfast at a shop, she could add two tea eggs and a bottle of milk. In ancient times, these conditions would probably count as quite luxurious. Boiling eggs with tea leaves, she remembered, tea was rather precious back then.

By then, An Lin had fully come to terms with her situation.

She had lived alone in modern times and had few close family ties or other attachments, so four hours after transmigrating, she calmly accepted that she had become an emperor in ancient times.

After finishing breakfast, An Lin sidestepped and asked Wang Xiuwen about her schedule as emperor for the rest of the day.

"Your Majesty still plans to bask in the sun in the garden today?" The Chief Steward, a eunuch, looked at An Lin with a subtle expression, then said with some hesitation, "Your Majesty hasn't visited the study for three days. If anything urgent comes in among the memorials from the provinces, it could be delayed. Perhaps you should handle the most pressing memorials before resting?"

An Lin could tell that this was clearly the euphemistic version of, "Is Your Majesty trying to slack off today?"

What was going on? Was her established persona not that of a diligent and benevolent emperor, but rather a slacker emperor who spent his days basking in the sun and trying to avoid work?

However, judging by Wang Xiuwen's tone, his relationship with the emperor must have been quite close; otherwise, he wouldn't have dared to say something like that.

An Lin had felt strange earlier. Of everyone she had met since transmigration, it seemed only Wang Xiuwen was someone who had appeared in the Emperor Simulator game. The other officials should be different from those in the game. Otherwise, if the game had featured a tag like 'Slick-Shouldered', she definitely would have remembered it.

"Then let's go to the study." Despite many thoughts turning over in her mind, An Lin's face remained calm as she nodded in concession.

Once in the study, An Lin finally had some time alone.

Memorials were stacked in piles on the desk, alongside ground cinnabar and brushes. An Lin picked up the top memorial, unfolded it, and placed it before her. Instead of immediately reading what was written, her thoughts drifted slightly as she pondered the underlying principles of that Emperor Simulator.

The reason she was sure it was the Emperor Simulator she played before transmigration was because those numerical values matched the game's exactly, right down to the font turning red for values over 80 and gold for values over 90.

But so far, she could only passively see the numbers floating above others' heads. Aside from that, what else was there?

Since such a thing existed, it couldn't possibly have only one function: viewing numbers.

Although this function was already highly useful, An Lin always felt there should be other features.

The question was how to check for other functions, and how to trigger them.

Drawing inspiration from various films, television shows, and novels about game systems, she tried awakening it in her mind using various keywords like 'System', 'Open', or 'Boot up', but none worked. She then tried calling out quietly in reality, which aside from seeming like adolescent fantasy, produced absolutely no change.

Nothing? Had she really guessed wrong?

An Lin grumpily picked up the teacup beside her and took a sip of water. After numerous failed attempts, she finally gave up probing, sat upright again, and formally directed her gaze to the open memorial spread on the desk.

This memorial was submitted by the prefect of Quzhou. It began with a lengthy account of the 'rainfall Quzhou received in mid-March,' meaning the amount of rain that had fallen there. It then described changes in the prefectural office's staff: the former coroner, an old woman, had fallen on her way home in a downpour a few days earlier and could not get back up, so she resigned. The office now had a vacancy for a coroner, and the prefect had already issued a recruitment notice.

After writing that formal section, the prefect of Quzhou added a few supplementary remarks at the end, stating that the resigned old coroner had a granddaughter who had learned autopsy techniques from her since childhood. Few in all of Quzhou could examine corpses as skillfully as the two of them.

How should she respond to this?

An Lin thought for a moment, picked up a brush, and planned to reply with something roughly meaning, 'We have taken note. If you are certain her autopsy skills are adequate, allow her to take up the post.'

It was a good thing she had chosen calligraphy among all those extracurricular lessons in elementary school and stuck with it; otherwise, her first act after transmigrating would have been to introduce simplified characters.

However, the moment the brush tip touched the memorial, something strange happened before her eyes.

The memorial, covered in writing, suddenly rippled like water, as if ink were spreading across a landscape painting. The characters seemed to come alive, twisting out of shape and rearranging themselves. Within seconds, the page had transformed into the familiar menu of the Emperor and Empress Simulator that appeared after login.

The minimap in the upper left corner displayed a map of the imperial palace, while the minimap in the upper right corner showed a map of the entire realm; both could be clicked open for inspection.

Below them were listed, in order, the [Register of Officials], [Army], [Historical Memorials], [Treasury], [Diplomacy], and so on.

Yet none of these were the most eye-catching. If anything, the most striking feature was the chibi figure standing atop the memorial, dressed in a dragon robe with tied hair. His expression was serious yet somewhat weary. The hem of his dragon robe appeared partially scraped away, looking somewhat tattered, and upon closer inspection, there seemed to be traces of red bloodstains.

There was no such chibi figure in the Emperor Simulator An Lin had played.

Curiously examining the chibi emperor figure, An Lin asked, "Are you the legendary System?"

The chibi figure seemed to pause for a moment. "This body you are using now was given to you by me."

"I am Junming."

"...?" An Lin froze for a moment, then made a tactical step backward... Oh, wait, she couldn't step back while sitting, so she could only lean back tactically. "Wait, this is getting complicated. You're the emperor? What exactly is going on? Can you explain it to me first?"

"Of course. I will tell you everything," the Chibi Emperor said.

"Go ahead," An Lin adopted an attitude of eager listening.

The Chibi Emperor began to speak in a low voice.

The story sounded somewhat complex and even involved concepts like time. It took An Lin quite a while to sort out the sequence of events.

The story of Junming, the chibi emperor, mostly matched what An Lin had learned so far. His father had died, and Junming, the sole prince, had been rushed onto the throne and inherited a kingdom with an empty treasury. His father had been relatively diligent in his youth, but in his later years began neglecting his duties and indulging himself, building palaces on a grand scale, becoming obsessed with alchemy, and sending large sums of money to neighboring states to secure peace.

And what happened after the young emperor ascended?

Although he didn't squander the treasury quite like his father, he had never learned how to rule an empire. After ascending the throne, he hesitated constantly when facing various state affairs. After one mistake in responding to an urgent local memorial made a disaster worse, he grew even more afraid to make decisions on his own. The entire country was barely propped up by a few veteran ministers.

Thus, five years after his enthronement, his kingdom fell.

As his kingdom fell and he was killed, the young emperor bound himself to a system that gave him one chance to start over.

However, a nation's slide toward ruin was inherently a grand trend. The fall of Xuan was not solely due to the young emperor's accession; long before he took the throne, during his father's reign, this trend had already manifested. So this time, upon restarting, he lost his kingdom once again.

On the third attempt, the system tried its best to push the restart timeline slightly earlier. This time, the young emperor returned to age ten, forcing himself to learn everything required of an emperor, striving to take early action to prevent impending natural disasters and human calamities. His two brothers saw his efforts to win popular support as a sign that he was too ambitious and a threat, and killed him.

On the fourth attempt...

In short, when only the final opportunity remained, the young emperor gave up. He realized he simply wasn't cut out to be an emperor. He struck a deal with the system to disguise Xuan's setting as a game and send it at random to another world, using this method, with almost no hope of success, to find someone who might change the kingdom's fate.

And thus, An Lin's transmigration came to be.

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