Chapter 88 Guilty Heart
Deep within the vast and luxurious master bedroom of the Iris Heart Palace, within the capital of the Silver Iris Empire, the sun was already setting. Cassius II, freshly waking from a hangover, pushed aside the snow-white arms of his twins, each draped over his shoulders. He squinted his eyes and stumbled out of bed. On his way to the bathroom, he stepped on a streak of petticoats and underwear scattered across the floor.
By the time he had finished peeing comfortably, the royal servants had already respectfully filed in, holding a golden basin inlaid with gems to help him comb his hair, wash his face, change his clothes and shave.
The main course, which I couldn't quite place at the right time, consisted of Slime Golden Wine, herbal tea, rosemary garlic bread, mushroom pâté, smoked veal, marinated roasted chicken, and partridge soup with kale and cream. There was also an exquisite dessert and fruit spread across the entire table. Cassius II wore a silk nightgown embroidered with intricate lace woven from gold and silver threads, revealing his chest and abdomen with impunity. His recent favorite twin dancers had also woken up and sat on either side of him, giggling and vying for cherries, trying to feed him.
"Oh, stop it, my dears. Let's not go to the theater for now." Cassius II laughed and kissed each of the beauties on the delicate face. "Duke Camus's youngest son is hosting a salon party. He's been inviting me several times, saying it's guaranteed to be a surprise. Let's go tonight and enjoy the fun."
"Banquet? Does that mean we're going to have to dance?" one of the twins exclaimed. "Oh my! All my dance dresses are the latest styles from two weeks ago!"
Another person was not to be outdone: "I don't even have matching jewelry. Now I don't know how those noble ladies are laughing at me behind my back——"
The king nonchalantly summoned the eunuchs and, without hesitation, responded to his lover's greedy and clumsy instigation: "What's the big deal? Let's invite the designer, tailor, and shoemaker to make a few sets for our dear Hina."
He looked at the dancer's fair and plump chest with ill intent and smiled ambiguously: "But I have to take it off while dancing anyway, so I don't see any difference."
Seeing one of them giggling shyly and the other pouting at him in grievance, Cassius II tilted his head and coaxed, "As for you, my sweetheart, Sita, go to the treasury and take a look. The royal family has a vast collection of jewels, and there's bound to be something you'll like."
"Your Majesty, this is against the rules—" A young eunuch was suddenly shocked.
You have to know that those priceless jewels have appeared on the noble heads of kings and queens of past dynasties. How can they be worn on the necks of lowly prostitutes now?
Cassius II looked up at him impatiently and said, "Where did this fool come from? Make him disappear from my sight."
Someone immediately covered the eunuch's mouth and dragged him out. The rest of the group kept their mouths shut—they were all close servants to the king, and had seen far too many things they shouldn't have. The king might not kill, but the queen did, and she certainly didn't mind silencing an insignificant little guy.
The nickname "Queen of Beheading" is well-deserved.
Another eunuch stepped forward tremblingly, bowing his head respectfully. "Your Majesty, the Queen sent a message this morning, hoping you would see her once you are sober. She wants to discuss the recent empire's financial expenditures with you."
"Let her wait." The king smacked his lips impatiently, his hand still restlessly groping the dancer's thigh under the table. Soon, the clothes he had just put on were thrown to the floor again. The eunuchs, who had not been ordered to leave, watched in silence until the king had had his fill and left the master bedroom with his two lovers in his arms. Only then did they quietly clean up the mess.
It was supposedly a salon party, but in reality, it ultimately devolved into a riotous orgy of gambling, drinking, and orgy. Cassius II, reeking of alcohol, was helped out of the Duke's Palace. Along the way, he even kicked a maid who didn't give way in time, leaving her to kneel trembling on the ground with blood at the corner of her mouth.
The king's luck at gambling was incredibly bad tonight, so bad that he even lost the necklace and jewels on his companion's dress. Finally, driven to gambling despair, he simply bet the remaining ownership of the Silver Flower Mine amidst the clamor, but still lost miserably. When he regained some composure, the thought of the foreseeable reproach and scolding gave him a sudden headache.
The bad mood reached its peak when he saw a gorgeously decorated carriage appear outside the Duke's Palace.
"I don't want to see anyone now. Get that bitch out!" The king roared incoherently at the eunuch who was about to cry beside him.
"……His Majesty."
A hoarse female voice sounded in his ears. Cassius II slowly turned his head and saw his queen, dressed in neat and solemn men's clothes, jumping out of the carriage and opening the door for him personally. Several silver-helmeted knights were guarding him on both sides.
"--Please allow me to say a few words to you." The woman's beast-like golden eyes were staring at him seriously.
In the end, the king reluctantly agreed to her wishes. He closed his eyes and listened with annoyance as she reported to him about the empire's increasingly serious debt crisis.
"...The Minister of Finance has submitted numerous memorials. If the fiscal deficit incurred recently to strengthen the border defenses of the Northern City and quell the refugee rebellion is not remedied, in three months at most, even the eunuchs' salaries might not be paid. Even the banks are beginning to give the royal family the cold shoulder, offering increasingly absurd loan terms and interest rates. Those greedy merchants have betrayed their monarch. If it weren't for the royal family's ownership of the Silver Flower Mine—"
Inside the stationary carriage, the king rudely interrupted her, "Why are you reporting this to me? Why don't you ask the God of Love for help and simply turn those big businessmen and bankers into your slaves? Wouldn't that solve the problem?"
The silver-helmeted knight guarding the side lowered his head, as if he heard nothing, but his fists in the corner couldn't help but clench slightly.
Esmerel slowly raised his head with an expressionless face: "...Your Majesty, I am not joking with you."
"I'm not kidding you either," the king sneered complacently under the influence of alcohol. "You don't know yet, but I just lost the remaining ownership of the Silver Flower Mine - probably 50% or 70% - to Duke Kamu's son of a bitch! Hehe, that kid is really good at cheating..."
"……His Majesty!"
The queen gritted her teeth, and shock, anger, and disappointment flashed across her golden eyes, but in the end, only exhausted pain remained.
"Go and pray to your God, dear Esmeralda?" Cassius II leaned close to her and squeezed out a few words from between his teeth. His eyes, which were cloudy with alcohol and lust, suddenly flashed with a cold light that was completely inconsistent with his usual foolish image. Then he kicked open the door of the carriage and fell down almost rolling and crawling, completely disfigured.
"Xina! Sita! Where are those two bitches?" The king shouted loudly in the night without any scruples.
…
In the end, the queen took back the ownership of the mine from the Kamu family, which the king had lost in an extremely absurd way. The greedy old fox Duke Kamu stopped while he was ahead, and after swallowing up the profits that were enough to make the royal family feel painful, he hypocritically claimed that it was just a joke of some drunken children.
This accident made the empire's already precarious financial situation even worse. A few days later, the Ministry of Finance's newly revised energy tax law was officially passed. Its far-reaching impact and the incredible and unprecedentedly high tax rates immediately caused complaints from all over the country.
At the same time, almost immediately, a brand new newspaper that no one had ever heard of before suddenly appeared and swept the streets at an incredible speed.
"…Thus, ordinary civilians who had no private property and had never enjoyed any benefits from the small stones called 'jet' by the upper class became the primary responsible persons for this absurd and ridiculous debt crisis. They were inexplicably sentenced to hard labor simply because they had to cook with firewood during the day and light lamps with kerosene at night." The author commented so coldly and fiercely in the most shocking front-page headline.
Never before had the detailed mechanisms of the Empire's shifting of crisis been so clearly and easily explained to the lower classes, nor had the anger and grievances of ordinary people been so vividly expressed. Initially, only a few people paused in curiosity after glimpsing the headlines, but soon the crowds in front of the newsstand grew larger and larger, becoming increasingly crowded, until the lines of people buying newspapers stretched for several blocks.
Even with the generous donations from the Okenseller Society, the initial print run was quite large, but the first issue quickly sold out. Newsstand owners were overjoyed, and some began scavenging through trash cans for used newspapers. Clever newsboys roamed the streets, offering clippings of the front page of the Limin Bao for a copper coin.
"An unprecedented grand and magnificent circus targeting the common people" and "text cast with a bewitching spell" were the sour comments made by peer newspapers. Some newspapers even began to open special pages to attack and abuse several political articles published in the Limin Daily word by word. As a result, the editor-in-chief was beaten with a club by street thugs that night and had a bruised face when he went to work the next day.
The name "Nova" became completely famous, and letters from readers came in like snowflakes, almost flooding the message room of Baita University. There were many letters with crooked letters, which were obviously from beginners or people with low cultural level.
At first, the professor could reply to each letter one by one, but he soon found that it was impossible to complete this task with his own hands. So he simply rearranged the layout of the next issue of the newspaper, opened up a reader area, and prepared to select some readers' letters to post and reply to them.
And it was at this time that his teacher Dels Rabelais came to him - you have to know that from the founding of the "People's Daily" to the publication of the first issue, including the transactions between the society, Nova kept it completely secret from the other party. In order to avoid being exposed, he even went to find Owl and found an excuse like an exchange meeting to make the old man temporarily leave Baita University.
Seeing his mentor's white hair and those sharp eyes that didn't match his age, someone finally realized that he was inexplicably guilty.
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