The life swap begins with Consort Hua becoming Lady Qin.

On the day the Emperor and Empress departed, Princess Ningshou cried her eyes out.

She always loved to cling to An Lingrong, and now that they were really going out, she clung tightly to An Lingrong's sleeve, sobbing and saying that she insisted on taking her along.

An Lingrong felt both sorry for her and wanted to laugh. She squatted down to wipe away her tears, but her attempts to comfort her were ineffective.

Finally, it was the Empress who spoke.

"Yesterday you were complaining that we only took you out, leaving your brother alone in the capital, which you called favoritism. Now you want to take his most trusted servant with you too. Who's really not thinking about your brother?"

Ning Shou was taken aback.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, and the tip of her nose was also red. She looked back at Hongwei, who was standing quietly to the side, and then at An Lingrong. Finally, she sniffed and slowly let go of her hand.

But she couldn't bear to part with him. After letting go, she looked at An Lingrong very seriously, as if she were entrusting her with something extremely important: "Lingrong, you stay here with your brother and take good care of him."

She paused, then, as if remembering something, her little face turned serious: "Take out all the pastries I told you to hide and give them to him. When I come back, I'll definitely bring you both gifts."

An Lingrong's eyes softened at her words, and she simply smiled and replied, "Okay."

Ning Shou finally got into the carriage, albeit reluctantly.

From then on, the vast Forbidden City suddenly fell silent.

There are not many proper masters in the palace these days, only five in total: the Empress Dowager, the Emperor and Empress, the First Prince, and Princess Ningshou.

With the Emperor, Empress, Empress Dowager, and Princess all having gone to Jiangnan, and the First Prince spending most of his days with Prince Zhi and Prince Li, learning to manage affairs and listen to government affairs, the harem has become almost empty.

An Lingrong also had a lot more free time.

She continued to blend perfumes and do needlework as usual. When she had free time, she would read books with Shen Meizhuang. Occasionally, the two of them would go to the Imperial Garden to enjoy the spring scenery and pick flowers to make perfumes.

The spring breeze is gentle, and the days seem to have suddenly slowed down, no longer as rushed and hurried as before.

Seeing that she couldn't get anything out of her, Lingdang gradually gave up on trying to get close to her and instead tried to transfer to serve the eldest prince.

The subtle, unintentional sense of being spied on by those around her also faded considerably.

An Lingrong secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

But they didn't really relax either.

Life goes on as usual, and things are still being done.

No one else knew that, because of Shen Meizhuang's relationship with Wen Shichu, the books she kept flipping through were sometimes the Book of Poetry, sometimes the Great Learning, sometimes the Incense Classic, and sometimes... they would become ancient medical books such as the Complete Herbal Medicine.

There were even yellowed ancient medical books that Wei Lin had dug out from his home.

Three months after the Emperor and Empress went to the south of the Yangtze River, another incident, neither major nor minor, occurred in the palace.

Because Lingdang accidentally spilled a cup of boiling tea all over the Thirteenth Prince while serving in the Imperial Study, she was severely reprimanded on the spot and demoted back to a lowly palace maid.

Everyone else took it as a joke.

An Lingrong listened, but only smiled faintly, instructing that people should not be bullied too much, and that some camaraderie from their past as colleagues should be remembered, before turning her back on the matter.

The emperor does not bear the painstaking people.

After nearly six months of quiet effort, she finally found the answer—

Blood-dried grass.

It looks very similar to the Lingxu Grass, especially its smell, which is almost identical.

But the effect is quite the opposite.

True Lingxu grass is an excellent neutralizing medicine, which can help other medicines exert their effects more slowly and gently.

Blood-dried grass, on the other hand, has the greatest effect of rendering other medicines ineffective.

Especially when taken together with tonifying medicines.

The amount doesn't need to be large, just a little bit, but over time, it can slowly deplete a person's qi and blood, accumulating toxins.

It is extremely difficult to detect in normal times.

However, once the person who takes it becomes extremely angry, their blood circulation will accelerate, and the toxins that are usually hidden will rush to the whole body along with the blood flow, instantly revealing their deteriorating state.

By this time, the condition is often beyond the reach of medicine and even divine intervention.