Desideria couldn't believe what was happening to her.
She was sent to the Cold Palace!
No, wait, rather than that, there was another thing. How did a near forty-year-old Italian woman wake up in the body of a nineteen-year-old Chinese girl?
"Is Niangniang breathing?" A soft, girlish voice choked out tearfully.
"Barely breathing. At this point, Her Majesty won't make it." Another soft, girlish voice answered heartbreakingly.
At first, she wasn't sure what she was hearing. It didn't sound like Italian, and it didn't sound like English. However, the more she listened, the more bewildered she became.
"Boohoo poor Empress. To have suffered so much and now poisoned?" A stifled sob, heavy with the vicissitudes of life, followed. "What can we do? Niangniang hasn't eaten in three days. I'm afraid Her Majesty can't hold on much longer!"
Unfortunately for that poor girl, 'Her Majesty' hadn't been able to hold on long ago and directly kicked the bucket during the night.
Someone answered anxiously, "Yang Zi, quickly send another message to His Majesty and ask for an imperial physician!"
"Jin Xiu jiejie, I couldn't even see a physician in the imperial hospital. We're being intercepted!"
"What? Who dares to intercept Her Majesty's people?!"
"Jin Xiu jiejie, it must be Yue guifei's people. Only Yue guifei's people hold so much sway in the palace!"
A stern voice interjected. "Keep talking if you don't want your life anymore. How dare you gossip about Yue guifei?"
"Li momo, weren't you able to get medicine last time? Go and fetch an imperial physician for Her Majesty!"
"What imperial physician? Her Majesty only has a cold. Are you trying to curse her to death? Step aside!"
Silence. Shuffling. Someone came to the bedside and pulled aside the bed curtain.
Desideria's mouth was drier than cloth and her throat felt like sanding paper. She could even feel her lips shrivelled up like a dehydrated sea sponge. "W-water."
That… was definitely not her voice.
"Water."
That wasn't even her language!
She was shocked at first, but her throat was still raw and painful.
"Your Majesty!" Gentle hands picked up her head and a moment later, a damp towel was pressed to her parched lips with a little water trickling between them. She slurped it down greedily, but it was barely enough to keep her from feeling like she'd guzzled sand in the desert.
"Is Niangniang waking up?"
"The heavens have eyes, the heavens have eyes!"
Enthusiastic fussing ensued, and Desideria was reclined against the head of the bed.
Her surprise was incalculable when she saw two Chinese teenagers and a middle aged woman holding a bowl of what looked like charcoal water, except the bowl was emitting an astringent scent.
"Your Majesty, please drink the medicine." The middle aged woman held out the bowl of what she called medicine and intended to bring it closer.
Desideria's eyes were somewhat blurry and her lids were droopy, but that didn't stop her from seeing how strange this middle-aged woman was.
At first glance, she looked kind and matronly, but further inspection showed that her eyes were steeped in cruelty. As a supervillain, and a criminal to boot, she knew that look very well.
She instinctively did not want to drink whatever was in that bowl. She wouldn't put it past that lady to have slipped poison into it.
However, before she could even open her mouth to refuse, the middle aged woman grabbed her chin in a vice-like grip as if she wanted to shatter her jawbone, and forced the bitter drink down her throat.
The hot liquid splashed onto her tongue, making it sting and go numb from the heat. Some of it that couldn't make it into her mouth dripped down her chin, and the scalding feeling of the medicine going down her throat was like a sharp blade peeling her vocal chords. Her whole body trembled from the pain.
And whatever was in the bowl tasted exactly the way it smelled. Desideria's entire mouth was overwhelmed by a chalky, bitter taste with a hint of liquorice. It made her gag desperately, wanting to spit it out, but the combination of scalding, choking and screaming only made sure the medicine had long been swallowed into her empty stomach.
In her thirty-eight years of life, no one had ever had the guts to treat her that way.
"Your Majesty!" The three maids who had been standing by were horrified. Faces pale with terror, they pounced on the woman in a three-on-one attack, wanting to pull her aside.
"How dare you harm Her Majesty! Unhand the Empress at once!"
"Guards! Guards! Someone is trying to kill the Empress!"
However, despite their ruckus, not only did nobody come to the rescue, it was discovered that the woman, despite her apparent age and aesthetic presentation, was stronger than the three of them combined. With only a shove of her elbow, she sent the three maids sprawling to the ground.
She looked at the maids and sneered. "Empress Niangniang is sick and needs to take her medicine. How dare you interfere with her treatment?"
And with that, an entire bowl of scalding medicine was shoved down her throat. In pain and weak from prolonged fasting, Desideria slumped on the bed and couldn't help but rethink her previous conclusion.
In fact, this kind of treatment was very in line with what hell was supposed to be. Perhaps she had misunderstood earlier and her soul had wandered into the wrong country's hell.
According to her understanding, Catholic hell was hot.
See, the story went that she had been in the middle of her grand evil scheme to trade sixty tons of her newly developed power enhancement serum with her archenemy, whom she had painstakingly called a truce with after twenty years of bloody battles, when that tree-hugging superhero Nympha jumped out of literal nowhere and said, "Put your hands up, we have you surrounded!"
Brilliant, simply brilliant.
Her archenemy swore that Desideria had set a trap for them, and she also decided that they had done the same. Guns were drawn, powers were activated, and, completely ignoring the presence of the police, a rain of bullets ensued. It was a brutal massacre.
At first, she didn't take it seriously because her fire had created a shield around her. Unfortunately, that stupid superhero, Nympha, got in the way and restrained her, and at that moment, a bullet from her archenemy pierced her neck.
Her little followers screamed a very tragic 'Donna!' and everything fell into chaos. It was quite sad.
That's right, Desideria Barese wasn't just a supervillain, she was a mafiosa supervillain. The most notorious thing to come out of Italy after the pope and moscato.
After all, everyone had heard about the infamous Scarlet Fox.
So that was how she died, and when she thought she was opening her eyes in hell, she first thought that it was too cold to be hell, and secondly, it was too quiet.
Where were the souls of the damned? Where was the wailing of the impenitent? Shouldn't there have been little demons with malevolent grins running around whipping everyone?
That was what she thought, at least until she realised that there was a bed under her body and a quilt on top.
Then, she unexpectedly recalled certain scenes of a life that wasn't hers. It was the remaining memories of the body she was now in.
Her name was Lei Junnan, and she had been dragged into the quagmire of political schemes at the tender age of thirteen.
It began with her reputation, which was so stellar and well-known in the capital that one wouldn't doubt someone was deliberately pushing for it.
Her father, Lei Nanfeng, was the son of a sixth ranked magistrate who rebelliously skipped the civil examinations to join the army during the biggest national campaign of the era.
Having originally been groomed for civil service, he had an agile mind, with not only the brawn, but also the brains to be a leader.
In five years, he became a battalion commander, and in ten, he was given the title of third rank general. Lei Junnan was born that year.
On the day she was born, lightning struck a cedar tree near an occupied city and set it ablaze. Not long after, news that the same occupied city had been taken back arrived from the capital, and Lei Nanfeng had something to do with it. Her birth was seen as an auspicious sign, hence her name.
As a reward, the late Emperor granted Lei Nanfeng a mansion, and when Lei Zhuan, his father, was transferred, the whole family moved to the capital.
From the time she was three years old, Lei Junnan had shown an outstanding aptitude for cultivation, two years earlier than what was normal. The Lei family, knowing that the tallest tree attracts wind, kept it a tightly guarded secret.
But despite their best efforts, the news was somehow leaked into the wind anyway, and the entire capital found out that the Lei family's daughter had already formed a spiritual core at the age of three.
While it was kept secret from the outside world, the Lei family still provided the necessary materials for Lei Junnan's cultivation, and she was able to cross the six levels of Spiritual Novice in two years.
The Lei family was alarmed by the speed. For better or worse, nobody could know about this, and they did everything in their power to suppress the news of Lei Junnan's talent, even going so far as tattooing a spiritual seal on her.
The seal worked for a few years, until she was seven.