Ministers Begging Me to Ascend the Throne Chapter 1096 - 130: She Was Already Crazy Before Taking the Divine Pill—Does She Still Need to Take It to Go Mad?

Lately, the officials in the capital have endured harsh times. Just recently, they swallowed the Divine Pill and got hauled off for a "visit" to the Imperial Court of Judicial Review's dungeons, where they faced severe torment. Once they learned the Divine Pill harbored parasitic worms, terror gripped them; they desperately hunted doctors to purge the creatures. Capital physicians failed utterly, but thankfully the Imperial Physician succeeded in banishing the worms, sparing their lives from peril.

Extracting the worms proved an excruciating ordeal, demanding bitter potions, piercing needles, and blood drainage. When the parasites finally vacated their forms, all had shed substantial weight.

At the outset, Divine Pill takers scoffed at worm claims, convinced it was mere court intimidation. Yet, beholding the wriggling beasts emerge from their own flesh left them petrified, nearly collapsing in shock. In the aftermath, revulsion blended with profound relief.

The mere whisper of the Divine Pill now drains color from every face in the capital. This grim lesson vows they'll never again gulp dubious elixirs blindly or swallow hype about Divine Pills.

Nearly all capital folk who ingested the Divine Pill have cleansed the worms from within, save one: Empress Xie.

Empress Xie has kept her Divine Pill indulgence under wraps. When the Emperor pressed her before, she vehemently denied it. Discovering the true worms inside sparked natural dread, yet approaching the Imperial Physician for discreet removal lay beyond reach.

Worm removal demands more than a day or two and inflicts agony on the sufferer. Even a hidden summons to the Imperial Physician by Empress Xie couldn't evade palace eyes. What's more, she harbored little zeal to evict the parasites.

Gazing at her mirror's ever-more-vibrant youthful glow, Empress Xie clings fiercely to her inner worms. Her fears have shifted from the creatures to the looming scarcity of fresh Divine Pills.

Earlier, Empress Xie ordered Xie Shi to snag her multiple bottles of Divine Pill, with the vendor tossing in two free ones. She once popped one daily, but after the Emperor's ban decree, she spaced it to every three days, then five, and lately seven.

Dosing one Divine Pill every seven days delivers diminished potency compared to daily intake. To ration her stock, however, she had no alternative.

Empress Xie dispatched Xie Shi to covertly track the Divine Pill's creators, only to learn of their execution long past. She next commanded a hunt for the recipe, but it too had vanished in destruction. Barren of makers or formula, she set him to scour for Divine Pill sales in distant lands.

Traces led to sales in places like the Western Regions and Annan, yet astonishingly, those realms had banned and eradicated the Divine Pill entirely. Thus, she alone clutches the last Divine Pills on earth.

Her Divine Pill reserves now teeter perilously low. Rationed tightly, they'll vanish all too soon. Visions of depletion plunge her into frenzy, haunted by visions of her aged, ashen return.

Reverting to her old frail shell repulses her, as does the specter of wrinkles ravaging her skin.

Jiang Chuan spotted Empress Xie's frequent scowls of late, her visage clouded in distress and peevishness, prompting a worried query: "Your Majesty, is something troubling you? Are you feeling unwell?"

"How many days' worth of the Divine Pill do I still have?"

"If you reduce it to one pill every ten days, it could last for a month or two." Jiang Chuan grasped the root of Empress Xie's woes. After a brief pause, she ventured carefully, "Your Majesty, considering the worms in the Divine Pill, for the sake of your health, perhaps you should stop taking it." Tales of the expelled worms' grotesque horror had chilled her.

Empress Xie's piercing glare sent Jiang Chuan quaking, eyes dropping hastily as counsel died on her lips.

"I've been taking the Divine Pill for so long and I'm perfectly fine. I haven't gotten sick or gone mad." Far from sicken, her vitality had surged; since starting the Divine Pill, nagging headaches never resurfaced.

"Your Majesty, but there are worms..." Knowledge of such a parasite within would doom her to endless nightmares, sleep shattered by terror. Yet Empress Xie remained unfazed, her youth obsession a terrifying force.

"The Emperor executed those who crafted the Divine Pill, and the recipe was utterly destroyed. This signifies the mother worm commanding the worms within the Divine Pill has perished. Thus, the worms inside me remain uncontrolled—what is there to fear?" Devoid of the mother worm’s dominion, these worms proved no different from lifeless husks. Encased within her, they posed zero threat to her vitality. In fact, absent the mother worm’s directives, the worms in her form sustained her enduring youthfulness.