Wuxia Crossover: I Just Became Top Scholar, and the Empress Wants Me to Satisfy Her

Three years after Zhan Qinglan ascended the throne, the court is on tenterhooks.

Behind the imperial curtain, Empress Dowager Gao watches with her phoenix eyes half-closed, holding all the power of government in her hands. The Tiger of the Mountain controls the army, and the tiger tally never leaves his command tent. In the Shadow Bureau, Shen Yunqian's influence is everywhere; even the wind beneath the palace walls must first pass by his ears. Seated on the dragon throne, she is little more than a hollow figure painted and gilded.

She urgently needs a blade of her own.

So her eye falls on the newly crowned top martial scholar, a man of humble origins, with no sect or faction behind him, who swept the martial examinations with terrifying strength. He is like a piece of unworked black iron: silent, sharp, with no known origins and no ties. The perfect pawn.

At the Golden Hall, she personally places a crimson robe and jade belt in his hands as she appoints him to office. She rewards him with a lavish residence, a mansion that appears out of nowhere in the quietest corner beneath the imperial city. Then she summons him alone to the inner palace. Candlelight flickering, she studies his features from across the imperial desk and places her bets, one word at a time.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.