Dream of the Red Chamber: Reborn as a Concubine’s Son, on the Road to the Imperial Exams

(Not a wish-fulfillment story. Military achievements, no golden finger, no System, plenty of garden drama and political scheming. The male lead is no womanizer, and there are few love interests. Avoid if that's not your thing.)

High walls and deep courtyards, thatched huts in the wilds.

The mortal world looms overhead, and all things suffer.

In the distance, he saw a couplet outside the railing. It read: “At night, sorrow comes upon the snow; in grief, spring brings pain. Frost-white hair and snow-white brows, at last the heart's resentment is laid to rest.”

Once again, an ordinary construction worker crossed the road, only to be promptly and considerately sent to another world by a brand-new, bright-red semi-truck. There was no time to mourn. Carrying a heart full of bitter resentment and sorrow, he awoke reborn in the Dream of the Red Chamber, bewildered.

But when Bu Qing opened his eyes, he stared in stunned disbelief. Before he could even be glad to be alive, or make sense of what was happening, he found himself saddled with a murder charge the very next moment after being reborn. The body lay on the ground, and the surrounding townspeople had become witnesses and evidence.

He wasn't even given a chance to explain. One man grabbed him by the collar, cursing him and slapping him hard across the face, while another clutched a club, eyes flashing with menace, and strode toward him furiously.

Bu Qing trembled, fear filling his eyes and heart. His mind suddenly went blank, and he couldn't figure out how to explain himself…

“I'll fight with everything I've got to stay alive,” Bu Qing thought. At last, an idea surged into his mind…

The road to the imperial examinations seemed endless.

And beneath the mire lay even more heartbreak.