(No System, not a power fantasy, multiple POVs for main and supporting characters. The male lead's POV follows a BL storyline, while the female lead's follows a BG storyline. They have no romantic connection to each other and each has their own story, but they share the same goal.)
[Political intrigue + palace intrigue] [Multiple POVs (Southern and Northern Dynasties)] [The ultimate schemer heroine] [The male lead turns evil to the core] [BE aesthetic, with a suffocatingly tragic price]
The Five Barbarians ravage China, and the realm is divided.
In the Southern Dynasty, the emperor is a puppet, the empress dowager rules from behind the curtain, factions fill the court, and aristocratic clans and powerful landowners tear into one another.
In the Northern Dynasty, four states are allies in name only, secretly slaughtering one another. Every emperor dances on the edge of a blade.
She is Gu Xi, a hapless wage slave tricked into signing a contract, then cast into this age of chaos as a pawn by a goddess. She was supposed to enter the palace selection, but Bei Ting Liang Ye kept her back.
"You. I've waited ten years for you."
So she took another path: throwing the Northern Dynasty into chaos, manipulating the Southern Dynasty, and making everyone follow her script to their doom.
He is Xuanyuan Tuo, a ruthless magnate who rose from humble beginnings and a notorious victim.
As a young man, he was tricked by the goddess into signing a contract and made the wish to "unify the North and South," never knowing the price of that wish:
His soul, family, beloved, and descendants would all be taken as payment.
Here,
family is a blade, love is poison, and power is blood.
Every alliance is a trap, every smile a scheme.
You think you control your fate, but you've long been a discarded pawn on the board.
Only when the realm is unified do you learn that the so-called "emperor for the ages" is merely the beginning of another cycle of reincarnation.
