Fuyao's Farewell: Master, I Don't Want to Be Empress Anymore

Ji Fuyao ascended the throne at eighteen. In the eyes of the world, she is the iron-willed, unyielding Empress Fuyao. She can draw her sword to quell rebellion and take up her brush to win over upright ministers, yet when she coughs up blood while working through memorials late at night, she turns red-eyed before the old sword her mother left behind. The imperial clan pressures her to marry for peace, and her ministers urge her to name an heir to secure the realm. But has anyone ever asked her, “What does Ji Fuyao want?”

Clutching a clue her mother left behind, “Seek a master at Qingxuan Peak,” she disguises herself and escapes the palace. At the mist-shrouded summit, she meets a reclusive man in green robes, feeding a fox with a lame leg. He tells her, “If you become my disciple, forget that you’re an empress.” Yet when she falls into a muddy pit while learning to fly a sword, he hands her a warm cloth. When she dreams of her mother’s brutal death, he quietly lights an eternal lamp outside the bamboo hut. And when she is falsely branded a “harbinger of disaster” and marked for sacrifice, he breaks his seal to protect her, at the cost of black markings spreading across his chest.

She once believed the realm was a shackle, but by his side she learns that true freedom is not about running away. It means daring to show weakness, daring to depend on others, and daring to find balance between power and the self. When a rift in the heavenly order pushes her toward a fate of “sacrifice,” Shen Qingxuan takes her hand and says, “I’ll stand with you to protect the realm you cherish, and I’ll help you tear down the cage you long to escape.”

This is the story of an empress laying down her armor to find herself, and of a seemingly cold but warmhearted master’s secret protection. From daily life as master and disciple at Qingxuan Peak to joining forces to solve crises at court, they prove through their actions that good love is never “giving something up for you.” It’s “You want to fly, so I’ll hold an umbrella over you and stay by your side as we take in the sights of this world and the endless stars.”