Gu, My Lord

“Love is a Gu, a poison you cling to even as it strips your skin and tears out your tendons.”

Shen Lingyuan (sickly villain gong) x Yan Lingyun (Northern Frontier war god shou)

Gong's perspective / evenly matched rivals / yandere imprisonment / fictional ancient setting / unconventional gong protagonist

Shen Lingyuan, Prince Who Guards the North of Southern Xinjiang, is a peerlessly beautiful man, frail and sickly in the eyes of the world, as well as a shadowy power broker who wields Gu poison and plots to overturn the imperial court. Born with evil in his heart, he murdered his mother and slaughtered his clan as if it were a game. Yet a game of political intrigue left him obsessed at first sight with Yan Lingyun, the war god of the Northern Frontier.

To cage this bright moon, Shen Lingyuan approached Yan Lingyun as his “rescuer” and secretly planted a heart-devouring Gu. He chuckled as he coughed up blood. “Hate me? But your life and your soul... can belong only to me, in every life.” By day, he gently fed Yan Lingyun his medicine. By night, he slipped into a secret chamber and murmured deliriously to portraits of him. To cut off every escape, he even arranged the slaughter of the entire Yan family, then sent their heads in a box to Yan Lingyun's bedside. “Look. This is what happens to anyone who wrongs you.”

Yan Lingyun once commanded the Northern Snow Army, a man of unyielding resolve. But the blood feud against his family turned him into a caged beast. He pretended to submit, biding his time to strike back. Yet when Shen Lingyuan cut open his own chest and drew blood to heal him, Yan Lingyun glimpsed the wounds beneath his mad facade. When the Gu poison flared, Shen Lingyuan fell to his knees and begged, “Don't leave me... please...” Yan Lingyun looked down at him coldly. “Shen Lingyuan, you're the one trapped by the Gu.”

Political intrigue and obsessive passion intertwine as Shen Lingyuan uses the world as bait, forcing Yan Lingyun to choose between the people and his personal vendetta. On the night of the palace coup, Shen Lingyuan meets the sword head-on and bites Yan Lingyun's fingertip to forge a Life-Sharing Gu. He laughs softly between ragged breaths. “From this day on, your life... will share my years, my joy, and my suffering.”