The gentle, tearful top scholar VS the wickedly charming, lovesick, neurotic emperor
Shen Shiyue was willing to sit the imperial exams and enter government service as a spy for the Prince of Shuofang, all to repay a debt of gratitude and avenge his family. He went undercover at the emperor's side.
He had calculated every step, including how to make the emperor fall in love with him.
The one thing he hadn't calculated was that he would be the first to fall. After Shen Shiyue spent one reckless night with Xiao Qixing, the grim-faced prince exploded with rage. “You were supposed to go undercover! How did you end up in his bed?”
The day his lies were exposed, the lovesick emperor heard with his own ears how his beloved had been serving someone else. Xiao Qixing didn't cry. He simply left him with the words, “I'm done playing,” then leaped from a cliff thousands of feet high.
He left the emperor alone through five cold years, through eighteen hundred days and nights. The emperor searched for him like a madman. When he finally found him, the man was dressed in a bright red wedding robe, about to marry someone else and become their empress consort.
He threw tantrums and begged, humbling himself to the utmost. “I don't need a title. I only want to stay by Your Majesty's side, even if it means being your lover...”
But the emperor wouldn't even take him as a lover. At last, Shen Shiyue panicked. The once aloof top scholar knelt, shattering his pride, and begged him to come back.
“If I can't be your lover, then I'll be your dog. I'll be anything. Just don't leave me...”
