I transmigrated into the history books as a notorious tyrant, and decided to become a good person.
But I never imagined that...
When I tried to cut taxes, my loyal ministers accused me of “buying popular support.”
When I tried to investigate corruption, my loyal ministers' protégés turned around and framed me.
When I tried to repair the Yellow River, the money for the dikes was diverted to pay the army.
The day the Yellow River burst its banks, I stood in the disaster zone and watched people who had lost everything.
A little girl, seven or eight years old, crouched in front of a ruined temple, holding her even younger brother.
She asked me, “Big Brother Emperor, can you give me back my dad?”
I had no answer.
From that day on, I vowed to find out:
Where had the 280,000 taels set aside for the dikes gone?
Who had killed the witnesses who had supposedly died in “accidents”?
Why did Qian Li, that perpetually smiling “treacherous minister,” have a ledger hidden away from twenty years ago?
Why had Zhou Zhi, the censor who cursed me most fiercely, knelt down and begged me to “get to the bottom of what happened to his nephew”?
Only later did I learn the truth...
The “treacherous minister's” father had died by the Yellow River twenty years earlier, killed by the money stolen from the dike repairs. He had waited two decades for a ruler brave enough to investigate.
The “upright official's” nephew, Zhou Huai, had led 30,000 new recruits to drive back 50,000 Northern Di, and had been hunted eight times. At the eighth, he said, “It's my turn.”
The little girl by the Yellow River, A Mian, later became a water conservancy official. She spent her life repairing the river and adopted dozens of orphans.
The history books say I was a tyrant, that I ruled for thirty-four years with brutal methods and killed countless people.
But the history books don't say...
I rebuilt the Yellow River's dikes.
I saved the soldiers guarding the frontier.
I was the one who crouched down and wiped that little girl's tears.
Whether the dragon throne is cold depends not on the seat, but on the person sitting in it.
"Thank you for giving us such a story. It requires the inspiration of a genius, but also the patience and courage of a craftsman. The characters come to life in your writing, and in reading, we see the reflection of our own souls."
A brilliant debut ~ I really like this book. As soon as I read the title, I knew it meant, "I don't want to be a villain emperor" 😄
The writing style is smooth and delicate, the story is wonderful, the plot is full of ups and downs, the wife, the wife, the wife is so beautiful, I highly recommend it.
The protagonist is not reckless, not a virgin, not a love-minded. He is methodical, tolerant, and well-organized. His rivalry with Qian Li, the minister of household affairs, can be called a textbook-level game between king and minister, making people's palms sweat after watching it.