Disguised as a Man: The Puppet Emperor Wins the Regent King

I was the puppet he had personally placed on the throne.

The entire court was waiting to see when the useless ruler that was me would be deposed.

But no one knew that beneath the dragon robes was a woman's body. In court, I was acting within an act.

The day Shen Mo slaughtered the imperial family, I huddled in the Cold Palace, crying and begging him to spare my life. He looked at me with disgust, hauled me onto the throne, and said, “I let you sit on this throne, so you are the ruler. If I don't, you'll be nothing but ash.”

I was violent, lustful, and absurd. My memorials looked like a dog's scratches, and I clung to his sleeve, sobbing with snot and tears streaming down my face.

He looked at me as if I were a pile of mud, so disgusted that he could barely be bothered to glance my way.

But he didn't know that every time he laid a plan, he was paving the way for me.

One court official after another fell, and every vacant post went to my people. When his old injury flared up again, he sought help from the legendary physician “Tingyun”... and Tingyun was me. He investigated cases late into the night, baffled by the smallest clues... and I was the one who had planted every one of them.

He worked in the open. I worked in the shadows.

What drove him to the brink was realizing he had long since fallen in love with “him.”

He knelt before the Buddha for days, torn apart by his own feelings. The mighty regent was kept awake night after night by a “man,” only to discover that she was a woman.

His eyes red, he asked me, “Just how much have you been hiding from me?”

Seated upright on the throne, I met his gaze without flinching. “Shen Mo, you're the one who should kneel.”

From the rebel general who slaughtered the imperial family to a subject who willingly bowed his head. From disgust to desire, from desire to madness.