The Mad Tyrant Would Trade His Empire to Make Me Look Back

[Possessive pursuit + forced love + unrequited love + a legendary groveling chase + bad ending + physical and emotional torment + alternate setting + angst + corruption + revenge]

[The unyielding princess of a fallen kingdom + the new king, cruel and unrestrained]

When they first met, she was an unloved princess confined to the cold palace, and he was a Liang spy being hunted.

She handed him half a pastry. “When people are hungry, they have to eat.”

She casually said he was like a wolf, and he never forgot it.

When they met again, she was a prisoner of a conquered kingdom, and he was the exalted heir of Liang.

As someone gripped her chin to inspect her teeth, he watched from a raised platform.

He spared her and her younger sister, and she told him he was “like a king.”

The third time they met, she was a dead woman on the list of those to be buried with the deceased, and he was the newly enthroned king.

He should have hated her: hated her country, hated that her heart belonged to someone else, hated that she was entangled in his father’s death.

But even as his hatred reached its peak, he tormented her mercilessly while being unable to bear letting her die.

He tore her clothes and dragged her from before the coffin into the bedchamber.

“I’ll spare your life. In return, you’ll serve me.”

The fall of her kingdom, the humiliation, her younger sister being buried alive, her former love standing right before her yet too afraid to recognize her, her fingers beaten bloody with thorny rods, three days without food as she fought for her life against hungry wolves... She recorded every wrong, one by one.

The world called her a calamity who brought ruin to Xianyu, but no one knew she had quietly stirred up the former court and the imperial harem, waiting for a revenge from which there could be no return.

Later, after her revenge succeeded, he knelt in a pool of blood, covered in it from head to toe. He reached for her hand with all his strength and cried out hoarsely, “Take Liang’s throne for yourself. I’ll give you my life. Just love me once, will you?”

She lowered her eyes and smiled. “Xiao Jinran, who do you think you are to ask me to turn back?”