I Meant to Restore the Emperor to Power, but the Powerful Minister Abducted Me

[Non-forced romance, devoted 1v1 couple + transmigrate into a book + light comedy + subverting tropes + slow burn]

She transmigrated into the body of a short-lived maid in a novel, and from the start, the powerful chancellor Cen Xuyan pinched her chin and forced a “poison pill” down her throat.

He said, “You’ll need an antidote every seven days. Go into the palace and give the emperor a son.”

Qin Zhi had no choice but to obediently become a palace maid serving the emperor. She needed to get close to him anyway, but she wasn’t about to have a baby.

Afterward, she sneaked out to find a doctor on the street

“Miss, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

Well, the poison was fake, and her life was her own.

So why hold back?

She could dance through the palace and follow the main plot properly! But she soon realized there was a reason the emperor had become a puppet: he was genuinely awful!

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the emperor offered her a cup of love potion, hoping to force the issue. Cen Xuyan kicked open the bedchamber door and dragged her away in front of the entire palace.

Under the moonlight, he pinned her against the palace wall, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he asked, “If I hadn’t arrived, would you really have given in to him?”

Qin Zhi: Wasn’t this what you wanted?

That same night, the System suddenly blared

[Warning! Cen Xuyan’s influence has exceeded the threshold. Original plan revised: persuade Chancellor Cen to relinquish power and return home safely.]

Qin Zhi was even more baffled.

She had gone to all that trouble to help the emperor seize power, only for the System to tell her to convince his greatest rival to give it up willingly?

Worse still, she seemed to have… grown a little reluctant to part with the man everyone called a “treacherous chancellor.”

Content notes and reading guide:

A slice-of-life narrative; the male lead is not a master planner who has everything figured out.

The romance is not forced T_T

A somewhat slow start, but it gets better.

This is not a political intrigue story; it is told mainly from the female lead’s perspective.