Do I Really Have to Be Emperor?

*^_^* Yang Xiaobei is transmigrating for the tenth time, this time with the unreliable System Good.

Good news: None!

Bad news: His father doesn’t care for him, his mother doesn’t love him, and he’s a notorious playboy in the capital. His daily skills are spending money and getting into trouble.

Even worse news: This mission is at hellish difficulty, he has to ascend the throne.

Yang Xiaobei: “...Can I just die and go back now?!”

Good calmly reports: [Dear user, HQ says that if you fail the mission, you’ll be erased twice over.]

Before he can even start planning, the scheming Prince Xie Zhiyun drags him back to his manor.

Yang Xiaobei: “?? Let me hit him with a slick move.”

And so, the manor’s atmosphere takes a sudden turn:

“Your Highness, want me to scrub your back?” “Your Highness, I’m cold.” “Your Highness, would I make a good princess?”

Seeing the increasingly dangerous look in the other man’s eyes, Yang Xiaobei decides to fake his death and run away.

But on the way, he’s kidnapped and forced to become a bandit.

He steels himself, seizes a mountain, declares himself emperor, and even writes “Great Yang Dynasty” on a shabby wooden sign and hangs it up.

“That ought to count, right?”

Good: [HQ says being emperor of a bandit stronghold doesn’t count.]

Yang Xiaobei: “...How does that not count?! HQ is so old-fashioned!”

To his surprise, Xie Zhiyun comes to the bandit stronghold in person and offers him an olive branch with a smile. “How about I help you ascend the throne?”

Yang Xiaobei clutches his collar. “We can work together, but keep your hands to yourself.”

Xie Zhiyun chuckles, pins him against the wall, and bends down to kiss him. “So... does this count as using my hands, or my feet?”

Later, the emperor abdicates in Xie Zhiyun’s favor, while Yang Xiaobei gets pinned beneath him on the imperial bed and thoroughly wrecked.

He’s scared out of his mind.

Good is even more frightened than he is: [Xiaobei, um, HQ says “ascend the throne” just means sitting on the imperial throne. The mission is complete. Should we return immediately?]

Yang Xiaobei, dazed from being wrecked, finds a moment to yell, “Good! Ascend the throne? Sitting on the imperial throne?! I didn’t just sit on it, I lay down on it too!”

Good falls silent for a long time, then quietly shuts down. In the end, the System has to bear it all.

[Bonus scene]

Rumors spread through the capital that the emperor isn’t very capable in bed.

When Xie Zhiyun hears this, that night he binds Yang Xiaobei’s wrists with soft silk and takes him again and again on the bed, asking gently, “I hear... the empress still isn’t satisfied?”

Yang Xiaobei, eyes brimming with tears: “I was wrong. It’s a rumor! Just a rumor!”

Reader’s guide:

1. Bottom: Yang Xiaobei, a resilient, clueless, timid, prickly cat type.

Top: Xie Zhiyun, extremely possessive, a tsundere who practices what he preaches, and a little manipulative.

3. Two powerful men who flirt with each other, with intense push and pull.

Theme: Don’t misunderstand