The Man Who Lost His Cover Is Bold and Mighty [Interstellar]

Everyone in the Galactic Empire laughs at Lu Xingpei, calling him useless.

After his mental powers irreversibly deteriorated, he lost his standing overnight, falling from the heights of a once-glamorous social circle.

Fortunately, he still had a face that could captivate anyone.

To maintain his life of being adored by everyone, he turned around and seduced powerful men from all walks of life. He had an ambiguous relationship with the Empire's arrogant, unruly prince, kept the ambitious major at arm's length, and made advances toward a student in the prime of youth...

In short, he would welcome anyone who could be useful to him.

*

Until the trap he had set with his own hands unleashed a storm across the Empire

The arrogant prince went white-haired overnight for his sake, falling from heir apparent to prisoner.

The innocent student threw away his whole life and eloped with him, only to become his most important hostage.

Even the major who had been entangled with him for years, with neither of them able to tell love from hate anymore, was ordered by Lu Xingpei to be executed on the spot over the communications channel, in the calmest of voices.

Watching him give the order so decisively, a bystander curiously asked whether he had ever truly had feelings for any of them.

He gave a particularly cold smile. "You were a fine person. What a shame you turned to banditry."

They had never been on the same path, and they were never meant to work together.

*

After Lu Xingpei's backers all fell from power, a lecher decided to have a taste of him. He used every despicable trick he could think of, then lunged at Lu Xingpei with bloodshot eyes, eager to devour him whole.

But Lu Xingpei merely raised his eyes without a trace of emotion, and the man was already lying in a pool of blood, decapitated.

A gentle breeze stirred. Not a speck of dust touched him, only a wisp of mist dampening his lashes.

Qi Ke was born into the imperial family, extravagant and domineering. He had never failed to get anything he wanted.

Until he spotted Lu Xingpei, who was about to become a groom, at an engagement banquet.

His half-brother's fiance.

So Qi Ke resorted to threats, bribes, and taking him by force.

But when the Qi family fell and his family was destroyed, Lu Xingpei still left without looking back.

Many years later, after enduring countless hardships, he finally rose again. He was now a mighty major of the Empire, with a boundless future ahead of him.

A successful general is built on a mountain of bones.

When he set out to hunt the Federation's most wanted criminal, Guyan, he was prepared for it to be a fight to the death.

But as thick fog rolled in, he heard the voice behind Guyan's mask.

One word, and then silence. It felt like another lifetime, like a hallucination.

Reading guide:

1. A secretly calculating, controlling top x a strong, obsessive rival bottom. Strong x strong, one-on-one, happy ending.

2. The top is an enigma. The bottom was originally an alpha, but his constitution changed because of the top's pheromones. The bottom has stronger villainous traits early on.

3. This is not a multiple-love-interest story. The leads are adults, and have only ever been intimate with each other. The top's morality is quite gray: he will use and manipulate others. Some side characters have feelings for the top, but the leads are devoted only to each other.

4. The top will have a fiancee through a marriage of convenience. There is no love or physical relationship between them. The fiancee has ambitions and her own storyline, and is not a tool character.

Important note: This story is highly melodramatic and includes classic tropes such as faking one's death, amnesia, misunderstandings leading to violence, false and true idealized first loves, and using oneself as a substitute. Both protagonists are adult men nearing thirty. The story focuses on adults repeatedly entangling with each other, falling out, and loving and fighting, before finally reconciling.

Theme: Though the road is long and hard, we will reach our destination if we keep going.