1.
Chu Yucheng, founding ruler of the Great Yu Dynasty, transmigrated into an ancient age of chaos from the start, restored the realm, and established a new dynasty. Later generations honored him as Emperor Shengde.
Xiao Chiyuan, founding ruler of the Great Chu Dynasty, admired no one more than Emperor Shengde, who had lived centuries earlier. Yet he personally destroyed the dynasty Shengde had founded.
The two emperors, separated by centuries, should never have had any connection. But Xiao Chiyuan went mad before his death and insisted on having his mausoleum built beside Chu Yucheng's imperial tomb.
He claimed it would be nice to be neighbors after death, and perhaps he might even meet the legendary Emperor Shengde in the afterlife.
It was meant as a joke. But when he closed his eyes and opened them again, he really did see Chu Yucheng: a floating ghost.
The two dead emperors stared at each other, forced to become neighbors just like that.
2.
Chu Yucheng had been rather troubled lately. A new neighbor had moved in next door, someone who had destroyed his country and ended his dynasty. By rights, they should be enemies, but the man kept pestering him every day.
On their third day as neighbors, Xiao Chiyuan invited him to view the burial goods in the imperial mausoleum. They wandered into a tomb chamber and found a pile of adult toys.
After a month as neighbors, Xiao Chiyuan invited him to visit the living world, only for them to be forced to listen to three days and three nights of romance stories pairing the two of them together.
After a year as neighbors, Xiao Chiyuan forcibly squeezed into Chu Yucheng's coffin, saying it was too cold outside and warm in there, so they should huddle together.
On an unknown day in their neighborly life, Chu Yucheng accidentally opened Xiao Chiyuan's coffin and found a portrait inside.
It was unmistakably a portrait of himself, painted a hundred years earlier.
3.
As a youth, Xiao Chiyuan had once received guidance in a dream from Emperor Shengde. The other man taught him military strategy, how to govern a country, and the arts of an emperor.
He also taught him, step by step, how to destroy his country and end his dynasty, and to ascend to the highest throne, before then leaving without hesitation. Xiao Chiyuan searched everywhere, from the heavens to the underworld, but could not find him. Left alone, he kept watch over his realm in vain.
Xiao Chiyuan swore that if he ever saw him again in this life, he would make his own body a shackle and his blood a cage, imprisoning Chu Yucheng by his side so he could never leave again.
But a hundred years later, on the day they met again beneath the earth, he looked at Chu Yucheng's familiar face and simply stood there, smiling silently for a long time.
A thousand palace lanterns, ten thousand towers, black hair turned white, all waiting for your return.
Theme: Through hardship and adversity, one is forged into greatness.
