The Abandoned Consort of the Inner Palace

A pampered beauty who can't endure the slightest hardship, gong x various shou

On his first entry into the palace, Shi Zhelü gazed back at the palace gates slowly closing behind him, unaware that he would leave a breathtakingly vivid mark in the annals of this turbulent dynasty.

As a Kunze selected for the imperial harem, Shi Zhelü was extraordinarily fortunate. The moment he entered the palace, he won favor and became the most beautiful person in the six palaces. He rose swiftly, usurped the throne, outlived his husband, and helped his young son become a puppet emperor.

Shi Zhelü got his wish and became the empress dowager, a figure above all others, ruling from behind the curtain and overseeing all affairs of state.

He thought he could now enjoy a lifetime of peace and security. But the emotional entanglements and troubles he had sown back then came back to haunt him one after another.

While the late emperor was alive, Shi Zhelü planned ahead, using ruthless and decisive methods to clear obstacles from his own son's path to the throne. First, he plotted to ensure that the fourteenth prince, the late emperor's full brother, would never return from the battlefield where he was leading the troops in person. Then he used his own body as bait to ensnare the crown prince and incited the late emperor to depose him. In those years, Shi Zhelü abused the late emperor's favoritism and blind trust to do as he pleased, using all sorts of excuses to punish the crown prince's faction. He managed to offend every minister and general he could, and even those he couldn't afford to offend.

People are never far from misfortune. After the late emperor died, Shi Zhelü was riding high, but he had barely enjoyed his glorious position as empress dowager for two days when the fourteenth prince, long missing from public view, crawled out of a mountain of corpses and returned to the palace, consumed by hatred. The deposed crown prince, already exiled to the borderlands, also appeared like a ghost, holding a secret imperial edict from the late emperor that could have the empress dowager put to death.

With nowhere left to turn, Shi Zhelü faced a violent prince ready to rebel and seize the throne on one side, and a deranged prince who held his life in his hands on the other. His crimes were too numerous to count, and knowing he could not escape his fate, he simply wrote a letter, tore off a length of white silk, and tried to hang himself, hoping to save his son's life.

Halfway through his hanging, several hands forcibly pulled Shi Zhelü down. He fell dazedly into a cold, hard chest, while a man's low, trembling voice sounded by his ear.

"You mustn't die..."

Shi Zhelü: "..."

Thinking the man had saved him only to make his revenge more satisfying, Shi Zhelü sat in his bedchamber, bored, waiting. He waited and waited, but the man never came to settle the score. Just as he began to let his guard down, in the middle of the night, a thief climbed into his phoenix bed. That night, the dew was thick and the flowers heavy; they turned the clouds and rain together.

The next morning, Shi Zhelü stared face-to-face with his formidable enemy, who should have been locked in a fierce political struggle with him at court.

Shi Zhelü was too weak to move and lay limply in the man's arms. His snow-white face was damp, soft and smooth as jade soaked in water. The man ran a satisfied hand over him, kissed the tip of his ear, and murmured, "Zhenzhen, I can protect you and keep you safe for your whole life. You can sit securely on that empress dowager's throne of yours, as long as you are like you were last night..."

"..."

Shi Zhelü had no choice but to accept the man's unreasonable bargain, his heart full of resentment.

Day after day, Shi Zhelü treaded on thin ice, but fortunately, the man kept his word.

Until rumors spread through the palace: the late emperor's precious widow, the young empress dowager who still wore a white flower in her hair, was carrying an illegitimate child...

Reading guide:

1. Shi Zhelü is the gong, and he's a pill gong, mud gong, and sg.

2. Ancient-era ABO.

3. It might be a sweet romance.

4. More to come...

This blurb was recorded on 2026.9.18 and has been backed up.

Theme: The obsessions of the past and present all come to nothing