Fan Zhaoning became empress dowager at twenty.
The emperor was thirty, and every day he hoped she would go join the late emperor.
All she wanted was to eat well and sleep well, but the System told her to replace the emperor and generously offered her an aide. No official title, no portrait: she had to choose based on his name alone.
Fan Zhaoning chose Pei Shouzhuo.
Shouzhuo sounded like the name of a seasoned old man. Ideally, he’d be a white-bearded chancellor who could prop up her tottering old age.
The portrait opened to reveal a man in crimson robes and a jade belt, his features cold and sharp.
Twenty-seven years old, and the director of the Directorate of Ceremonial.
The System burst out laughing.
Pei Shouzhuo discovered that he had developed a strange affliction.
When the empress dowager called, he had to come. When she told him to sit, he had to sit. Yet this empress dowager knew nothing at all. She dared to challenge the accounts right in front of the emperor, and even dared to shut the doors and ask him, “Can we replace the emperor?”
He drew his sword to make her understand the weight of those words.
She opened a blind box.
When he opened his eyes again, he was sitting by the phoenix bed, his long hair loose over his shoulders. The palace attendants were asking him to try on tomorrow’s hairpin and crown.
And the woman who had taken over his body had already made it to the palace gate.
Theme: Even in the depths of hardship, remain kindhearted. Protect others with courage and a sense of duty, and fight for freedom.
