Half the Empire

For twenty years, he had feigned madness and foolishness, all for the day he could return to the palace and ascend the throne. Heaven rewards the determined: the late emperor passed away, and none of the palace consorts had borne him an heir. The empress who had once heartlessly driven him and his mother from the palace now thought of him, the "bastard" who had been left to wander among the common folk. To hold power by controlling the emperor, the venomous woman summoned him to the palace and resorted to all manner of despicable tricks to test whether he was truly mad or merely pretending. She even claimed she would arrange a marriage for him, then foisted a man on him and forced them to have sex in front of everyone's eyes. To achieve his ambition, he endured humiliation and passed one trial after another, overcoming every obstacle until he finally seized power and won the realm. After ascending the throne, the first thing he did was grant a general amnesty, reduce taxes, cut all expenses for the officials and the imperial harem, and open the granaries to aid disaster victims. The ministers supported these measures, and he won the people's hearts. His second act was to slaughter the former empress dowager's lackeys, as well as the eunuchs who had watched the bedroom spectacle that day, avenging his humiliation.

He thought he could be ruthless and act as if nothing had happened, even forbidding anyone in the palace from mentioning that man again. Yet the scenes of the two of them together, day after day and night after night, kept haunting his dreams. The scholar, rigid in his ways yet kindhearted, who had been innocently dragged into this struggle for the throne, was still waiting foolishly in that cold palace, worried sick for his "foolish prince" and unable to eat. What, then, should he do with him...?