Chronicles of Courtly Survival

[Both volumes of the print edition are now available. The published title is Palace Survival Chronicles!] After Xia Qing died, he was forcibly made to transmigrate into a book and became a ghost haunting a tyrant. The System told him that if he possessed the tyrant's body and completed the plot, he could come back to life. Xia Qing looked at the moody, brutal new emperor of Chu and rolled his eyes. “Come back to life, my ass. Don't you know I died poor in my last life? Get lost. Stop keeping me from reincarnating.” The System shrank back, then steeled itself. “...Host, how about I tell you the plot first? Maybe you'll change your mind.” Xia Qing reached out to tug at it. “I don't want to hear it. Shut up and send me back.” But the System didn't shut up. Right in front of him, it rattled off a melodramatic story about a universally adored protagonist. In the book, the tyrant spends the first part of the story constantly courting death, then becomes a devoted, lovesick dog in the latter half, only to have his love go unreturned and suffer body and soul at the hands of the protagonist on the receiving end until he dies. The System asked cautiously, “Don't you want to know how it ends?” What kind of nonsense was that? Xia Qing covered its mouth. “No!” “But I do.” A soft laugh came from across the desk. Xia Qing and the System looked up at the same time. The beautiful tyrant across from them set down his book and propped his chin on his hand, looking over with an innocent smile. His black hair shone like satin. “Go on. Let it talk.” Xia Qing: “...” * For certain reasons, the two of them reached an agreement. #WhatIsItLikeToShareOneBodyAndTwoSoulsWithATyrant# #PalaceSurvivalAndCourtingDeathChronicles# * Lou Guanxue was cold by nature, an evil seed from birth. His bone-deep hatred lay buried in his flesh, like a vengeful ghost. When he first met the soul from another world, his heart was cold and he thought only of using him. But by a twist of fate, he let that person see his entire past. He saw Lou Guanxue at his ugliest and most wretched, his most cowardly and humiliated, yet chose to reach into those memories stained with mud and blood and personally save him from the abyss. Lou Guanxue had once thought of killing him. But on the day the Futu Pagoda fell, the merfolk became demons, and night descended upon the mortal world, that man laid down his sword and his soul scattered into nothingness. Lou Guanxue knelt before the formation, eyes bloodshot, his black hair turning white. In a single night, he fell into demonic cultivation. * Afterward, spirit-rose flowers bloomed across the Sea Beyond the Heavens and the lands above and below, all in search of one person. 1. I'm picking up an old abandoned project from 2019. It won't be long. This is writing practice, and I have an outline [important]. 2. My other work, Back to the Immortal Venerable's Youth, is being drafted. Please add it to your favorites! And I really don't want to write the same premise twice!! I only planned to write one story about two souls sharing a body. I hadn't even planned to write this palace story at first. But leaving an abandoned project up looked too bad, so I quietly worked out an outline and turned it into a short story. 3. I'm trying my hand at writing a beautiful, unhinged pursuer w, but don't rush to label either lead early on! I've never written a protagonist who's unforgivably evil, so trust me, okay qwq. I'm actually pretty happy with the pursuer's character! Also, the recipient's soul scattering wasn't caused by the pursuer. It was mainly so he could return to his original body. The blurb feels like it spoils a lot, but whatever, it's just a short story. In reality, the romance isn't that angsty. 4. The theme “See yourself, see the world, see all living beings” comes from the film The Grandmaster. 5. One-on-one romance, very sweet! Here's a fantasy danmei coming soon. Please add Yangyang's story to your favorites! Best Performance [Watching your movies leaves me blind from beginning to end] [In the entertainment industry, I only respect Tong Hua. He can turn a reunion after years apart into a revenge drama with a knife, a campus romance into a war-of-resistance epic, and the village busybody Old Wang into a greasy CEO. I hereby crown him the king of bad movies.] The year Tong Hua turned twenty, he was dubbed a box-office curse, his parents died tragically, the whole internet mocked him, and he was saddled with eighty million in debt. His agent delivered his final ultimatum: “If you don't pass the audition for The Murder House, you'll have to go make adult films to pay off your debts!” With a cold expression that made him look like he was the one owed eighty million, Tong Hua left. He turned and ducked into the basement, opened a collection of films starring the award-winning actor Shen Yan, and studied them expressionlessly as he ate instant noodles. Then he choked on a noodle. The moment he opened and closed his eyes, he found himself in a decrepit apartment block in the 1980s. A Best Performance app had appeared on his phone, and a cold voice spoke beside his ear: [Dear Host, you can leave this building only after delivering the best performance of your role.] “...” Tong Hua stood in a public restroom, staring into the mirror at a middle-aged man with a face covered in stubble, a dull, wooden expression, and a bulky green padded coat. After holding it in for a long while, he cursed, “Fuck.” * On the day The Murder House premiered, the internet exploded. [Holy crap, was Tong Hua possessed or something? Have you seen The Murder House? His portrayal of Wang Jianguo was incredible.] [That feeling of drifting through life with no one to rely on, wanting to be respected but ending up a laughingstock. He got so many details right, his hands, his eyes, that fawning, submissive smile. I cried...] [...Does anyone know The Murder House is based on a real murder that happened in Qingcheng in the 1980s?] [Holy crap! Shen Yan followed Tong Hua?!] * Shen Yan's life was torn apart in the summer he was fifteen. A paternity test shattered all the pride he had once held. He had taken another's place, and in an instant even his excellence seemed like a sin. The young man put away his battered pride, fragile and pale, and returned to the narrow, backward, damp alley that should have been his home all along. Like a bird with broken wings, lost and helpless, he encountered the brightest light of his life in the abyss. A famous director was shooting nearby. His beloved little son tossed a piece of candy down to him from the moldy, damp stairwell and warned him fiercely, “You're not allowed to cry.” Shen Yan lowered his eyes and stared at the candy. After a long while, he covered his eyes with the back of his hand and laughed silently. [Meeting you was a fairy tale that fate wrote for me] * It begins in a haunted apartment building in the 1980s and leads to the arson case on Yong'an Street that shocked the nation ten years ago. The present day and the movies intertwine. The truth is traced through film, while the self is found in real life. One day, I'll stand atop the world of fame, where the stars shine brightest, and deliver the best performance of my own. A flamboyant, wickedly charming award-winning actor as the pursuer x a cool guy dubbed the king of bad movies as the recipient. An entertainment-industry story about an award-winning actor's rise to stardom. It has a bit of an unlimited-flow feel (?) and some mystery-solving elements too [though it's not serious crime fiction. I want to be a little kinder to my hair qwq]. Just read it as a satisfying, sweet story! Theme: Suffering follows from the sins one commits.