A Little Thousand Autumns (Ming)

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[Story blurb]

The Xia family is virtuous, reserved, gentle, and sincere. The family is upright, and the brothers get along harmoniously.

The ministers, satisfied: Her, then!

Zhu Houzhao: I'm not satisfied!!

No one paid him any attention.

Later, Zhu Houzhao finally went from Crown Prince to emperor. With a carefully chosen virtuous empress at his side and a once-in-a-century statesman beneath him, something nevertheless began to change.

Zhu Houzhao: I want to go fight in the north!

The ministers, sweating: Hurry and get the Empress to stop him!

Xia Lingshun: Your Majesty, you shouldn't do that!

The ministers: Exactly, exactly!

Xia Lingshun: Our destination should be the ocean! Don't you want a field of corn?

Zhu Houzhao: ...Ahem. Then we'll listen to the Empress. Let's build a bigger ship first and get ready.

The ministers: ...??

The ministers looked at one another, then suddenly understood.

So they'd let a wolf through the door! The Empress was even more of a handful than the Emperor!

Only then did the Crown Prince speak up timidly: "But... Father, Mother, didn't we agree to first go up to the heavens and see if there are immortals more powerful than the Great Qing Dharma King?"

The ministers: ...Please, the three of you, have mercy on us!

[Before reading]

A sweet 1v1 romance about an emperor and empress who love stirring up trouble.

Warning!!!!! The heroine, Xia Lingshun, is truly a girl from an ordinary family, with many siblings and poverty written all over her face. The hero, Zhu Houzhao, is the biggest troublemaker among the sixteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty (just kidding).

As Xuanji Niangniang once said, "History is the bones, art the wings." This story is entirely fictional. Apart from young Zhu and a few historical details from the period that were researched, most of it is made up. Please don't misunderstand, readers! Respect history, and don't take this as fact!

[Coming up next]

Next story >>> "Why Did the Princess Become a Nun? (Ming Dynasty)"

[Blurb 1]

After transmigrating into the body of a princess, Huaiying was overjoyed.

Didn't this mean she could live off others forever? Maybe she could even keep a pretty boy around and play cards with him. How delightful!

But she had transmigrated into the Ming Dynasty, where princesses were married off to commoners and expected to live as widows. The good news was that her father, Emperor Hongzhi Zhu Youtang, had only one wife, her mother Zhang, and one daughter, Zhu Huaiying, whom he doted on. The bad news was that her father would die from overwork, her mother would die after being mistreated, her older brother would die of illness, and her younger siblings would die in infancy. At home, she had unlucky relatives and troublesome ministers; beyond the borders were the Tatars, the Jurchens, and islanders who were doing quite well for themselves.

Princess Lingci Zhu Huaiying, her heart lurching up and down: I'd better become a nun early and find a crooked old tree to hang myself from. That one on Coal Hill looks pretty good...

Even so, Zhu Huaiying got to work studying her alchemy System, completing missions and making miraculous pills to save her family.

Zhu Youtang: Ever since I started taking my darling daughter's pills, my back doesn't ache, my legs don't hurt, and I can review a hundred memorials in both the morning and afternoon audiences.

Zhu Houzhao: Raise ten more leopards for me! Ten tigers! And...

Empress Zhang: Yingying, there's also your maternal grandfather and uncles...

Zhu Huaiying: What? I healed you so you could cause all this trouble?

[Blurb 2]

Princess Lingci Zhu Huaiying, the first princess of the Hongzhi reign and the apple of the emperor and empress's eyes, prefers Taoist robes to women's finery. Instead of studying "Lessons for Women," she studies "The Art of Combining Elixirs." Her lifelong idol is the Medicine Sage Sun Simiao, and she often makes pills for her parents and siblings. The Grand Secretariat gets a headache at the sight of her, while the censor officials can only sigh.

To stop Princess Lingci from harming the emperor, empress, and crown prince with her pills, the ministers unanimously decide to hurry up and petition the emperor to marry her off. But before long, Princess Lingci leaves the world to become a Taoist nun and keeps making pills, sometimes asking the crown prince to pass them along for the ministers to try.

The ministers: ...Help!

And so the Ming Dynasty grows strong again amid the smoke of Princess Lingci's alchemy.

[A little extra]

Zhu Huaiying: Cousin, come make pills with me!

Zhu Houcong: What? Are you messing with me?

[Before reading]

This story is also known as "The Ming Family," "Taoist Nun Simulator," and "Alchemy System User Manual" (Hey!).

Blurb written on 2022/03/27, screenshot saved.

Theme: Strengthen the foundations of the state, pursue reform boldly, and ride the tide of the world