Synopsis
Women may enter officialdom in this alternate setting (men may have three wives and four concubines, women may have five favored consorts and six attendants). Set in an alternate world!
Blurb: Huo Yuan has a goddess in his heart. The year he was ambushed while away from home, the goddess he adored descended from the sky and saved his life. From then on, her breathtaking, immortal-like figure was branded in his heart.
Huo Yuan also has a nemesis. Their feud began when his six-year-old nemesis stole one of his milk candies. Huo Yuan couldn't get it back and was beaten until he cried, even though he was seven that year.
Later, Huo Yuan ascended the throne and became emperor, while his nemesis became chancellor. Huo Yuan knew his chance for revenge had finally come. From then on, he dumped every exhausting chore and troublesome task on his nemesis.
Huo Yuan thinks the way his nemesis looks at him in court every day is just like he's looking at an idiot, but he doesn't care. He loves seeing his nemesis unable to stand him and unable to do anything about it!
But later, Huo Yuan discovers that his nemesis is the goddess. At that moment, he feels as though the sky has fallen.
Huo Yuan burrows under the covers and lies awake all night. Before court the next morning, he finally makes a painful decision: so what if his nemesis is his nemesis? He'll just have to accept his bad luck!
Wen Wan is young, yet already holds the office of chancellor, second only to The Outcast and above all others. Her future should be bright, but the idiot emperor above her is at odds with her and spends all day coming up with childish ways to torment her. If he weren't still a wise ruler, Wen Wan would have wanted to kill him long ago.
Until one day, the damn emperor publicly decrees that she is to enter the palace and become empress...
The damn emperor is shameless and incredibly clingy. She can't take it anymore, and is plotting to throw a sack over his head and beat him when she suddenly hears that he was hit on the head and his memories have become jumbled.
Wen Wan goes to visit him. The moment she steps inside, the damn emperor dismisses the palace attendants, then turns around and starts undressing. His clothes hang loosely from his body, leaving his firm chest fully exposed. Then he ties his own hands to the headboard. His handsome face full of humiliation, he says, "Go ahead!"
Wen Wan: !!!
I'm not sure if these count as potential dealbreakers, but I'll list them anyway:
1. This isn't a serious court-politics story. It's mainly for laughs, and the central plot is romance, but the country will also be governed properly. The leads aren't so blinded by love that they act recklessly. Neither of them will be careless about serious matters; they're both strong and make a great team. The male lead is just a bit of a rascal in private, or you could say he's a cheeky brat with no shame. Yes, there's nothing wrong with his memory. He's faking it.
2. The leads are strictly one-on-one throughout, with no harem, and they're each other's first love. However, there will be more than one female supporting character who has a properly wedded husband and also takes male lovers. I won't change this. I have to honor the setting I came up with.
Coming soon: After Stealing the Immortal Venerable's Dao Companion
Blurb summary: This is the story of a heroine holding the script of the successful second male lead and a male lead holding the script of the heroine in a regret-and-redemption story.
Male lead's blurb:
Yao Yu's true form is a divine stone. Ten thousand years ago, it was touched by the blood of an ancient god, gaining sentience, and after cultivating, it took human form. Those three drops of divine blood also became its source.
On the day it took human form, Immortal Venerable Si Xuan stood before it.
Si Xuan was the first person Yao Yu met after taking human form. Longing to see the world beyond, it willingly followed Si Xuan to the immortal realm. It knew nothing about the outside world and only "knew" Si Xuan, so it could only stay by his side. Si Xuan never stopped it, and it remained with him for a thousand years.
Later, Si Xuan's heavenly tribulation arrived. To help him overcome it, Yao Yu voluntarily gave him one drop of divine blood. Even though it would cost a thousand years of cultivation and make it difficult to reach adulthood in the future, it did so without hesitation.
After Si Xuan successfully overcame his tribulation, their relationship seemed to grow closer. For ten thousand years, no one had stayed by Si Xuan's side, yet he alone allowed it near him. The entire immortal realm assumed they would become immortal partners one day.
It had thought so too, until Si Xuan brought a little demon back from the mortal realm. Si Xuan said the little demon had done him a favor. Since she was an orphan, he had brought her back to teach her and keep her by his side as a maid.
At first, it didn't pay much attention. But it hadn't expected Si Xuan and the little demon to grow closer by the day. The little demon was as lovely as a lotus rising from clear water, and her smile was as sweet as honey. Her mischievous charm gradually wore down Si Xuan's boundaries.
Little by little, they went everywhere together and shared their meals and lodgings. It was no longer the only one allowed near Si Xuan. The little demon could even get closer to him than it could.
When asked, Si Xuan explained: "She's only my maid."
Later, Yao Yu's bloodline tribulation arrived. Si Xuan had promised to help, but he never came, as he was dealing with the trouble that little demon had caused. Fortunately, at the last moment, the famously good-natured immortal lord Jiu Shu came to its rescue, sparing it from being badly injured and falling into a deep slumber.
That night, it had a dream. In the dream, Jiu Shu did not appear during its bloodline tribulation. It was badly injured and slept for a century before waking, its cultivation greatly diminished.
When it walked through the immortal realm again, all it heard were stories of Si Xuan and the little demon Bai Ye's unbreakable love. It became a laughingstock.
Unwilling to accept it, it took its anger out on the little demon. The little demon was rescued every time, while Yao Yu gradually became someone everyone despised. It lost all its cultivation, and its final drop of divine blood was forcibly taken to save the little demon.
Si Xuan told it, "That belonged to Xiao Ye in the first place."
After waking from the dream, it thought the whole thing was absurd. It planned to give up on Si Xuan, but he came after it again, saying he couldn't bear for them to part ways. He even insisted on forming a bond with it and becoming immortal partners.
It couldn't resist and was forced to form the bond with him. But that very day, Si Xuan abandoned it once again to save the little demon and left. Faced with the various looks from everyone around, it felt not the slightest humiliation. It smiled and held out a hand to Jiu Shu beside it. "Let's go."
.
Si Xuan would never forget how, on the day they formed their bond, he hurried back only to see Yao Yu, now an adult and having chosen a male body, holding someone else's hand. It made it unmistakably clear to him that it had truly fallen in love with someone else long ago.
Female lead's blurb:
Wang Xiaoya transmigrates into a xianxia romance novel as an ordinary mortal. According to the plot, the male and female leads have nothing to do with someone like her. The trouble is, the leads are hopeless romantics, and a whole group of immortals may say that the common people are their top priority, but in truth they don't value their lives at all. At the slightest provocation, they threaten to have all the people of the world die with them.
Wang Xiaoya refuses to become a background extra witnessing someone else's "earth-shattering" love story. She resolutely sets out on the path of cultivation and, before the story begins, finally becomes Jiu Shu, an immortal lord in the immortal realm, with status and power second only to the male lead, the Immortal Venerable.
One day, while out wandering, she happens to save the wicked female supporting character from the story. Seeing that this young immortal isn't so bad, Jiu Shu occasionally offers her some guidance, so she won't hang herself from the male lead's crooked tree and end up losing her life.
But later, that little stone stops liking the male lead and starts liking her instead.
The premise of this upcoming story is pretty outlandish. Mainly, I wanted to write a regret-and-redemption story, but all my heroines are smart and emotionally perceptive. (If anyone thinks they're not clever, that's definitely my fault for not writing them well, and absolutely not my heroines' fault.) I also didn't want to introduce a character who was lacking in both intelligence and emotional awareness and drag down my heroines' average. On top of that, I can't bear to see my heroine suffer at the hands of some lousy man. After thinking it over, the only option was to sacrifice the male lead. Actually, I feel pretty bad about sacrificing him too (pretending to be sincere).
Of course, there's another reason for this setup. In regret-and-redemption stories these days, the male lead is usually tormented by the heroine faking her death or something like that. I wondered if there was a setup where the heroine could stay alive, keep popping up in front of the male lead every day and live a great life, yet still have the same effect on him as faking her death. In the end, I had a sudden idea: hey, what if the heroine became the male lead? That perfectly solves all my problems. It's a little absurd, but otherwise there's nothing wrong with it.
Theme: What goes around comes around.
