The Deposed Empress Wants to Rule the World

Please support the official release. My upcoming novel next door is Dreaming of a Floating Life.

I stood by him as he went from deposed crown prince to emperor. Then he turned around and wiped out my mother's family, killed my father, and seized the Qi family's military power.

I begged him to spare my father for old times' sake, but he rewarded me with a bowl of infertility medicine.

I tried to burn myself alive to end my humiliating life of barely surviving, but he had the tendons in my hands and feet severed.

From then on, guards watched Changchun Palace day and night, and its lamps never went out.

And I could not die, no matter how I tried.

The ministers wanted him to depose me. I couldn't have been happier.

But then he suddenly said that after ten years at his side, I was like an old sword, and that a wife who had shared his hardships could not be cast aside. I knew my chance had finally come.

In Changchun Palace, I spent money recklessly and lived wantonly. The civil officials cursed me, and the military officers were outraged.

But he said, "As long as she's happy."

The lamp stayed lit, and the curtains stirred gently.

He knelt by my bed, his voice hoarse.

"Tonight, may I..."

"Heh. Get lost."

Ji Yunshen gazed at Qi Changnian's sleeping face. He knew there were many scars on her body, though she had never shown them in public.

There was one on her right wrist, from the time she fell while picking wild fruit from a tree because there was no food in the deposed crown prince's residence.

The one on her chest was from the time he regained his position as crown prince and an assassin tried to kill him. She had taken the blade for him.

There were countless others like these.

He thought he would always use Qi Changnian for his own ends. But no matter how splendid and lively the vast imperial palace became, it could never compare to hearing Qi Changnian tell him to get lost.

The main story is not told in first person.

Truly old-school, scum-and-doormat, melodramatic angst.

I was in a bad mood and wanted to dig up an old-school, melodramatic scum-and-doormat angst story to vent.

I just want someone to owe me, so I can stand on the moral high ground and call him out without a second thought, hitting him where it hurts!

A truly old-school story, with every sort of melodramatic, clichéd plot twist that might come along.

Happy or tragic ending, depending on my mood.

Dreaming of a Floating Life

The day I was led to the executioner's block, Xie Xinghe still demanded that I prove I had never loved him.

I curled my lips without answering. In this world, you prove that something exists, not that it doesn't. How could he expect me to prove I had never done something?

The executioner's blade fell. I thought that was the end of my life.

But when I opened my eyes again, I saw Xie Xinghe, his hair completely white and his face aged.

He said, "A Luo, I've waited forty years for you."

From a spirited young man to an old man in the twilight of his life, he had spent all those years waiting for me to wake up and look at him.

*

In a daze, I remembered that before I died, Master had fed me a pill. He said it would make dying hurt less. I only remembered that in the world after death, the sun was bright and the air as gentle as spring. Master cared for me, my brother loved me, and even Xie Xinghe turned back to look at me.

So hell was this warm.

That was why, after I closed my eyes, I never woke up again. I didn't want to wake up.

But only later did I learn that the executioner's blade had never fallen on my head. What I had taken was not pain medication, but a Gu.

The Floating Life Gu.

Once you enter the dream of a floating life, you can wake whenever you wish. If you don't want to wake, you can remain in the dream for the rest of your life, never to return.

Theme: Only by staying alive do you get the chance to strike back.