The Powerful Minister Has Had Enough

As the Third Prince's trusted aide, Xie Xian helped him seize power and claim the realm. He wielded political schemes and shored up support. For the sake of the prince's throne, his hands were stained with blood. He spent his life ill and injured, becoming the vilest, most despicable person imaginable. Everyone trembled at the mention of his name.

Yet he had no regrets. His loyalty to the emperor was etched into his bones. He thought he would help the emperor usher in a peaceful age that would last for generations. Even battered and bruised, he was willing to stay by his side.

Who could have known that after half a lifetime of hardship, his achievements would make him a threat to the throne, earning him an imperial decree for his arrest?

As peace reigned and the land prospered, the emperor ended his life in prison with a cup of poisoned wine.

When he awoke, reborn in his youth, he was the youngest son of the prime minister: full of vigor, clad in fine clothes, enjoying every luxury, and surrounded by a group of loyal friends. On the day he went to study at the Imperial Academy, snow fell thick and fast. The disfavored Third Prince had been made to kneel beneath a covered walkway, his face full of misery as he shivered with cold.

Xie Xian knew his chance for revenge had come.

In the days that followed, the Third Prince saw him as the light of his life. He took arrows for him, shed blood for him, risked everything for him, and did all he could to win his favor, yet none of it could earn even a trace of Xie Xian's sincerity.

Premise: Turning the tables