In the sixth year of the Yuanshou era, the young emperor took power and ordered the three chief ministers placed under house arrest. He also secretly executed Qi Shulan, the chief grand secretary.
Over the next ten years, the empire teetered on the brink of collapse.
History of Ming
Chen Xi came from a family of petty merchants. Her father took more than a dozen concubines, her mother died young, and her stepmother was cruel. The household had long since rotted from within.
Her father sold her to Sixth Young Master Qi.
A man even worse than her father.
For two years after marrying into the Qi family, Chen Xi struggled to survive like a little weed.
She scrimped and saved, learned to read and do accounts, and dreamed that one day she could leave, open a small shop, and live without having to watch everyone else's moods.
But the day she finally saved enough money, Sixth Young Master Qi discovered her plan.
He beat her, locked her up, burned her books, and sold the maid who had helped her... The whole household had long since thought this normal. Third Madam came to advise her: Go apologize to your husband.
Starving and on the verge of death, she secretly hid a short knife in her sleeve the night before agreeing to see him.
She never expected her husband to get drunk, lose his footing, and tumble down a cliff, before being carried back.
She also had no idea that the person who woke up in the seventeenth year of Jianning was not Sixth Young Master Qi.
It was Qi Shulan, a pillar of the Yuanshou dynasty and its chief grand secretary.
The history books record that he died of illness and was buried in Lingnan.
Qi Shulan didn't know whether to praise the young emperor for being clever enough to know he had to get rid of him, or to call his former student a fool for cutting off his own right arm.
The dynasty changed hands, and the young emperor who had once been so eager to seize power had long since become a pile of dust.
And he awoke in the Qi household in Liuzhou.
Qi Shulan had safeguarded the old dynasty for more than a decade, until he finally realized he couldn't be a saint... Protecting all under heaven was simply too difficult.
But protecting one little girl,
that was easy enough.
[Little Scene]
...Qi Shulan raised Chen Xi well. She was eager to learn, clever, and resilient, and gradually shed the immaturity and timidity of her youth.
In the twenty-first year of Jianning, he asked Chen Xi if she wanted to remarry.
The girl was practicing calligraphy when her hand suddenly stopped. Her ink smeared into a dark blot.
She was silent for a long time. Then she tossed aside her brush, turned, and hugged him, pressing her face hard against his neck as she murmured, "You have no idea how much I hate him..."
"But I love you."
1. A healing story.
2. The blurb may be adjusted later.
Theme: The world is full of distractions; don't lose sight of who you are.
