The Butcher's Darling

[Top is reborn, primarily from the bottom's perspective]

Emperor Cui Zhaoshi was brilliant and dazzling, noble and upright. But as the eldest legitimate son of a prince, he was maliciously framed by his brothers as a boy, his bones broken again and again until he was brought lower than the dirt.

He had tasted the bitter hardships of life, and had also ridden the winds of fortune to take revenge, winning the throne and claiming the pleasures of the realm.

Yet after a life of many twists and turns, the one person Cui Zhaoshi could never forget was a down-and-out young butcher in the outskirts of the capital, who could barely string a sentence together.

He heard, faintly, that the young butcher's family had been blessed with a baby boy. Cui Zhaoshi sat alone all night.

When he woke again, he had been reborn ten years into the past, on the night of the Lantern Festival.

The young butcher, in coarse clothes washed pale, clutched a few copper coins as the crowd pushed him bewilderedly into Cui Zhaoshi's arms, dirtying his fine robes...

Hearing the young butcher stammer out an apology in his arms, his eyes brimming with sorrow and dismay, Cui Zhaoshi, reborn, froze. The mind that had always been clear and upright, filled with thoughts of statecraft, held only one thought:

Take him back to the manor and lock him up.

Reading Guide:

1. Honest, simple older bottom x younger top who is not what he seems; they are three years apart.

2. In his previous life, the bottom never married or had children.

3. A rebirth story with doting romance.

4. Writing this for myself. I just want to bully an honest man.

5. The main story is told from the bottom's perspective. The blurb uses the top's perspective because I think it makes for a better hook.

"The love I could never put into words: this time, I'll tell you every bit of it."

Theme: We must not live like beasts; we should pursue knowledge and virtue.