After the Most Hated Man Married the Enemy of the Court

Please add my next book, Saving the World Starts with Breaking Up Couples, to your reading list! Yuan Xi was once a young prodigy, the most charming and amorous young noble in the imperial capital. Then the court was thrown into turmoil. His family was destroyed, and he spent a year in prison. By the time he got out, he was barely alive. His martial arts were gone, he could barely walk, and he had been poisoned. His friends cut ties with him, his master urged him to seek an early release through death, and his enemies watched him like hawks, waiting for him to finally collapse so they could swarm him and leave nothing but scraps of bone. With nowhere else to turn, he had to beg the most ruthless powerbroker at court to spare the family he had left. That man had once praised his looks. Yuan Xi thought, If I'm going to sell myself anyway, I might as well get the best price I can. So he sheathed all his claws and, wearing the most docile and harmless expression he could manage, threw himself into the arms of the most corrupt official in the court. As long as he survived long enough to take revenge, he was willing to do anything. The man's attendant dressed him in humiliating clothes and took him to the study. Yuan Xi expected to be subjected to every kind of degradation, but instead… The Regent, a man of ruthless ambition whom everyone feared, was staring blankly at a stack of memorials in his study. When he saw Yuan Xi, his eyes lit up. The Regent said solemnly, “I'm extremely particular, and I don't like idiots. Come here and draft a memorial for me.” Yuan Xi: … On his first day at the residence, the Regent said he wanted to test Yuan Xi's abilities and had him revise memorials all night. Yuan Xi's eyes blurred from working on them, and he figured the Regent was testing him. The Regent was very pleased after that first night, so he summoned Yuan Xi every night and made him revise memorials every night. A few months later, the Regent watched him use the Regent's influence to make moves of his own, build alliances, and eliminate his rivals. Instead of getting angry, he praised Yuan Xi for a job well done. Yuan Xi figured the Regent must have hit his head and gone mad. A year later, the Regent wrapped his arms around Yuan Xi's waist and confessed through tears, “That's right, I transmigrated into this book. I really don't know how to govern a country!” Yuan Xi: … What else could he do? He'd chosen the man, so he'd have to put up with him. Content warning: There is a secondary couple who are both assassins, and they switch roles in the bonus chapters. Reader's guide: 1. The couple is a forced-to-be-ambitious, universally feared, argumentative top x a beautiful but tragic, universally despised bottom. They're a villainous couple. 2. The angst-filled love story turns into a sweet little dessert shop. The romance is 99 percent sweet (probably). 3. The top transmigrates into the book, while the bottom is the original character. The story is a slow burn, and the characters have flaws in their personalities, so they may not be very likable at first. Also, they're both Schrödinger's straight men. 4. This is a completely made-up setting, the kind that's practically in outer space. The political scheming is about as sophisticated as a preschool class. The main focus is romance: the kind of sugary story where they're all over each other all day. The characters may be a little dim, because the author isn't very smart TAT Here's where I ask you to add it to your reading list Saving the World Starts with Breaking Up Couples I. He Ting Tong lives in a sieve of a cultivation novel, one packed with transmigrators, Systems, and reborn big shots. His role? An utterly ordinary passerby, here to watch the drama unfold. In this bizarre world, where transmigrators are as common as dogs and the reborn are everywhere, every day brings a new tale: forbidden love between master and disciple, enemies who love and fight each other, a Demon Lord's Red and White Roses, a Daoist Venerable's substitute for the one he truly loves, or a wealthy family that switched babies at birth, an emotionless cultivator who kills his wife to prove his Dao and then pursues her through a fiery trial of regret… In short, the world's most brilliant chosen ones are tangled up in love and hate, drowning in heartbreak and misery, willing to sacrifice all living beings for the sake of one person… And then the world reset eighteen times. Every time, the land was devastated, and heaven and earth were overturned. Unlike everyone else, He Ting Tong retained all his memories and went through all eighteen resets too. By the nineteenth go-round, He Ting Tong, one of the countless lives in this world, was completely numb. To hell with romance. I'll break up every last one of you! Go cultivate the Emotionless Dao, all of you! II. Fu Feng Yan spent his whole life locked inside a towering white building. He had no emotions or desires and had lost all five senses, spending year after year chanting scriptures atop a high platform. His father told him he was a seal, an embodiment of the Heavenly Dao, born to save all living beings. So he gave his life to save them. Every time the world was destroyed, he gave his life to repair it. On the nineteenth repair of the world, the day his senses returned, Fu Feng Yan stood amid the karmic flames. Just before he turned to ashes, he saw a young cultivator he had once met, rushing toward him against the tide of everyone else. Fu Feng Yan thought the one running toward him was love. He Ting Tong: Nice try, buddy. You're the world's reset button, aren't you? Theme: We hold our own destinies in our hands.