A Hidden History of the Southern Kingdom

The story takes place fifteen years after The Annals of King Qi, following the turbulent lives of Lu Qiling, nephew of Lu Xiao, and his elder brother, Zhang Baique. It will also add the story of Lu Xiao and Ning Shuying from the perspective of an onlooker.

Main couple: Zhang Baique, the young and ambitious emperor of Nanxia, x Lu Shijing, the Ghost Marquis prince who takes his twin sister's place in a political marriage

This is probably a story about a moody, scheming top who uses his power and age to terrorize a displaced bottom who doesn't speak his language every day...

It is easy to make Lu Shijing fall in love with Zhang Baique.

Back in his homeland, Lu Shijing was not a favored prince. He and his sister had a father who had been disgraced after losing a war, and a mother from the foreign land of Yeyang. Most importantly, both twins had a pair of light brown eyes. To the people of the Ghost Marquis, those eyes were a mark of slavery.

Their half-brother princes and the nobles strolling through the streets had a refined taste for entertainment. They would catch the twins, tie them up, and set them loose in a pasture to chase the cattle, all for their amusement.

When Lu Shijing sent his sister away and went alone in her place to a distant country, the first person he met was its emperor. Lu Shijing wanted to kill the tyrant who had conquered his homeland.

But his trembling hands could not hold the knife steady.

The emperor's body bled profusely. Yet the emperor did not get angry. Instead, he gave Lu Shijing food and clothes.

Every night, Lu Shijing sat in the vast, empty palace and waited for him.

The emperor told him he was allowed to speak, and only then did Lu Shijing dare to speak. The emperor told him he could leave the palace and learn whatever he wished, and only then did Lu Shijing venture outside. He learned the language of the Han people, and how to make crops grow in the fields instead of raising livestock.

Zhang Baique often came to see him, bringing books and strange toys. Lu Shijing thought Zhang Baique was so good to him. Zhang Baique was kinder to him than anyone he had ever known, even his father and brothers.

Lu Shijing desperately wanted to know what their future would bring.

He wanted to know what the future held for him and Zhang Baique. He wanted to know whether he could stay here after people found his runaway sister. Lu Shijing wanted to remain in Nanxia, on this land where crops grew instead of grass for grazing.

Zhang Baique was good to him. Compared with all that kindness, Zhang Baique's long spells of coldness, his unpredictable moods, and his reproaches did not matter at all.

For the first six years of his life, Zhang Baique was constantly on the run, with nowhere to call home. He scavenged scraps left by slaves to stave off hunger and slept in the palace's forgotten corners. At times, he even had to feign madness to amuse the Xie nobles who came looking for entertainment.

Zhang Baique's father lived just as humbly as his son. Yet he told Zhang Baique that he was the sole legitimate heir of the Han dynasty, the most noble child in the world.

Zhang Baique thought his father was insane.

But one day, when the Wuzu cavalry breached Luoyang, the truth came to light. The world learned that the deposed Xia emperor, long believed dead according to the history books, was still alive, imprisoned for twenty years in the depths of Emperor Huo Feng's palace in Luoyang.

As the only child of the deposed emperor Zhang Yufu and the nephew of the Nanxia emperor, Zhang Baique was brought to Nanxia, where he spent a happy and fulfilling childhood. When the Nanxia emperor died, Zhang Baique inherited all his rank and power.

Even so, he never forgot the humiliations he suffered as a child. Zhang Baique swore that as long as he lived, he would drive every Hu person from the Central Plains, reclaim the northern frontier, and turn every pasture back into farmland.

At the age of twenty-four, Zhang Baique decisively pacified Anguo, where the remnants of the Ghost Marquis had taken refuge.

The country had fallen, and its people were left to ruin. In their fear, the people of Anguo sent Lu Shiling, a princess of the Lu clan, to Nanxia in a political marriage. Zhang Baique immediately came up with a brilliant idea: he would bestow this Ghost Marquis princess upon his younger brother, Lu Qiling.

The Lu family and the Ghost Marquis were sworn enemies. When the Ghost Marquis conquered Chang'an, Princess Lu Shiling's father, Lu Yingze, had personally slaughtered half the Lu family's descendants. Among them was Lu Qiling's grandfather, Lu Wu.

Zhang Baique loved his younger brother more than anyone in the world. He was willing to offer him this chance at reconciliation with his own hands.

The Ghost Marquis princess was escorted to Nanxia by Cao Dilian, son of Anguo's Great Chanyu. Zhang Baique gazed with a smile at the Ghost Marquis prince kowtowing every five steps beyond the city walls, and arranged a lavish banquet to welcome them.

At the banquet, Zhang Baique and Cao Dilian drank and chatted merrily. Cao Dilian presented the princess at Zhang Baique's palace, lavishly praising his cousin's beauty. But Zhang Baique was unmoved. He had already decided to give the woman to his younger brother as a wife. Since Lu Qiling was traveling abroad at the time, Zhang Baique asked the princess to wait there until their wedding a few months later.

That night, the princess's servant came to the emperor's bedchamber and begged for an audience, saying that the princess had suddenly fallen gravely ill and needed to see His Majesty at once.

Zhang Baique thought nothing of it and hurried to the princess's quarters. But to his astonishment, the person he saw that day was not a princess. It was a boy, his eyes filled with hatred and fear, dressed in a brilliant scarlet robe. His hands trembling, he lunged at Zhang Baique, trying to plunge a dagger into his chest.

Side couple: young prince Lu Qiling x the real princess, Lu Shiling

You're welcome to preorder this novel. I plan to start it after The Annals of King Qi is complete. I hope to weave a family history through three connected stories.

Theme: Continuing the story