A modern-day historian transmigrates into the past x a queen who seizes power and brings ruin to her nation
"A person's worth can never be measured in gold or silver."
Xu Qianze never dreamed she would enter the world of her thesis and meet, time and again, the legendary woman recorded in the history books.
The first time she saw the woman in dragon robes atop the long staircase, she was filled with boundless curiosity.
The second time she saw her, the woman wore a phoenix robe and stood atop a tall building. Beneath the bright moonlight, she said, "At last, you've come."
The third time, by the Pavilion for Admiring the Evening on the Qixi Festival, the woman made a wish beneath the moon. She seemed younger, yet her eyes were full of sorrow, as if she no longer remembered Xu Qianze.
The fourth time, everything returned to the beginning. The woman was still a naive young girl, sold by her greedy parents to a silversmith as a concubine. Helpless, she screamed again and again in the rainy night. Xu Qianze resolved to open a path of light for her and lead her onto a road reaching to the heavens.
[An obsessive history student with a dream x a notorious empress]
The history books record that Empress Dowager Chu Ze, after taking power, ruled with cruelty and tyranny, slaughtering her opponents on a grand scale and sparing neither the imperial clan nor the old ministers. Enraged, the people rose up against her.
Thus, barely a month after donning the dragon robes, she was overthrown by a branch of the imperial family and imprisoned deep within the palace, where she remained until she died of old age.
She bore no children. Her only son was taken from another imperial consort, and the story even included a cat-swapping-the-prince deception, a tale that remains a perennial favorite in popular fiction.
Whenever people speak of that dynasty and that name, they always recall the absurd rumors surrounding her, her romantic escapades, and her reputation for brutality.
In history, she was the woman who came closest to the throne after Empress Wu. In the twenty-first century, Xu Qianze chose her as the subject of her thesis, meticulously digging through every account of her life and weighing her deeds, both good and bad.
She wanted to know why, with victory within reach, the woman had still lost by one move.
But her thesis and research topic were rejected, her family pressured her, and her job applications were turned down. Xu Qianze's dreams suffered one blow after another. Depressed, she went to a special exhibition on a nearby dynasty to clear her mind, hoping to catch even a glimpse of one of the woman's relics.
She never imagined she would accidentally transmigrate a thousand years into the past. Atop the long staircase stood a woman in dragon robes, utterly unshaken amid the rebels and insurgents.
Theme: I came for you
