The Imperial Tutor's Strategy

Also known as "The Man My Father Brought Back from the Twelfth-Floor Brothel Became the Darling of All Jizhou"

[Su Jue: Prince, Heir, do you want the throne?

Prince & Heir: We can't, we can't... Well, all right, let's take it...

Chu Yue: Young master, want a wife?

Su Jue: Yes, yes!!!]

As the water clock dwindles, jade hairpins shatter, and old dreams of a former dynasty coil like threads.

Beneath the red silk curtains of the Twelfth-Floor brothel, Su Jue gazes at the lingering imperial features in the bronze mirror and suddenly remembers the ceremonial crown that broke before the Zichen Hall. Everyone says the Twelfth Floor's newest star courtesan is breathtakingly beautiful, but no one knows that the three souls and seven spirits of Northern Yan's last emperor dwell within this body.

The twilight over Linjiang City always carries the scent of rouge.

A storyteller knocks on the block and swallows a secret history of the previous dynasty with a cup of pear-blossom wine.

Leaning against the green gauze screen, Su Jue listens to the copper bells beneath the eaves scatter the misty rain over the city. Master Qinglian always ties a string of gaharu beads around his wrist. The old physician often slips honeyed plums into his medicine pouch. Even the drunken, unruly scholar aboard the pleasure boat is willing to snap his wolf-hair brush for him. But when the water clock drips past midnight, he always sees another self in the depths of the bronze mirror, with towering hair and clinking ornaments, just like Princess Jiacheng, whose name was crossed out in red in the history books.

On the day of Awakening of Insects, the wind chimes suddenly sound like clashing weapons.

Su Jue sees blood soaking the steps before Xuanwu Gate, sees corpses covering Jinming Lake, and sees the Twelfth Floor reduced to ash in a blaze reaching the sky.

He crushes the glass cup in his hand and lets blood soak the new brocade robe he only just received. As dust rises along the post road in Jizhou, no one sees that the golden hairpin in the celestial courtesan's hair has been replaced by a short blade of black iron.

At the other end of a rift in time and space, Su Yu is inserting a neural interface into her temple. The scarlet warning