[A top who gives everything at first, then couldn't care less later x a sharp-tongued, scheming fourth prince who endures humiliation]
A new emperor takes the throne, and the court undergoes a change of hands.
Ji Xingze, once riding high, loses his title as a general after a single defeat, and the emperor appoints him to guard the imperial mausoleums.
Anyone would sigh at the gap between their former and present stations.
But the man at the center of it all isn't the least bit angry. He swiftly packs his things and heads off to the mausoleums.
"This emperor knows how to play the game. Of all the imperial mausoleums, he sends me to guard yours. What do you think, my first love?"
*
To make it easier to clean the mausoleum, the man builds a thatched hut right in front of the fourth prince's tomb and makes it his home.
Whenever his thirst for alcohol strikes, he'll bring a couple of ounces of liquor to the fourth prince's tomb, sit down on the ground, and reminisce about the old days.
"Wouldn't it have been great if we'd seen each other one last time? Then I wouldn't have had to keep guarding the border for you, as you ordered... Anyway, not one of you from the Yu family is any good!"
Ji Xingze gets drunk. His face flushed and his eyes hazy, he seems to see Yu Shanzhi from his memories slowly emerge from the tomb.
That sobers him up in an instant.
"I was just lamenting that we never got to see each other one last time. You didn't have to hurry out of your grave to meet me!"
Yu Shanzhi, who had only come out for some fresh air: "..."
Why is there an idiot drinking by the tomb in the middle of the night?
*
Note:
1. The setting is fictional, and the world is an alternate one.
2. Daily life in the first half, court politics in the second.
Theme: None.
