Name: I Have a Sword That Rebukes Immortals
Author: Li Jiangge

Synopsis

[Ensemble Political Drama, Everyone's Unhinged | The Crown Princess Returns from the Dead to Ascend the Throne]

Jing Zhao died in a blaze that consumed the Scarlet Crow Hall, dying while still heir to the throne.

After her death, everyone won.

Her younger brother ascended the throne, her political enemies divided up power, and the former subordinates who had betrayed her became founding ministers of the new dynasty.

Her enemies basked in their success for seventeen years, never knowing that disaster was already creeping closer.

At some point, the officials of the entire court began going mad, one after another.

One man secured his hold on the throne by trading on her infamous name, yet grew paranoid over a prophecy that a woman would become emperor. He slaughtered the women of the imperial clan and dared not trust even the person he loved most.

Another commanded all the armies of the realm, yet willingly offered himself as a sacrifice, hoping his flesh and blood could help his dead wife ascend to immortality.

A third was a peerless writer who had calculated every possibility, yet gradually forgot his past, even forgetting his own life.

Everyone said the vengeful spirit of the Tyrannical Crown Princess was behind it all.

They burned her portraits, vilified her life, and cursed her name, yet lived forever in her shadow.

Until one night, seventeen years later.

The Changxin lamp flickered to life, and dust rained down from above.

Jing Zhao lay in a stone coffin sealed away for years. She opened her eyes once more.

The dead woman they had cursed for seventeen years had returned.

-

After her resurrection, Jing Zhao assumed the name Jing Nanji. At first, she only wanted to uncover the truth about what had happened seventeen years ago.

Then she changed her mind.

Nightmare spirits ran rampant, and peace had rotted away. The living had made the world what it was, so the dead would have to return and clean up their mess.

Once, her father had chosen her to be Crown Princess.

Now, she would choose for herself to become the emperor of the Nineteen Provinces.

-

Xiangli Bai was the exception among the court officials.

He had once been a white snake Jing Zhao rescued when she was nine. She fed him and gave him a name.

The white snake took human form and became her bodyguard, her general, and the person in the world least likely to betray her.

So she carefully staged a betrayal, making Xiangli Bai hate and resent her, until he finally killed her with his own hands.

At the moment the Executioner's Sword pierced her heart, Jing Zhao thought her plan had succeeded.

Seventeen years later, she found herself lost in thought before her own empty tomb.

A question:

Why were the words "deceased wife" carved before her name?

She'd wanted him to commit regicide, not become a widower.