Grand Imperial Preceptor, Please Behave Yourself [Gender Bender]

[The female lead has no j, but she isn't intersex either. This will be explained in the story.]

As the only female national preceptor in the Nine Provinces, Hua Zhao's Shi Luojin was best known not for her breathtaking beauty, but for her extraordinary skill at reading the stars and foreseeing the world, bringing good fortune and averting disaster.

People said she was an immortal descended to earth, able to understand the heavens and the earth, yin and yang, and capable of anything. Through her own efforts, she had brought the state of Huazhao to an unprecedented golden age.

The Sacred Emperor respected her. She stood above all others, revered by the people. She was practically divine.

Yet no one knew that Shi Luojin only wanted to be above one person.

**

In the nineteenth year of the Shian era

The old emperor, on his deathbed, entrusted his heir to Shi Mujin, who assumed it would be another prince or nobleman currently in the spotlight.

But the eunuch brought her the son of an abandoned concubine from the cold palace, Jun Shi, whom she had met once before.

The old emperor wept as he admitted he had wronged the boy, asking Shi Luojin to protect him and grant him a life of peace once the Crown Prince ascended the throne.

Seated upright on her lofty chair, Shi Luojin gazed coldly at the frail boy. She watched the fear in his eyes become impossible to hide, and saw the surging hatred in his gaze...

She raised an interested brow. A little wild cub pretending to be obedient!

How hard could raising a child be?

And yet

In the first month, the boy making her bed lowered his eyes and asked, all pitiful, whether she disliked him.

In the third month, the boy making tea accidentally scalded his hand. He tried to hide it, but deliberately lifted his sleeve to show her his slender, delicate arm.

In the sixth month, at the Crown Prince's wedding, the drunken boy took her finger into his mouth and looked up at her with an innocent yet alluring gaze.

A year later, Shi Luojin stood on the observatory, incense smoke curling through the room. Looking down, she saw the boy, now just past eighteen, serving her with lowered eyes, his sheer robes fluttering in the breeze.

"What do you want?"

On the soft couch, their dark hair entwined. Tears dampened one corner of the boy's eyes, but his gaze was resolute. His words broke apart amid their movement: "I... want... the right to assist in governing."

Shi Luojin bit his crimson lips and gave him what he wanted.

But when she first began to fall from her divine perch, the man who had pulled her down into the mortal world stood in the golden palace hall.

At the foot of the steps, his eyes held the coldness common to the imperial family. His once-bright red lips parted, and he spoke with unmistakable distance:

"National Preceptor, please conduct yourself with dignity!"

Shi Luojin looked at the slender waist beneath the new Regent's python robe. She approached step by step, then leaned over him. All warmth disappeared from her smile, leaving only layers of desire. In an instant, she had bound him across the imperial desk.

"Conduct myself with dignity? Ha. Your Highness, I never have. Why don't you teach me?"

Shi Luojin had never fallen from her divine perch. If she wished, she could climb back to the top, for that altar... was one she had built, block by block, herself.

"The same goes for Your Highness's throne."

I can help you build your tower high, and I can make you fall from it.

Jun Shi was born in the cold palace. His father did not love him, his mother did not like him, and he suffered constant abuse. He hated the palace that imprisoned him and the throne that ruled over all beneath the heavens.

He had no interest in power, but only by standing at the very top could he make sure every contemptible person who had bullied him met a miserable end.

Perhaps fate had decided he wasn't meant to die. His mother regained the emperor's favor, and the old emperor, whose conscience had finally stirred, entrusted him to the young female national preceptor, whose reputation was rising fast.

She was as cold and aloof as the rumors claimed, without desire or emotion. She taught him strategy, poetry, prose, and music, rescued him from the cruel ways of the world, and taught him everything a prince should know. She was strict, but at least she never abused him maliciously.

The old emperor's health declined day by day, and the princes fought each other to the death.

Jun Shi had no particular talent, only the stunning face he had inherited from his mother.

To achieve his goal, he abandoned all sense of shame, finding new ways every day to tempt Shi Luojin. After a whole year with nothing to show for it, he was ready to be despised and cast aside.

But he never expected that the last time he steeled himself, in a room filled with spirit banners, the woman who had never once looked him in the eye would pull him into her arms and pin him beneath her, asking in a hoarse voice, "What do you want?"

But after finally getting what he wanted, Jun Shi happened to hear people outside slandering and cursing Shi Luojin. He covered his body, marked all over with red, and endured the pain as he resolutely dodged the woman's outstretched hand.

"National Preceptor, please conduct yourself with dignity! You mustn't let my filthy, tainted body stain your spotless, jade-like reputation."

But things were nothing like he had imagined.

Later, Jun Shi gave the servants who had spread those rumors a few dozen strokes of the cane.

He had no choice. Their rumors had tormented him day and night. If things went on like this, he might die before those wretches did.

P.S. She's a national preceptor. Knowing a few tricks to summon wind and rain is perfectly normal.

2. This is the second revision of the blurb. Before, the male lead was supposed to be the emperor, but that role came with too many restrictions, making him hard to "train."

3. The male lead dislikes power, even hates it. He'll give up everything for his goal, including himself.

4. The female lead is very possessive. Yes, really very possessive... the pathological kind.

5. The male lead speaks his mind.

Theme: If you have great ambitions, why not rise ninety thousand miles into the clouds?