The Young Emperor and Empress, an Old Married Couple

*Saving a spot for a forthcoming novel: a rental-room-style school story, "Please Don't Worry," about dreams growing in a tiny, shabby home | living-under-the-same-roof trope | a top student who dropped out, hides in a small town, and gives up on herself while repeating her final year VS a physical-training student and delinquent who has turned over a new leaf to make a final push in senior year. Full blurb at the end.

*This novel's blurb: two formidable, pampered troublemakers | three-year age gap | a teasing, flirtatious male lead | supernatural beings and strange phenomena. (The novel is complete and has entered VIP status. Thank you all for your support!)

*An otherworldly, unconventional, ruthless female saint x a golden-child aristocrat, an enchanting and manipulative charmer with no sense of restraint (a princess of a fallen kingdom x a former-dynasty young lord)

*A story about idealists. There are times when people defy fate, and Heaven never leaves people without a way out.

*No political scheming, little revenge, and plenty of wild imagination and nonsense throughout. Lighthearted! Happy ending.

I. Long ago, she was thirteen and he was sixteen.

The young prodigy and the little beauty were still children, yet their lives had already been promised to each other.

Childhood sweethearts, envied by every couple.

He casually peeled out a sliver of bamboo, held it in the corner of his mouth, and leaned back with his hands behind his head as he turned to wait for her. "Looks like we'll have to stay together for the rest of our lives. You won't get sick of me, will you?"

The girl still had a child's innocence on her face, but her reply sounded very grown-up. "I suppose I can put up with you, Second Brother."

II. But then, who could have expected war to break out?

The two of them were forced apart.

Yet when he came of age, he rode three horses to death rushing back from Beiting to Xiao Chong Mountain.

He saw the girl, looking just as exhausted, standing crookedly amid mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, blood at the corner of her mouth, eyes half-closed as she gave a bitter smile.

The crimson on the curved blade in her hand was still dripping in thin streams.

Her lips seemed to say, "Well, damn me."

?…

The young man had not even removed his armor. He quickly turned away to hide his reddened eyes, and a low scoff escaped his throat.

It sounded more like a sigh of relief.

"It's been years, and you still don't know how to greet people."

Years had passed, and she had already died once. A crescent-shaped scar now ran from the corner of her right eye to her cheekbone, and a shallow scar slanted across the bridge of her nose, not yet healed.

Her long hair was tied high. Her delicate face now held a hint of ferocity, and a careless glance made her seem even more ruthless.

Years had passed, and he had become half a cripple, too.

III. Now, dear readers, the story is finally about to begin.

Everyone says the current empress has submitted to an immortal master.

In her first year, she shot hawks a thousand miles away. In her second, she chased birds along sheer cliffs. In her third, she commanded countless ghosts and spirits.

She cracks her whip in the wind, and neither gods nor Buddhas can stop her.

They also say the Prince of Beiting submitted to the northern steppe at eighteen, then drove the barbarians back more than seven hundred li.

He captured five kings, forced six nations to retreat, and fought until his eyes turned red.

But no one mentions that the wayward young lord everyone talks about has grown frail, coughing every other step.

The Prince of Beiting weakly waved to the handsome figure ahead. "Wait for me. You might get hurt when the fighting starts."

She raised a hand, removed the red cord tying up her hair, and wound it tightly around her wrist. Four talismans were tucked between her fingers. With a proud smile, she said, "It's fine, Prince Qi. I'll protect you."

The girl turned around and snapped her fingers. A row of shifty-looking little ghosts burst into view behind her.

"Anyone who eavesdrops is a ghost!"

The ghosts: "…"

In short: The empress and emperor travel incognito. It's goofy and brainless, and the world works however the author says it does.

*Without faith, without God, nothing is forbidden.

(Blurb screenshot dated 2024.10.28)

^The school-story relay blurb:

*A rental-room-style story, dreams growing in a tiny, shabby home | living-under-the-same-roof trope

*A top student who dropped out, hides in a small town, and gives up on herself while repeating her final year VS a physical-training student and delinquent who has turned over a new leaf to make a final push in senior year

*People-pleasing personality x avoidant personality

Luo Yuanfang: You're a top student? And that's all you scored?

Does that even sound like something a person would say?

Zheng Ce returns the favor: You're a full-on underachiever? And you got every multiple-choice question right?

A story about a top student and a bottom-of-the-class student pretending not to know each other in class and telling everyone to stay away, then going home and acting like loving classmates.

(I)

Zheng Ce never expected to run into an old classmate while repeating a year,

let alone that jerk who had shared her exact name back in elementary school.

The first time she met her old classmate, he seemed to carry the scent of mountains and forests.

Like a dense green canopy shrouded in mist.

Fresh, untouched by the smoke and bustle of the world.

But when she established her image in class by claiming she'd just gotten out of jail,

her old classmate immediately chimed in, perfectly in sync: "We were cellmates!"

Cellmates my ass.

The cellmate's lackey then looked at her with the envious admiration of someone whose brain wasn't quite working right:

No wonder you adults are so impressive!

Zheng Ce glanced at him, wanting to say something but stopping herself.

At least she'd only be studying there for a year and a half.

But she never expected a year and a half to be long enough for these people to leave indelible marks on her heart.

(II)

Luo Yuanfang thought this girl made life far too difficult for herself.

Her eyes were dark and bright, and her silence was like a moonless night.

But when she smiled, her eyes curved, as if a stone had been tossed into a deep pool.

Ripples spread through the stillness and brokenness.

He thought,

Sooner or later, he'd have to pry her mouth open.

"Keeping too many things bottled up will stunt your growth."

But when Zheng Ce called him, struggling to keep her emotions in check, he was the first to lose control.

"I kind of miss you."

"If you miss me, come downstairs. I'll take you home."

Inside the little home that belonged to the two of them.

For a moment, they lost control after drinking.

Luo Yuanfang pinned her beneath him, unreasonable and red-eyed as he demanded:

"Don't you like me? You can't just decide you don't want me again."

#The most important stages of a Chinese person's life: elementary school, middle school, high school, and university

#Energetic old people, exhausted middle-aged people, and lifeless young people

#The leads had the same name in elementary school, after which the male lead changed his name. The book starts in their second year of high school, with no lengthy flashbacks interwoven.

#Everything in this story is fictional, though some place names are based on real ones. If you drop the novel, please don't tell me.

Blurb screenshot dated 2025.4.5

Theme: Seek eternal life in the face of certain death