[Proud but amnesiac empress x food-loving, retirement-minded, beautiful and tragic eunuch male lead]
After being castrated and entering the palace, Liang Huailing had always been cautious and kept a low profile.
Having worked his way up from a lowly eunuch to his current position as a junior eunuch and supervisor of the Directorate of Palace Attendants, he had no lofty ambitions in life and no particular desire for fame or fortune.
He had only two hobbies in life.
One was good food.
The other was beautiful scenery.
He had been in the palace for nearly ten years. At last, he received permission to leave and return to his hometown once he turned twenty-five.
For this, Liang Huailing scrimped and saved, bought a plot of land in the countryside, and planned to retire to his roots.
*
After eagerly waiting for the day before his birthday, he handed in his seal of office and packed his bags.
That night, however, a palace coup broke out.
As he knelt in submission before his new ruler in the main hall, he suddenly heard a voice he had yearned for over a decade.
"Raise your head."
He lifted his eyes in a daze, unable to believe it, surrounded by the other palace attendants.
The ruler seated high above the court, the emperor he would serve from now on, was none other than Zhou Jiang, the woman to whom he had been betrothed when he had placed third in the imperial examinations.
When they were young, they had talked about riding through life together, and about governing the country and shaping its future.
Proud and bright-eyed, she possessed formidable authority and strength. She was both familiar and strange, the woman in his heart.
But he was no longer the gifted scholar worthy of her.
The passing years had worn away his life.
The shifting shadows had erased his ambition.
He was nothing...
Just a palace servant who wanted to leave the palace and return to his hometown.
* A real eunuch
* In this setting, both men and women can hold official positions; other details are modeled on the Ming dynasty
* The female lead has amnesia; the female lead is not a virgin, while the male lead is
Blurb updated May 13, 2024.
Theme: An independent, self-reliant woman can claim all under heaven
