You’ve Really Made Life Miserable for Me, Your Majesty [Interstellar]

Bai Cixing is the illegitimate son of a minor rural noble family, a nobody who lives like a ghost. The only bright spot in his life was marrying a gentle, refined teacher who came to the countryside to teach.

He thought he would spend the rest of his life in quiet contentment.

Until one day, the Empire's mecha forces descended in numbers that blotted out the sky, their silver-gray metal sheen swallowing the heavens. They swept through like locusts, and even the silly rabbits his husband had raised for him were not spared.

Bai Cixing huddled, trembling, in the depths of the cellar, with only one thought in his mind: His husband was still outside teaching. He must not come back.

Then he saw his husband emerge from the smoke. His human skin fell away like clothing, and his handsome, gentle face, always touched with a smile, split open to reveal countless insectoid compound eyes. He was utterly transformed.

With a single sweep of his hand, he tore the entire mecha force apart. Blood soaked the courtyard dirt until it turned a dark red, and severed limbs rolled to the cellar entrance, landing an inch from Bai Cixing's fingertips.

Bai Cixing was petrified.

Amid the mountains of corpses and sea of blood, he watched his husband slowly turn around. His voice was still as gentle as ever: "Did I scare you?"

Only then did Bai Cixing realize that his husband was the world-destroying villain who slaughtered entire star systems in a novel about transmigrating into a book.

And he himself was the only surviving heir of the Imperial family, lost outside the palace.

[An unconventional couch potato / coming of age / redemption / a touch of ensemble cast / serious drama / family, friendship, romance, and teacher-student bonds]

*Neither the gong nor the shou is human, and they belong to different species.

Theme: Finding a way to break free from the tug-of-war between ideals and reality