Climbing the Heavenly Ladder [Matriarchy]

Male lead's perspective: When Xi Zhaozhao was six, his mother sold him into the palace for a string of cash, and he became the lowest-ranking servant in the laundry. There was always more work than he could finish and never enough food. He spent fifteen years hunched over, just hoping to leave the palace and marry into a decent family. But his increasingly beautiful appearance ultimately changed the course of his life. He crossed paths with the Sixth Princess, who had left the palace in disguise. Young and inexperienced, he couldn't resist her exquisite beauty. A few sweet words made up for a lifetime without love, and he flew toward that dazzling flame like a moth. Even at the very end, as she conquered every part of him, he foolishly asked, “Could you give me a title, even if I'm not your principal consort?” Later, he recognized the pomegranate-red undergarments she wore. They were made from fabric he had carefully washed himself. So the Sixth Princess already had a whole retinue of consorts, and he was nothing more than a diversion in her dull, monotonous life. Later, she took a principal consort, accepted secondary consorts, and ascended the throne. More and more people surrounded her, but she never gave him an official title. She made him a palace servant in the Imperial Study, attending to ink and brushes. The number of times all the consorts in the imperial harem had been summoned to her bed, according to the palace records, wasn't even as high as the number of times he and she had fooled around in the Imperial Study. He didn't dare fall in love with someone he could never reach, so he could only seal away his heart and watch coldly as the consorts in her harem competed for favor. Later, as his youth faded and his beauty withered, he unexpectedly rose to become The Outcast at the age of forty, second only to the empress and above everyone else. Looking back on his life, the best years of his first half were spent bearing the mockery of climbing the ladder to power, while in the second half he became the emperor's consort, the father of the realm. An emperor's affections are truly impossible to fathom. In short: a story about a scumbag woman who reaches middle age, finds the imperial throne lonely, and finally realizes that the most sincere person by her side is Xi Zhaozhao, whom she's always looked down on. She then settles down and helps him rise to the position of principal consort. The heroine is not a virgin, the hero is. There is palace intrigue, and the heroine truly has a harem. The ending is one-on-one. Character setup: humble palace servant male lead × scummy female emperor heroine. The heroine was born and raised in an imperial family in a matriarchal society. She's genuinely awful early on, though perhaps not exactly awful: she's a person of her time, rich and powerful, and has no need to restrain herself. Theme: Hold on until the clouds part and the moon shines through.