Court Intrigue Is No Match for Becoming Emperor (Nation-Building)

Upcoming novels seeking your support: "My Cold Boss Is Pregnant with My Child" and "Conquering the Entire Galaxy with Mecha." Their blurbs are below.

-

When Shen Shi'an woke up, she had transmigrated to an alternate dynasty.

She had become the daughter of a provincial governor, soon to leave for the capital to take part in the imperial selection.

The good news: she had a System.

The bad news: it was a palace-intrigue System. It left her with the main quest, "Become the ruler of the imperial harem," and warned that if she failed, she would die immediately before it shut down and disappeared.

Shen Shi'an stared in surprise. "... Palace intrigue? Me?"

The people were suffering under crushing taxes, the country was in turmoil, and the dynasty could fall at any moment. What was so fun about palace intrigue when building infrastructure was right there?

In a dynasty ruled by a foolish emperor and useless princes, rather than become someone's concubine, she might as well become a bandit chief herself.

So Shen Shi'an kicked the bandit chief out and took his place, then led her subordinates in developing her own little patch of land.

--

The System went offline, but it kept issuing quests.

To avoid dying, Shen Shi'an had no choice but to find another way to complete them.

System: [Ding! Host, please build up your influence as soon as possible.]

Shen Shi'an became a bandit chief, built up her influence, and completed the quest.

System: [Ding! Host, please raise your status as soon as possible.]

Shen Shi'an conquered another bandit stronghold, raised her status, and completed the quest.

Shen Shi'an looked at the rewards the System gave her for completing quests.

Gold and silver, jewels? Sold. Beauty pills? Sold. Glassmaking techniques? Sold. Porcelain-making techniques? Sold.

In the end, Shen Shi'an stared at the mountain of wealth piled up in her private treasury and fell into thought.

She had people, and she had money. What should she do in a time of chaos?

Of course, recruit soldiers and buy horses.

From a bandit hideout to a county town, then a prefecture, and finally the capital, Shen Shi'an rose step by step from a discarded pawn to an empress and founded her own dynasty.

--

Years later, the System came back online, fully charged, and was horrified to see its heroine on the verge of storming the capital.

The System's voice crackled with panic: [Host! What are you doing?!]

Shen Shi'an remained calm. "Doing the quest."

The System nearly lost power from fright: [The main quest is to become the ruler of the imperial harem. You're about to become the emperor!]

Shen Shi'an: "How does being emperor not make me the ruler of the imperial harem?"

System: ...That actually makes a lot of sense. It couldn't argue with her.

[Reading Guide]

1. One-on-one romance, both leads' first time.

2. The male lead appears very late.

3. The antagonists include both men and women.

4. The dynasty is fictional, with original worldbuilding. Please don't nitpick historical accuracy.

5. Place names are made up at random. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.

6. The System has very little presence and mostly serves as a mascot.

-

The following are blurbs for upcoming novels.

"My Cold Boss Is Pregnant with My Child"

Not gender-bender, normal anatomy.

01

After graduating, Xie Lingyin was drugged by a pursuer. In a daze, she walked into the wrong room and slept with a man, thinking it was just a brief fling.

Not long afterward, at a company meeting, the cold-faced man in a suit at the head of the table matched the hazy face in her memory.

Xie Lingyin: !!!

Her sleepiness vanished in an instant. Had she really slept with that sharp-tongued, picky, utterly inhuman boss everyone talked about, a man good for nothing but his looks?

Remembering how she'd treated her boss like a gigolo, Xie Lingyin nearly choked. Would he make her life miserable at work?

But her boss didn't seem to notice her at all. He just carried on as usual.

Before Xie Lingyin could breathe a sigh of relief, a message from her boss suddenly appeared on Feishu.

He was pregnant, and the baby was hers.

Attached was a medical report.

Xie Lingyin: O.o

What was going on? Could scammers hack Feishu accounts these days?

Once she calmed down, Xie Lingyin immediately reported the account. Scammers these days had no professional standards. Didn't they do any research before trying to trick someone?

Her boss was a man.

She was a woman.

Gu Yanzhou sent the pregnancy report, but waited and waited for a reply from Xie Lingyin. Instead, he received a notification that she had reported him for having a hacked account.

Gu Yanzhou: ???

02:

Gu Yanzhou was a workaholic. Now over thirty, he looked back on his life and found that, aside from money, status, and reputation, he had nothing: no parents, friends, lover, or child. Suddenly, he felt the urge to get married.

After being drugged on a blind date and unexpectedly spending the night with someone, he began feeling worse and worse. He was nauseous, vomiting, sleepy, and weak.

Three months later, he touched his vanished abs and stared at the urine test results, unable to believe his eyes.

He was pregnant.

Well, that was convenient. He'd skipped straight to having a precious child.

Because of the pregnancy, his attention kept being drawn to Xie Lingyin, and he couldn't help following everything about her.

Xie Lingyin noticed that ever since her boss's account had supposedly been hacked, he kept showing up in front of her.

What's more, she noticed that her boss had gained weight. He was young, but already had a beer belly, and his temper was getting worse and worse.

Xie Lingyin: ...What a bizarre man.

She had to find a way to stay away from this strange old man.

When Gu Yanzhou saw that she didn't believe he was pregnant at all and even wanted to quit, he finally panicked and laid it all out: he was pregnant, and she had to take responsibility.

Xie Lingyin: O.o

Was this for real? Had human evolution left her out?

Reading Guide:

1. One-on-one romance, both leads are each other's only ones.

2. Normal anatomy. The male lead can get pregnant because the female lead is a monster (like seahorses, where females lay eggs and males carry the young).

3. The female lead doesn't know she's a monster.

4. The one-night stand happened because both leads were drugged.

5. Age gap: the man is 32, the woman is 22.

"Conquering the Entire Galaxy with Mecha"

Other people transmigrate: slap their enemies in the face, turn their lives around, and reach the peak of success.

Yun Kai transmigrates: a spaceship explodes, bugs infest a desolate planet, and everything goes wrong from the start.

Looking at the spaceship wreckage torn apart by bugs,

Yun Kai decided she could still be saved. Even if she died, she had to die in one piece.

After being rescued, Yun Kai was placed in Star System 91. Penniless and lacking legal identity, she had every disadvantage stacked against her and was about to run out of food.

Yun Kai, heir to a martial arts family and an automatic troublemaking machine who fought wherever she went and gave countless people headaches, returned to her old trade: competitive fighting.

The interstellar world revered the strong, and Yun Kai was right at home. She defeated everyone in Star System 91 and resolved to become the strongest in the galaxy. To do that, she enrolled in a military academy, only to become famous for being illiterate before she could even show off her skills.

At the military academy entrance exam, Yun Kai's score of zero in interstellar history and full marks in Earth history caused an uproar across the Star Network.

[That can't be real... How could someone get full marks in Earth history but zero in interstellar history?]

[It's a publicity stunt! It has to be! The last person to get full marks in Earth history was the last person!]

Yun Kai, the illiterate one: "..."

*

Before a major competition began, the whole Star Network was livestreaming.

[It's really going downhill. Other military academies have nothing but 3S-ranked students, and here we've got an illiterate one, an F-rank weakling, a cripple, and a delinquent who can't focus on their studies. The only decent one is from the countryside.]

[Not one of them can fight. Just waiting for this academy to drop out of the top ten.]

[It's time to reshuffle the top ten military academies.]

Yet in the military academy league, this school not only stayed in the top ten but fought its way into the top three!

During one match, the competition was halfway through when the bugs attacked. The arena fell, and all contact with the outside world was lost. Just as everyone outside believed that none of this year's cadets would survive,

before everyone's eyes, Yun Kai piloted the Marshal's mecha and cut straight through the bug swarm, blazing a path to safety for everyone.

Everyone knew that the Marshal's mecha was the first symbiotic mecha since the beginning of the New Star Calendar, as well as the first super-3S mecha. It could only be piloted by someone with super-3S mental strength, and no one had been able to pilot it since the Marshal's death.

The entire internet erupted.

[Reading Guide]

1. Mecha ensemble cast.

2. A rise-to-the-top story. The female lead isn't the strongest from the start; she grows over time.

3. Once she has grown, the female lead is unquestionably the strongest.

Theme: Where there's hope, miracles can happen.