Being a Substitute Is the Greatest Blessing a Couch Potato Could Ask For

A shameless, carefree, fallen prince who plays the spoiled stand-in x a true old-school authoritarian emperor who can't help himself because the prince is just too beautiful and has him completely hooked

★ Jiang Shiyi was born and raised in the Cold Palace. He had never met anyone else, only his mother, who had fallen out of favor and been mercilessly banished there. She would occasionally lose her mind, spending all day reminiscing about the days when she had been doted on and lived in splendor.

Growing up surrounded by this, Jiang Shiyi developed a very simple worldview:

If you're born a person, you have to marry someone powerful and rich.

If they can't be powerful, they absolutely have to be rich.

And if they don't even have money,

then you might as well die.

★ So when the country fell and he and his mother were released from the Cold Palace, Jiang Shiyi was overjoyed to be offered to the new emperor as a replacement for the former crown prince, the only surviving imperial prince.

A good life, with power and money, was finally within reach!

What? The former crown prince was the new emperor's unattainable white moonlight?

And Jiang Shiyi was just a pitiful stand-in being used by others?

Jiang Shiyi was made a noble consort and lounged in a luxurious bedroom built of gold. He could grab a handful of gold ingots to play with whenever he liked, and all he had to do was open his mouth for a beautiful maid to feed him peeled lychees.

You call that pitiful?

Let this poor, pitiful man go on living this pitiful life.

Unfortunately, the good times didn't last. The former crown prince was still alive, and now he had returned!

The new emperor was going to marry him and make him empress!

Countless people waited to see the miserable end of Jiang Shiyi, a stand-in playboy who cared for nothing but food, drink, and amusement.

Jiang Shiyi had already made off with all the gold and silver. He took along the newly appointed top graduate, who was so bewitched by him that he would die for him and refused to marry anyone else, and headed to Jiangnan. There, he started an even better life, surrounded by wealth and beautiful people.

If you've got money, you're the lady of the house wherever you go, aren't you?

★ When Yuwen Zheng was still the heir to the Duke of Dingguo, the emperor tried to win him over by offering him the crown prince in marriage. Yuwen Zheng refused outright and went to the border instead.

By the time Yuwen Zheng rebelled and ascended the throne, somehow the story had spread that the former crown prince was the unattainable love of his life, and had once deeply humiliated him.

Unfortunately, the crown prince was dead.

Some busybody dragged the Eleventh Prince out of the Cold Palace to curry favor with him.

Yuwen Zheng had a headache. He had planned to send the boy away, figuring that the Eleventh Prince had spent his whole life confined to the Cold Palace and knew nothing of the world. He could simply be housed somewhere remote and given plenty of good food and drink.

Who could have guessed that this former Eleventh Prince knew more than anyone?

He had one clumsy, childish, laughable ploy after another to flatter the emperor and compete for his favor. Even making him a noble consort and showering him with daily rewards wasn't enough; he dared to ask for the imperial seal, too. Yuwen Zheng's headache only worsened, and he considered sending him away.

But the Eleventh Prince was truly beautiful, and Yuwen Zheng's care only made him more so. After the exhaustion of state affairs, a few more glances at that face were enough to lift his spirits.

Yuwen Zheng also wanted to see what other tricks he might come up with.

He never imagined Jiang Shiyi would be so bold as to run away!

Not only did he escape, but when Yuwen Zheng found him, Jiang Shiyi had his officially appointed top graduate in his arms and was calling him his new husband!

Yuwen Zheng looked at the baby in Jiang Shiyi's arms, supposedly fathered by the top graduate, but identical to him, and sneered:

"Am I blind or stupid?!"

Jiang Shiyi thought, very quietly: Aren't you, though?

1. One-on-one romance. The receiver and the top graduate did not get married.

2. The premise is the premise. The blurb and title may still be revised before the novel officially starts posting.

Theme: No matter what circumstances you find yourself in, never give up on yourself. The light that belongs to you is just ahead.