You Scoundrel Emperor, You’ve Made My Life Miserable

[Historical + Feel-Good Power Fantasy + Border Army + Transmigration]

Shen Yi’s greatest ambition in life is refreshingly simple: lounge around and wait to die in the flourishing border market he built with his own hands, cuddle a fiery young beauty, gnaw on fragrant lamb legs, and stay alive by playing the fool. He wants to be a carefree young general.

The three biggest dens of indulgence are his safe havens. He’s a master of eating, drinking, and having fun. Loyalty to country and family? Nowhere near as worthwhile as a good cup of hot wine.

But the rotten Great Jing court refuses to let him live in peace. The civil officials and eunuch faction in the capital are too busy fighting among themselves to care that they’re selling out the country. In secret, they collude with the Golden Wolves beyond the frontier. With a hundred thousand cavalrymen bearing down on them, they intend to abandon the Zhenshuo Army and hundreds of thousands of people in the borderlands.

Veteran soldiers who have guarded the frontier for generations cry out with nowhere to turn. His hungry, freezing comrades have no way out. The flourishing border market Shen Yi built with his own hands has become a living hell, and Li Qingcang, the Marquis of Zhenshuo, finds the very heavens over the borderlands closing in on him as the court drives him to his doom.

The sky is falling. The court has abandoned the people at the frontier, and every path to survival is blocked.

At last, the good-for-nothing who used to grin and joke, with his mind full of ways to slack off and have fun, grips his blade.

Not for loyalty to the emperor, nor for service to the country, but for the brothers beside him who would risk their lives for one another, for a meal that will keep them alive, and so they won’t die unjustly beneath the Golden Wolves’ curved blades.

From a lowly soldier who was only passing the time, he is forced to become a fierce frontier warrior with a blade in hand. He fights corrupt officials, unravels conspiracies, and takes command of the Zhenshuo Army. With his streetwise tricks and iron-fisted methods, he battles the decaying Jing court to the bitter end.

As the Central Plains descend into chaos and the realm falls apart, Shen Yi leads the Zhenshuo Army against foreign invaders, pacifies displaced refugees and the people of the borderlands, and wins the people’s hearts. From a frontier warlord, he is pushed by the tides of history, step by step, to the very top.

At last, with the people’s support, he claims the throne and founds a new dynasty. Looking back on the past, Shen Yi can’t help but sigh:

“I only built a border market. How did you end up making me emperor? You’ve really made life hard for me!”