This winter was especially cold. On the evening of the Winter Solstice, a day for family reunions, a heavy snow fell upon the capital. Everyone hurried home to be with their families before the entire city turned into a blanket of white, and by nightfall there was hardly anyone left on the streets.
The Liu household, however, was remarkably desolate on such a festive occasion. The reason was simple: the Liu family’s young master was to be married off tomorrow. Grand Tutor Liu had opposed this match from the very beginning, but the young master was stubborn, and after grandfather and grandson had a huge fight, no one dared touch that sore subject again.
When Liu Miqing opened his eyes, he saw a boy holding a set of bright red wedding clothes, muttering to himself. Somewhat puzzled, he asked, “Where am I?”
The boy looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, and spoke in a soft, gentle voice: “Young Master, what kind of question is that?”
“Young Master?” Liu Miqing grew even more confused. He looked at the boy, then at the clothes on his own body, and a guess surfaced in his mind. To confirm it, he asked the boy, “Who are you?”
The boy froze. It took his mind two passes over the question before he understood, and anxiety rose to his face. “Young Master, do you refuse to acknowledge even me? I” He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Liu Miqing frowning, immediately shut his mouth, and answered obediently, “It’s me, Zhichun, Young Master.”
Zhichun?
Hearing that name, Liu Miqing could almost confirm his suspicion, but to be safe, he pointed at himself and asked a second question: “Then who am I?”
At this question, the anxiety on Zhichun’s face gradually gave way to confusion. He hesitated. “You are my master” Then, seeing Liu Miqing’s brow furrow even tighter, he quickly corrected himself, “You are the youngest son of Grand Tutor Liu.”
Liu Miqing nodded, and his brow relaxed a little.
Judging by the current situation, if he wasn’t mistaken, he had probably transmigrated into a book. This sort of thing was common in novels, so it happening to him didn’t seem all that strange?
And the book he had transmigrated into was a so-called “sweet romance” he had once read online, titled The Realm as My Dowry.
In the original plot, the shou was a tragic beauty of pitiable origins who, after many twists and turns, was placed beside the gong as a spy, becoming the unsetting white moonlight in the gong’s heart. The two loved each other dearly and even had a little child. Then one day, the beautiful shou suddenly vanished. Heartbroken, the gong searched desperately for him, and in the end won the throne and reclaimed his beloved a happy ending, one might say, worthy of celebration.
However, all of the preceding plot had nothing whatsoever to do with Liu Miqing, because by the standard formula, he must have transmigrated into a character with the same or a similar name as his own. Only one person in the book fit that condition and that person was not the beautiful shou.
The original author played dirty: tagged as a sweet romance, yet lacing the sugar with poison this was, in fact, a scum-gong-and-doormat-shou story.
The scum gong, so devastated by loss that he never even fought for the throne and spent his days pining for his white moonlight, met a doormat shou who looked somewhat like the beautiful shou amid one disappointment after another and from then on began tormenting him, breaking both his body and his heart.