Chapter 1: Damn the stupidity and mischief!
The northwestern border county of the Great Zhou Dynasty, the Xiguan Palace.
Liu Ziye suddenly opened his eyes.
She remained motionless, staring at the green silk tent with rolled edges and the cloud-carved bed top above her sight for a full minute. It took her almost no effort to accept the fact that she had been reborn and traveled to another completely different world.
With a thought, he curled up his fingers slightly, and his fingertips touched the soft, warm and smooth quilt.
The heat floats between breaths, and the heart beats healthily and strongly in the chest.
Even this body that had suddenly woken up after sleeping for too long, the dizziness and the faint pain that felt like it was about to burst her brain from time to time... all made her feel uncontrollably excited.
The feeling of regaining life almost made Liu Ziye so excited that he burst into tears!
He took a deep breath of fresh air, and just as Liu Ziye's muscles tensed up and he was about to throw off the quilt and jump up—
"Bang!"
A dull sound of flesh and bones colliding with a heavy object pierced the eardrum. Just by listening to the sound, one could tell that the person who was hit must have his skin and flesh torn and his head broken and bleeding.
Liu Ziye, who was immersed in unprecedented joy, felt his hair stand on end and his scalp tingle.
Liu Ziye suppressed his muscle reaction, firmly tucked himself into the quilt, and pretended to be still unconscious.
His hands in the quilt suddenly tightened, pinching his palms until blood came out.
Fortunately, her face was obscured by the bed curtains, and in the shadows, no one noticed. Liu Ziye frowned hard, holding back a splitting headache, concentrating his attention amidst the pounding brain.
"No! Eunuch Liu, the young prince... the young marquis is not dead yet! You can't just bury him with the old prince like this!"
"Not dead?"
Liu Ziye heard a feminine, sharp voice answering from a few feet away from the ebony bed. The speaker's tone was contemptuous: "The imperial physician who accompanied us from Yanjing said that the young marquis has already died. Who do you think you are? You have delayed our important task of recovering the Prince of Xiguan and returning to Yanjing for his report. Do you think you can bear this?"
"No... the young marquis was just, just now, still breathing!"
"Eunuch Liu, we kowtow to you, kowtow to you, please wait a little longer, please wait a little longer? If you seal me in the coffin now, there will be no chance of survival. Isn't that the same as being buried alive?"
For a moment, a series of teeth-grinding banging sounds of people kowtowed were heard on the side near her bed.
Among the voices begging for permission were those of the old and the young, men and women.
"Oh, it's truly incomprehensible. This young marquis was such a foolish and stubborn character in his lifetime, even people like us, far away in Yanjing, have heard of it. You've endured his tyranny for so long, and now that death is imminent, why are you resisting for him and causing yourself more suffering? Furthermore, even if you could hold him back for a moment, if your young marquis truly survives and comes back to life, how long can he protect you? And how can he even remember your kindness?"
Liu Ziye listened quietly while carefully moving his hands and feet in the quilt to restore blood to his limbs.
The old servant of the palace who had taken the lead in kowtowing and begging for mercy just now spoke again. His voice sounded a little weak. It was obvious that he had lost a lot of blood during this period of time and had no strength left.
"Prince Xiguan was kind to us when he was alive. No matter what misdeeds the young marquis may have committed in the past, he is still the master of our Xiguan Marquisate, the only blood relative of Prince Xiguan, and the legitimate grandson of the Emperor Shengzu! How could we possibly commit such a treasonous act?"
However, it is obvious that not everyone is as tough as the old servant who spoke. Instead, they chose to rely on Eunuch Liu and crawl forward to seek a chance of survival.
The old servant's voice was filled with shock and anger. "You, you are the young marquis's personal guard, how can you be so afraid of death? The palace raised you to adulthood, and this is how you repay the King of Xiguan?"
A much younger male voice paused for a moment before replying, "The old prince is dead. If the palace raised me and treated me well, that was the old prince's kindness. What does it have to do with the young marquis? As for our young marquis, his personal guards are nothing. Even you, the steward, are nothing more than a cat or dog for him to toy with and use at will!"
The palace steward seemed to have been touched on a sore spot, and his reply was somewhat halting: "But...but the young marquis is, after all, the old prince's only bloodline. Since he is still alive, no matter what, we cannot do anything that would endanger his life!"
"Perhaps, perhaps, after this catastrophe, the young marquis will have changed his nature when he wakes up...right?"
The old butler spoke in a hollow tone, knowing full well that such words would not even convince himself. The people in the palace were all numb and desolate, knowing full well that their current situation was nothing more than a desperate struggle.
The young marquis's awakening would not bring any benefit to their situation.
Through the thin bed curtains, Liu Ziye tilted his head slightly and looked into the room from the darkness.
In a bedroom roughly thirty to forty square meters, the dozen or so people closest to his bed, some lying or kneeling, all fiercely protecting the bed behind them, were presumably servants of the palace. In front of them, two armored guards, each gripping a sword hilt, surrounded a eunuch holding a whisk, their expressions solemn.
What is even more impossible to ignore is the several rows of guards who are also wearing light armor, lined up in neat rows, and their imposing presence is greater than that of the people.
The bedroom door was open, and occasional cries of alarm could be heard from outside, but they were quickly suppressed. Clearly, this incident had caught everyone in the palace, both inside and outside the bedroom, under control.
At this moment, the servants standing in front of his bed were like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
Before the cold armor and the gleaming blades, they seemed as frail as paper. A silent oppression hung in the air, and the servants breathed heavily, their bodies trembling. They knew that this unequal confrontation was doomed to be a futile struggle, waiting for Eunuch Liu's pitiful patience to run out.
Eunuch Liu took in everyone's expressions. "Haha, it's better to hope that the Prince of Xiguan will be resurrected than to expect a master like this to change his ways." He raised his whisk and ordered, "Leave no one alive."
He didn't intend to let him go no matter whether he begged for mercy or not.
After all, they are just a group of slaves who have lost the protection of their master and are like ants.
Liu Ziye was under the sheets and tried to lift his arms.
Okay, you can move now.
All of a sudden, the room was filled with the sound of ping-pong, accompanied by the sound of human bodies being hit and falling to the ground or against the wall.
Someone approached his bed step by step.
Liu Ziye calculated the timing perfectly. When the man bent down and stretched out his arm, he suddenly opened his eyes again, looked at him coldly, and grinned slightly.
"Ahhh what the hell!"
A scream shook the house, and the person who came in fell back and sat on the ground.
The chaos in the room suddenly stopped due to this sudden change.
Liu Ziye then threw back the quilt and sat down on the edge of the bed with swift movements.
As far as the eye could see, apart from the eunuch crawling backwards to escape, there were also every sword-wielding guard and servant in the palace who subconsciously took a step back.
Before Liu Ziye woke up, the system that bound her to the time travel talked to her about the task she needed to perform.
The system said that her mission was to save the Great Zhou Dynasty, which had perished after the second generation, and become the greatest emperor of all time on this continent.
Originally, she thought that the mission of becoming an emperor, or rebelling to become an emperor, sounded like pure fun. However, if it could gain her the health, status, and money that she never had but desperately desired, and the system sounded experienced and not simple, it might be worth a try.
After all, she had no other choice at the time, right? She had to cling to a glimmer of hope first.
But now...
Liu Ziye gritted his teeth secretly.
Damn, the original owner was such a jerk! More importantly, she was about to be wiped out just at the beginning!
All that remained in Liu Ziye's mind were a few sentences that kept repeating over and over again: the foolish, naughty, and notorious young marquis disguised as a man, the desolate and barren fiefdom that could face a riot at any moment, the current emperor who constantly wanted to kill him, and his various lackeys...
The system obviously selectively concealed some facts. Apart from that, she had no idea what other pitfalls were waiting for her.
Rebel and become emperor.
Just based on this?
Very good, very good, she even wanted to lift the roof!
Some things, when you never have them, you may gradually become numb and accustomed to them.
But if you wait too long and are granted pleasure, enjoying it for a moment, you will have to watch it being taken away again...
Dark emotions surged like boiling magma, ready to erupt. Her fingers trembled slightly, and her eyes burned with not only anger but also a kind of resentment bordering on despair. However, her past life's experience had conditioned her to never lose control and to always maintain a well-behaved and sensible smile.
She allowed herself to smile warmly.
The face was androgynous, with long eyebrows, bright eyes, a high nose bridge, a delicate and slightly raised nose bridge, and thin lips curved into a perfect arc. Due to long-term bed rest, the lips had an unhealthy blue color.
His eyes were as dark as a deep pool, yet he was smiling softly.
This strange scene made everyone present feel their hearts skip a beat.
Many of the guards from Yanjing were seeing the notorious young marquis for the first time. It was once rumored that this youngest grandson of the Holy Ancestor bore a striking resemblance to the founding emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. Now, it seemed the rumors were indeed true!
The imperial physician cried out in a trembling voice, "Impossible... Clearly, half a quarter of an hour ago, the young prince... no, the young marquis, was already dead! I can't be wrong, I can't be wrong!"
How come he sat up so strangely and horrifically in the blink of an eye?
There was a loud "clang--creak--" sound.
The wooden door and windows were blown open by the strong wind from outside, and cold air poured in.
The dazzling sunlight outside the window made Liu Ziye's pupils shrink slightly. The cold wind blew her thin clothes into her body, scraping her skin all over, causing pain like a frozen knife.
Liu Ziye narrowed his eyes.
Well, it feels so good to be alive.
She really...really didn't want to die again.
Her pupils suddenly contracted, making her gaze look extremely cold, but Liu Ziye himself seemed unaware.
A moment.
Liu Ziye walked back and forth in the unknown pool of emotions, his brow furrowed in concentration and curiosity as he scanned the faces of every stunned person in the room. He shouted in bewilderment and extreme surprise, "Hey, what's going on?"
After he finished speaking, the people in the room took another step back in fear.
A steward of the palace, his face covered in blood, was crawling on the ground, but with his eyes wide open, he was crawling towards him with difficulty.
"Young Marquis? Young Marquis! Are you awake?"
On the ebony cloud bed, Liu Ziye was wearing a clean white inner garment and his hair was neatly arranged. It was obvious that a servant cleaned and tidied it up every day.
At present, most of the maids and housekeepers and servants in the palace were indeed as they had just shown. Even though the original owner was stupid and naughty, they still diligently took good care of the sleeping and impoverished young marquis.
Liu Ziye turned his gaze away from the old butler's face, which was extremely miserable and eager, as if he had been saved from a desperate situation.
She ignored the old housekeeper's call, leaning on her arms for support, and slowly rose from the bedstead. She clasped her hands behind her back, and without boots, she stepped haltingly across the cold ground.
His gaze fixed on the leading eunuch, who was still lying on the ground, pale and bloodless from shock, he smiled and said, "Why? After all, I am also a descendant of the Holy Ancestor's royal family, a marquis of a prefecture in the Great Zhou Dynasty. You guys don't even know how to salute a marquis of the current dynasty?"
After he finished speaking, Liu Ziye looked at the colorful expressions on their faces with admiration, raised his eyebrows to signal, and then stood there waiting.
The tone of her voice was so natural and calm, and her aura was so strong.
The horrified and stunned guards from Yanjing finally came to their senses, and someone immediately stepped forward, intending to help up the eunuch Liu who was lying on the ground.
As he stumbled to his feet, Eunuch Liu spoke in a trembling voice, "You...you...are actually still alive? And you even know about being demoted to a marquis?"
Liu Ziye naturally would not answer his question.
She simply leaned forward slightly, her eyes coldly observing everything before her. At the very moment the guard bent down and lifted Eunuch Liu up, she, seemingly indifferent yet serious, drew a long sword from the guard's waist with a "swish".
As if playing with it, he pointed the tip of the sword directly at Eunuch Liu's neck, which was exposed during his struggle.
Her movements were so casual that even if the guards in the back row saw it, they would never have imagined that such a sword could cause such damage in her hands.
Until the next moment——
The splattered blood covered the guard's outstretched hands like ink.
It drips and drizzles on the ground.
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