The Empress Wants to Conquer Ye Xuan

Changmen Palace.

The originally desolate palace suddenly became lively.

Ranks of golden-armored guards surrounded the dilapidated courtyard so tightly that not a drop of water could leak through. Several palace maids holding incense and brocade robes filed in.

"An oral decree from Her Majesty!"

The leading female official shouted in a shrill voice, "Concubine Ye, receive the decree! Her Majesty pities your loneliness and has granted you the special grace of serving her in bed tonight! Hurry up, bathe, change your clothes, and follow me to Weiyang Palace!"

Ye Xuan, who was in the courtyard watering a crooked tree, suddenly froze.

He looked up at the female official—the very same one who had once forced him to jump into a cesspit—and the smile in his eyes instantly vanished.

It was this routine again.

This same condescending charity.

"I'm not going," Ye Xuan said calmly, putting down the water dipper.

The female official sneered, "Master Ye, it's not up to you this time. Her Majesty said that tonight, even if we have to tie you up, we will tie you to the dragon bed! Men, get him!"

Several strong, burly old maids immediately rolled up their sleeves and pounced forward like ravenous wolves and tigers.

"Let's see who dares!"

Ye Xuan suddenly shouted, turning around and running.

But he didn't run outside the palace, nor did he hide inside the house.

Like a frightened rabbit, he bolted straight to the corner of the courtyard, right next to the foul-smelling latrine.

That was the dirtiest, smelliest place in all of Changmen Palace.

"Don't come any closer!"

Ye Xuan stood with one foot on the edge of the cesspit, pinching his nose with one hand, while using the other to spread his bedding over the muddy ground next to it. He shouted:

"Whoever dares to come over, I'll jump in! I dared to jump last time, and I dare to do it again!"

"Furthermore..."

He pointed at the bedding on the ground, his eyes resolute and wild:

"From today on, I'm living right here! Eating, drinking, sleeping—I'll stay right by this cesspit!"

"Didn't you want to wash me clean and send me to that female emperor? Fine! I will make myself reek to high heaven! I will make myself filthy to the bone!"

"Let's see if she wants a fragrant male pet, or a stinking man covered in feces and urine!"

The crowd was dumbfounded.

The old maids who were originally ready to grab him caught a whiff of the stench drifting on the wind. One by one, they covered their noses and backed away, their faces full of disgust and nausea.

Crazy.

This man was completely crazy.

To avoid serving in bed, to escape that devastatingly beautiful empress, he would actually rather keep company with a cesspit?

The news was reported back to the Imperial Study.

Smash!

This time, Wu Lingxiao directly flipped over her entire imperial desk.

Precious memorials scattered all over the floor. Her breathtakingly beautiful face was now covered in a frosty glaze and twisted with disbelief.

"Ugh..."

Just hearing the palace servants' report, hearing words like cesspit and smell of feces and urine, Wu Lingxiao, who was a severe germaphobe, felt her stomach churn. She was so disgusted she almost threw up.

"Bastard! You absolute bastard!!"

She roared hysterically, her voice so piercing it nearly shattered the roof:

"He would rather sleep next to a toilet than sleep by my side?"

"Am I a vicious beast? Am I a plague? I actually can't compare to a cesspit?"

This was a humiliation.

This was the greatest humiliation since the founding of the Great Xia Immortal Dynasty!

She, a majestic Tribulation-stage Empress, the supreme sovereign, had actually lost a contest of charm to a pile of shit!

"Fine... You have a backbone, do you? You think you're so noble?"

Wu Lingxiao laughed out of extreme anger, her laughter eerie and terrifying:

"Since you like suffering so much, I will let you suffer to your heart's content!"

"Pass down my decree! Cut off all supplies to Changmen Palace!"

"Spirit stones, pills, spirit rice... cut them all off! Don't even send him good mortal food! Every day, only give him two moldy steamed buns and a bowl of cold water!"

"I want to see if he can still stand tough guarding that cesspit when he's too starved to even crawl, and when his cultivation can't progress a single inch!"

Once the imperial decree was issued, life in Changmen Palace instantly became unlivable.

The few low-grade spirit stones Ye Xuan used to receive every month were gone.

The meals, which used to be coarse but filling, turned into sour slop and black steamed buns as hard as bricks.

Even the originally thin spiritual energy around Changmen Palace was forcibly drained away by an array set up by Wu Lingxiao's men.

This place had completely become a dead zone.

Ye Xuan's cultivation speed went from a snail's pace to a complete standstill.

Without spiritual energy for nourishment and without food to replenish his strength, his face visibly wasted away. His originally well-fitting green robes now hung loosely on his body; a gust of wind seemed enough to blow him over.

Yet, he still did not beg for mercy.

He broke the two blackened steamed buns into pieces and chewed them bit by bit, refusing to waste even a single crumb.

Without spiritual energy, he practiced body cultivation. He performed a set of Taizu Long Fist he had learned from the mortal realm in the courtyard. Even when he was left panting and drenched in sweat, he found joy in it.

In the dead of night.

A crescent moon hung high in the sky.

Uncle Fu looked at Ye Xuan, who had grown so thin he was almost unrecognizable, and shed tears of heartache.

He pulled out a long-hidden egg from his robes—one he had secretly salvaged from the slop buckets of the Imperial Kitchen.

"Eat it, child."

Uncle Fu pressed the egg into Ye Xuan's hands, his voice choking with emotion. "Don't hold out anymore. Really, don't hold out."

"I've been in the inner palace for so many years, my eyes are sharp. Her Majesty... she has truly taken a liking to you."

Uncle Fu sighed. "She's breaking a falcon. As long as you bow your head, even if you don't say anything soft, as long as you stop fighting her like this, she will give you anything."

Ye Xuan peeled the egg, carefully split half of it for Uncle Fu, and then placed the remaining half into his mouth as if it were a precious treasure.

"Uncle Fu, I'm not hungry."

He said with a smile. Although his smile seemed a bit desolate due to his emaciation, his eyes were still as bright as stars.

"You fool..."

Uncle Fu stamped his foot in anxiety. "What are you after? You're imprisoned here for life. You can't go out, and you can't see outsiders. What's the point of guarding your body?"

"Do you really plan to take this body of primal yang into the coffin?"

Uncle Fu pointed at the four high walls. "This is the imperial palace. There is no love here, no future. Wouldn't it be better to give up your first time in exchange for wealth, glory, and a comfortable life?"

Ye Xuan swallowed the last bite of the egg and fell silent for a long time.

He looked up at the broken moon, his voice very light, yet crystal clear:

"Uncle Fu, I know there is no love here."

"I also know that perhaps I will never meet a girl who makes my heart flutter in this lifetime."

"But..."

Ye Xuan turned his head, looked at Uncle Fu, and said earnestly:

"Living in this world, a person must have some principles to hold onto."

"If, just for a few spirit stones and a few good bites of food, I have to curry favor with someone I dislike, or even loathe, and hand over my most precious possession..."

"Then what difference is there between me and the walking corpses within these palace walls?"

He pointed at his own chest:

"If I just live my life like this—pure and clean—that's also fine."

"At least, whenever I wake up from a midnight dream, facing this sky full of stars and facing my late mother, I can pat my chest and say: I, Ye Xuan, am still the same Ye Xuan. I haven't become filthy, and I haven't gone bad."

"This peace of mind is worth more than any wealth or glory."

Uncle Fu opened his mouth, looking at the frail youth before him who looked as though a single gust of wind could blow him over, but ultimately, he said nothing.

His words could only dissolve into a long sigh and a cloudy tear at the corner of his eye.

Meanwhile, at this very moment.

Inside the Imperial Study.

Wu Lingxiao sat quietly in the darkness, the faint glow emanating from the water mirror illuminating her face, which flickered with unpredictable emotions.

She had heard Ye Xuan's words.

Every single word was like a needle piercing her heart.

Pure and innocent... clean and unblemished...

She muttered these words under her breath, suddenly finding them somewhat grating, yet also feeling an inexplicable sense of envy.

She was the Empress; she owned the world.

But her hands were already stained with blood, and her soul had long been tainted and fractured within the swirling vortex of power.

She had traded her body for benefits, her marriage for allies, and slaughter for stability.

Ye Xuan...

Wu Lingxiao reached out her hand, caressing the gaunt yet resolute face in the water mirror through the empty air.

Her original anger and irritability had, at some unknown point, transformed into a much deeper, far more twisted emotion.

It was a yearning for beauty, and simultaneously a desire to destroy it.

The more you are like this... the more I want to possess you.

Do you not wish to guard your purity? Do you not want peace of mind?

I simply will not allow it.

Wu Lingxiao's eyes were brimming with madness.

She wanted to shatter this youth's pride, to stain this flawless piece of jade with her own colors, to watch him sink into the sea of mortal desires, and then... to have him belong to her and her alone.