Chapter 1: The State Preceptor Scheming to Overthrow the Court

Shi Qingyi vs. Xu Zhaosu

Shi Qingyi was utterly baffled by her current situation.

As everyone knew, every book had a villainous big boss. They were evenly matched with the protagonist, had a difficult and despairing past, then successfully blackened, becoming the greatest obstacle to the protagonist’s rise to the peak of life.

—The role Shi Qingyi played was the scum who drove the villain to blacken.

She kept transmigrating to other worlds, working diligently to accumulate enough tasks to return to her original world and live her dream life. She toiled tirelessly and wholeheartedly, but because she took her job too seriously, she pushed a villain at Level 10 blackening to Level 100. The villains she had abused harbored such deep resentment that the protagonist couldn’t even contend with them.

—Then, the protagonist was killed by the villain.

With the protagonist dead in a world, the world’s trajectory shattered completely, plunging it into collapse.

Not only did the world collapse, but the Main God collapsed too. The result of the Main God’s collapse was throwing her straight back. If she couldn’t pull the blackened villain back to normal, she would collapse along with the world.

Her mental world was linked here, meaning if the world collapsed, she would die with it.

A line of text suddenly appeared in her mind.

Task: Make the villain, already teetering on the edge of blackening, feel love and warmth, then abandon her terrifying idea of destroying the world!

The Main God said, “Because too much power was consumed maintaining the world before, I can’t send you back directly to before the villain blackened.”

The white text paused for a second: “Time is short. Good luck!”

Shi Qingyi jerked her head up. Before her was a palace with carved beams and painted rafters. She had just turned a page in the memorial on the desk, and two rays of flickering light leaked in from the window outside, bringing with it an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

In an instant, she remembered—this was the first world she had experienced.

The villain in this world was Li Yue Kingdom’s Female Sovereign, Xu Zhaosu. As the imperial family’s only heir, she had been doted on by her parents since childhood, with a noble status and a life of smooth sailing, never encountering any setbacks.

How could such an enviably perfect character be a villain? So, her smooth life came to an abrupt end at age twenty.

That year at twenty, she met the calamity of her life—Shi Qingyi.

The State Preceptor’s sole female disciple emerged from the sacred mountain after thirteen years of secluded prayer, arriving on rays of dawn light. Dressed in white robes as pure and cold as snow, with brows and eyes like the first moon of winter, she smiled faintly at her amid the icy snowscape and called out.

—Your Majesty.

Clear skies after wind and rain were probably nothing more than this.

The Female Sovereign, who had never experienced romantic desires in her life, fell for that otherworldly smile and never walked out of it.

As the ruler of a nation, what beauty could Xu Zhaosu not have? Yet she had never been moved by anyone, never indulged in worldly passions.

She was always forbearing. Even after becoming emperor, she never let anyone know she actually liked women.

As a monarch, she was undoubtedly qualified. A ruler’s marriage was merely a bargaining chip to balance powers; she understood this clearly, yet she still flew like a moth to a flame toward the cold and heartless State Preceptor’s disciple.

She handed over almost everything she could give, granting her positions and power beyond anyone’s dreams, all just for a single smile.

Former State Preceptor disciple, current State Preceptor Shi Qingyi—outwardly ethereal and transcendent like an immortal, but actually a total scum.

The original Shi Qingyi was a scheming girl obsessed with power. On the surface, she seemed aloof, noble, desireless, and indifferent to everything, but inwardly, she was wildly ambitious.

To turn the wise ruler Xu Zhaosu into a blackened villain boss, she imprisoned Xu Zhaosu.

She held the Emperor hostage to command the feudal lords, ascending to the pinnacle of power from her position as State Preceptor.

Back then, her task was to force Xu Zhaosu to blacken. She showed no mercy—not content with mere confinement. She threw Xu Zhaosu into a dungeon, subjecting her to all sorts of torture and inhuman torment.

During this time, Xu Zhaosu finally saw Shi Qingyi’s true scummy nature and began plotting her counterstrike. As a villain boss capable of destroying the world, her intelligence was beyond doubt. Even when defeated, she could find a sliver of hope in the cracks.

The current timeline was exactly one year after Shi Qingyi imprisoned Xu Zhaosu—Xu Zhaosu’s birthday. Last year on this day, she had personally thrown Xu Zhaosu into that dark, sunless prison, plummeting her from the clouds into eternal damnation.

—Only one month remained until Xu Zhaosu’s counterstrike. The loyalist armies were already assembled, ready to storm the Imperial City at any moment.

Shi Qingyi tossed aside the memorial and bolted outside. What a joke—if she delayed any longer, she would be destroyed along with the world!

The palace servants behind her were startled to see the usually composed and steady State Preceptor in such a panic. They hurried after her, calling out for her to wait.

The room was warm as eternal spring, but Shi Qingyi came to an abrupt halt only after rushing out of the palace.

—Outside, snow was falling heavily, with goose-feather flakes swirling down. Her dark hair was half-undone, and she nearly lost her composure gazing at the blizzard outside the window.

If she remembered correctly, Xu Zhaosu was imprisoned in the coldest depths beneath Fangzhi Palace, near the City Moat. The place was remote and desolate, heavy with moisture and chill—and everyone knew Xu Zhaosu feared the cold, unable to tolerate even the slightest freeze.

Later, because of this ordeal in the prison, she developed lifelong ailments. Winters brought unbearable pain, and her temperament grew increasingly tyrannical, capricious, and unpredictable.

Shi Qingyi felt darkness close in before her eyes; she nearly stumbled. Couldn’t the Main God be even a little reliable?!!

Why send her back to this moment? Xu Zhaosu already hated her to the bone, wishing to devour her alive, grind her bones to dust to vent her hatred. And now she was supposed to make her feel warmth and the beauty of the world?

Shi Qingyi: Heh.

Try being betrayed and imprisoned on your birthday by the person you loved most, stripped of everything, tortured to the brink of death, half-alive with illness—could you still feel the world’s warmth and love?!

This was totally a pipe dream!

Trembling, Shi Qingyi waved off the palace servants summoning a sedan chair for her and walked forward step by step.

—She needed to think carefully about how to survive in these cracks.

Li Yue’s Imperial Palace was elegantly and exquisitely built—not grand and imposing, but full of twists and turns. It had been constructed under the guidance of the first-generation predecessor from the State Preceptor’s residence, incorporating the arcane arts of Qimen Dunjia, the Five Elements, and Eight Trigrams—immensely complex.

In simple terms, even a thief without a guide would get lost, and might not find the way out even after running until their legs gave out.

She relied on the palace map in her mind to avoid getting lost. Stumbling along the way, she finally realized just how truly remote Fangzhi Palace was!

If her residence in Yuming Hall was the central core of the entire Imperial Palace, then the place imprisoning Xu Zhaosu was on the extreme edge, the outermost periphery. The more peripheral the palace, the more desolate and forgotten it was. This realization nearly made her face crumble by the time she reached Fangzhi Palace.

Under the heavy snow, the palace lay in ruins. Not far away, the dilapidated walls had gaps, and the north wind howled through them, scattering the thick snow nearly ankle-deep inside.

Shi Qingyi’s mouth twitched. As a ruthless and venomous scum, she had indeed been too “dedicated” to her work before!

She had known Xu Zhaosu endured inhuman torment but hadn’t delved into the details. She only knew that after this trial, the gentle woman like an orchid underwent a qualitative change—from a flower in a greenhouse to a great gray wolf ready to bite anyone to death at any moment.

Now, she was probably fully blackened…

Seeing her stop, a guard immediately cleared a path inside. Shi Qingyi stood disheveled in the wind for a moment, then suddenly rushed in without waiting for the snow to be fully cleared, as if she couldn’t bear another second.

A palace maid behind her cried out urgently, “My Lord!”

She pretended not to hear. Snow seeped into her shoes, bringing piercing cold, but she had no time to care.

The prison holding Xu Zhaosu wasn’t in Fangzhi Palace itself but underground beneath it. When she entered the rear hall, the guards there were still dozing. In the dead of winter, this forsaken place had no one around; when idle, they either gambled or slept.

Shi Qingyi kicked the one blocking the entrance. Her attendants rushed forward, snatched the keys, and dragged both men out. The sleepy ones, rudely awakened and about to flare up, had their necks seized.

—Then they glimpsed a flash of white robes at the secret passage entrance.

The figure had an elegant and outstanding silhouette. Even without ornaments, her innate nobility and pride shone through. Her dark hair was slightly disheveled, her steps hurried.

Many people wore white, but only the current State Preceptor, who held sway over the realm, could wear it so pristinely and ethereally.

But why had the State Preceptor come here?

Hadn’t everyone said the State Preceptor despised the one locked in the prison?

—The whole world knew the prisoner admired the State Preceptor, but the State Preceptor had no interest in women. In the end, it came to this outcome, evoking sighs of pity.

The two guards at the secret passage were elite warriors, one oblivious to these matters, the other Xu Zhaosu’s trusted aide. Seeing Shi Qingyi charge in, his heart panicked.

—Had Her Majesty’s recent actions been too overt? Had someone caught on to something?

Why else would she rush here to see Her Majesty?

Should he notify the general to advance the plan and rescue the sovereign with loyalist forces?

But Shi Qingyi had no mind for the thoughts of those outside. She plunged deeper into the secret passage, her heart growing colder with each step.

The depths offered no warmth—instead, it grew even chillier. She knew one of the two at the entrance was Xu Zhaosu’s confidant, so she had hoped Xu Zhaosu might be faring slightly better. But upon entering, she realized she had been—naive.

In this season where water froze solid, the passage had only dim oil lamps illuminating the pitted ground. No wind, but that did nothing to blunt the bone-chilling cold. After passing two empty cells, at the end of the prison, she finally saw the person huddled inside.

Dressed in plain white mourning clothes, the crude cell lacked even a bed. Her hair disheveled, she sat on the ground in a single thin gown that barely covered her body. Thumb-thick chains bound her limbs. In the dimness, she turned at the sound.

The chains on her legs kept her slumped to the ground, like a flower blooming from the dust, stained with blood.

A pair of bright eyes, untainted even in misery, seemed especially dim under the faint light. Then, upon seeing her, they froze for an instant, as if in disbelief, before a surge of complex, indescribable emotions poured forth.

—It was malice and hatred so thick it almost materialized.

She looked ready to devour her alive.

Shi Qingyi: “…”

Shi Qingyi felt darkness close in before her eyes.

It was over. She had blackened.