The Villain's Foremost Treacherous Courtier - Chapter 1

Around midnight, I read one of those novels where the hero keeps leveling up and winning at everything.

Unfortunately, this hero’s chosen path to success was sacrificing his lovers.

He used his childhood sweetheart’s entire family fortune to get to the capital and take the imperial examinations. Then he used the Eldest Princess’s life to clear his name of a false charge. By the time he’d ruined more than a dozen women, he finally ascended the throne.

Then he married his latest love, filled his harem, and became the next monstrous emperor to prey on the common people.

Clutching my screen, I sobbed. “For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Villain, please kill this bastard who climbs over women to get to the top!”

One transmigration later, I opened my eyes and found myself kneeling with a group of maidservants.

The woman beside me shook all over. “We’re done for. We’ve offended that scourge, the Prince of Yan. He’ll probably boil our corpses and cook our flesh.”

The Prince of Yan?

Shen Ji, Prince of Yan?

The great villain who had no harem, loved only one woman his whole life, and even had reforms he wanted to pursue?

I raised my head in a daze.

Bare feet stood on a bearskin rug. His black robe bore dark red patterns of winged serpents, and his long hair hung loose, wreathed in the cool scent of dunou incense.

His naturally gray eyes were an unusual color. A cloudlike tattoo ran from his cheek to the corner of his eye.

Shen Ji’s face was expressionless, his voice icy. “Whoever speaks first, and says something that pleases me, gets to live.”

Everyone buried their heads, trembling in terror.

I knew Shen Ji had a terrible reputation in the novel. As a child, he’d accompanied his father on an imperial military expedition, only to be captured by the tribes beyond the border. They tortured him mercilessly, even tattooing his face as punishment.

He wasn’t ransomed until he was grown.

He was the living symbol of our dynasty’s humiliating defeat, and its most vicious madman.

People said he liked eating human flesh raw and killed at least thirty people every day.

So no one dared stick her neck out first.

I drew a deep breath and stood.

Shen Ji slowly turned his gaze toward me.

Before it even settled—

I bent sharply at the waist, clasped my hands in salute, and scurried out of the crowd with my back bowed in abject flattery.

Shen Ji’s eyelid twitched.

Thump! I dropped to my knees, shuffled several paces forward, and knocked my forehead against the floor with a solid clunk.

His icy composure cracked a little.

But I was only getting started.

I thrust my clasped hands higher, making my salute so reverent I practically pointed them at the sky.

“Your Hiiiighness!” The call rang through the hall, syrupy and fawning, fervent and earnest.

A vein stood out at Shen Ji’s temple.

“Your Highness! You are the fiercest tiger, the cleverest eagle, the most agile wolf—the most handsome and beloved prince in our dynasty!”

Expressionless, Shen Ji waved a hand. “Leave the others for now. Executioners, drag this one out first and beat her to death. Wash your hands and faces before you come back. Then get a few masters in to chant some proper exorcism scriptures.”

“Your Hiiiighness!” My loud, mournful wail swooped through a full eight notes.

The axe-bearing guard froze, looking with utter disgust at the hand he was about to touch me with.

I sped across the carpet on my knees, scooted right up to Shen Ji, and seized his hand.

“Your Highness! Other men squat in their little fiefs because they lack ambition—alive, but already half dead. But you, my prince, have spent these years in your fief concealing your plans, waiting for the perfect moment to act!”

I smiled ingratiatingly, swore to Heaven, and spoke with the utmost sincerity.

“Your Highness, I am a devoted servant. Tell me to face east, and I’ll never read Journey to the West again…”

The frightened women began turning to stare at me, their surprise giving way to contempt.

It was written all over their faces: Damn it. Even the capital rarely produces a treacherous bootlicker this shameless!

Shen Ji smiled. It was an evil smile.

“Oh? Then if I tell you to die, will you die for me?”

I looked up, all righteous conviction. “Your Highness, such a trifling matter! How could I possibly refuse? It’s just that, seeing you up close, I find your beauty ever more like fragrant orchids and jade trees, your bearing ever more like the lotus—washed in clear ripples, yet never gaudy. And your legs are hollow within and straight without, neither sprawling nor branching…”

Shen Ji stared without expression.

My enthusiasm only grew. “How could someone as majestic and great as you stain his hands with the insignificant life of a nobody like me? Your Highness! You ought to stockpile grain, bide your time before proclaiming yourself king, march on the capital, and storm—mmph!”

A hand clamped my mouth shut.

Shen Ji and I stared into each other’s eyes.

Slowly, I gave him a smile that said I wasn’t afraid to die.

He released me and said softly, “Behead every maid implicated in this poisoning. Send the bodies back to the southern tribes.”

“Your Highness, then what about this one…?”

“Keep her for now. Gag her and send her to my bedchamber.”

Amid the cries and pleas for mercy, I turned my back on everyone and wiped my cold, sweaty palms on my clothes.

That was close.

Thank goodness I’d read the novel. I knew this apparently deranged Shen Ji actually harbored enormous ambitions.

A little revenge on a few southerners was nowhere near enough for him.

He wanted the realm—and a justification that would make taking it seem perfectly rightful.

And if I went down in the history books, I would naturally be the rat dropping that corrupted the Prince of Yan: a born treacherous chancellor, a rebellious temptress who brought disaster.