Marked by a Tyrant After Transmigrating

The imperial palanquin pulled up at an isolated palace.

Unlike the palaces in the central part of the harem, this place was extremely cold and lifeless. As the journey progressed, the palace walls on either side of the road became mottled, with thick snow accumulated on the curbside, a sign that it had not been tended to for a long time.

When Jin Wang ascended to the throne, the former emperor’s harem was disbanded. All its palaces were sealed off, as was the Cold Palace.

It had just snowed last night. Ye Shu had the palanquin stopped outside the courtyard. He stepped on the soft snow and approached the wooden door.

The wooden door had become so weathered that it no longer clung together properly. Standing in front of it, one could feel a cool breeze coming through the gap.

Ye Shu’s heart inexplicably beat more rapidly. He took a deep breath, pushed open the wooden door that had been left unlatched, and stepped into the courtyard.

The courtyard, however, was not as desolate as he had imagined.

The courtyard was small, with a bare peach tree covered in snow, and a stone table sited beneath it with four stone benches. There were only two sheds in the courtyard and a few potted plants arranged in front of the house, evident that they had been carefully pruned.

Ye Shu strolled directly into the main hall, which was equipped with simple furnishings, but was so clean, not a speck of dust could be seen.

He looked up and saw that the roof, which he recalled was damaged, had been repaired and the windows on all sides had been reattached to ensure that the cold wind would not enter.

It had clearly been uninhabited for a long time, yet signs of inhabitation were apparent everywhere.

Ye Shu entered the inner room. 

Notwithstanding the cleanliness of the house, it did not detract from the crude surroundings. There was a single wooden cot in the inner room, with a flimsy mattress on it whose fabric had been washed to the point of fading and was full of stitch marks from an unknown period of use.

The Palace’s living expenses were distributed regularly and rationed by the Imperial Household Department, but no one would send these to the Cold Palace.

In the hardest times, the original owner could only go to other palaces, scavenge things that others didn’t need and sew and clean them himself, struggling to get by.

Ye Shu sat down at the small table by the window.

The table was missing a part of its leg, held up only by a small piece of broken tile, and as he looked up, he caught sight of the faint carving on the wall facing him.

It was two tiny stick men of a crude form.

The two were sitting side by side. The taller one with his arm around the other was all smiles. The other, on the other hand, was relatively reserved, only slightly curving the corner of his mouth.

All traces of the two juveniles’ growth had been kept well intact there.

Ye Shu’s eyes suddenly started to prickle.

He got up to go when his foot accidentally hit the corner of the table.

The small, short table was light in weight and shifted slightly from his impact, revealing what was carved beneath the two tiny stick men.

It was a small, beautiful line of written characters.

—”Ye Shu & Jin Wang. Thefifth year of spring.”

Ye Shu froze in place.

The small line of characters happened to be a little shorter in height than the table, hence Ye Shu did not notice it the first time. To top it all off, it was not the usual seal script used in Changlu, rather it was in simplified characters that only modern societies would use.

The blood on Ye Shu’s face drained off in a flash. He stood still, his gaze fixed dead on those small characters. It took a while for him to notice the abnormal pounding of his heart.

That was……his own handwriting.

This was what he had been looking for.

In this obscure and distinct way, the still-young Ye Shu of those days left his own unique, yet sufficient mark of identity.

Ye Shu closed his eyes, breathing unevenly for a long time.

Jin Wang did not misidentify anyone after all.

There was no such person as the original owner. There was only him and only him who had been with Jin Wang right from the beginning.

With closed eyes, Ye Shu felt the tip of his nose turning sour.

Suddenly, a strange rattling sound came from the courtyard outside.

The rattling came from behind a shed off to the side. Ye Shu collected himself and followed the sound.

There was not much snow behind the house. An overgrown path extended to the corner, where a very small dog house was built out of brick and straw.

It had been built by Jin Wang for A-Wang, the little yellow dog they had kept back then.

Ye Shu lightened his footsteps as he cautiously walked over, brushing aside the thick growth of grass ahead of the doghouse.

A yellow dog had its back to him, clutching a piece of bone it had stolen from who knows where in its front paws, panting while gnawing happily.

As if sensing someone approaching, the dog turned its head back, its round, dark eyes meeting Ye Shu’s puzzled ones.

Ye Shu, “……”

The dog, “!!!”

The dog sprang to its feet with a loud “ah” and tried to run out in a panic, then accidentally hit the edge of the doghouse and nearly knocked it down.

“Ohww……” It got dizzy from the impact and staggered over to Ye Shu’s feet.

Ye Shu quietly took a half step back.

The sound this dog just made didn’t sound anything like a bark, but rather like……a human voice.

The dog shook its head off and sat down at Ye Shu’s feet, looking up with an innocent expression. “……Woof?”

“……” Why did that sound insincere?

Ye Shu narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “A-Wang?”

The dog locked eyes with him. “Woof woof.”

This clearly couldn’t be A-Wang.

Perhaps because of the hardships of following the two young men, A-Wang had died just the day before Jin Wang’s ascension to the throne, and was buried by their own hands in a beautiful spot outside the palace.

But this dog here looked too much like A-Wang.

This dog had a light yellow dorsal surface, while its belly and four paws were as white as snow, the color of his coat and overall appearance exactly like A-Wang’s.

Ye Shu thought for a moment before he said, “You’re A-Wang’s son?”

“……”

The dog made no sound.

An intuition flashed through Ye Shu’s mind, and a conjecture vaguely surfaced. He shook his head and muttered to himself, “Better bring this dog back to Yangxin Hall and ask Jin Wang…”

Then, in a loud voice, he called out towards the door, “Men!”

“Nooooo!” A young male voice rang out from behind Ye Shu.

Ye Shu stood still and then looked back to see the yellow dog anxiously waving its two front paws.

“Just now…… Was that you making the call?”

Before a reply could be given, several inner servants had already pushed their way through the door. “What are your orders, my Lord?”

The dog said anxiously, “Don’t let them see me!”

Ye Shu glanced at it and then turned his head towards the servants. “It’s nothing, you may step out first.”

The servants’ footsteps paused and then complied, “Understood.” 

All that remained in the courtyard was a man and a dog.

Ye Shu asked, “Who are you?”

The dog sat down. Its voice greatly changed. “The one who brought you here.”

Ye Shu’s eyes became even more puzzled.

The dog wagged its tail restlessly and then scratched its ears, before it spoke evasively, “Just… This is a world in the book… Naturally, you can’t just pop in whenever you want, right, so…”

Ye Shu, “So?”

“I’m the system to guide you in this world.”

Ye Shu sized it up and down.

“Ahem, this is not my original body. I’m just inhabiting this little yellow dog.”

Snow gradually began to fall outside. The yellow dog jumped through the window into the house and shook the snow off its body adroitly. Ye Shu walked in leisurely, closed the door, and sat down at the table.

Ye Shu asked, “You can talk now. What exactly is going on?”

“There are many worlds in the book, and the one we are in now is just one of them,” the dog explained. “After each world in the book takes shape, the characters within it will all develop self-awareness. Consequently, they can easily cause the plot to change either because of their own subjective consciousness, or because of a lack of logic in the plot.”

“My job is to find suitable hosts to enter these worlds in the book and assist them in guiding the characters and rectifying faulty paths.”

“……”

Ye Shu pressed his temples. His mind was full of questions but he didn’t know where to start. “……That means you brought me into this world more than ten years ago?”

The dog said slowly, “Actually… It’s the second time you have been here.”

Ye Shu, “What does that mean?”

“More than ten years ago, when you first came into this world, you were given the task of helping Jin Wang become the state monarch. The reward was the restoration of your then impaired legs.”

Ye Shu was struck dumb.

“And three years ago, upon Jin Wang’s ascension to the throne, your mission was considered complete,” the dog said. “The real world and this world have different time flow rates. You spent ten years here, but only a few days have passed in the real world.”

“When wiping the memory, it will affect part of the host’s original memory, that’s why you don’t remember much about the events before you transmigrated. But between the time your legs were healed, and this time when you transmigrated, you lived in the real world for more than ten years in between, you should remember these, right?”

Ye Shu nodded.

But then he thought something was wrong. “Since I left three years ago, then how is it that I’ve been living out there for over ten years and only three years have passed here?”

The little yellow dog hesitated for a moment, and then said slowly, “Many years have indeed passed here.”

Ye Shu frowned in confusion.

“After you left, this body would be taken over by the system program and would proceed to complete the plot of the book,” the dog lay on the small table, its tail wagging softly. “Minister Ye conspired to rebel and was executed by Jin Wang; none of this went wrong. But ever since Minister Ye was executed, the plot went haywire.”

“Or I should say that it was Jin Wang who went haywire.”

“He became more and more tyrannical and even went around stirring up wars and making a mess of people’s lives.”

“……All in all, that plot ended up veering so far off its original course that we had to choose to start all over again.”

“We tried many times, even matching hosts for other characters in this world to try to fix the plot, but it was all useless.”

“In the end we realized that the reason the plot had veered off was because of you.”

Ye Shu’s eyes flickered.

The dog continued, “Hosts that are able to match the plot are one in a million, and once matched, they are in a class by themselves. Therefore, we could only get you back.”

Ye Shu couldn’t help but ask, “Then why didn’t you guys show up when I first got here?”

“Well……” The dog paused and grinned at Ye Shu. “As you may have noticed, we changed a bit of the settings of this world during the restart this time.”

It looked over at Ye Shu’s slightly bulging abdomen.

“……” Ye Shu seethingly wrapped his fox fur robe tighter.

“Also……” The dog considered for a moment, but still said the truth, “something like making the host return to work has never happened before, if it gets out, we will be in trouble.”

Ye Shu, annoyed, “Suppose I was killed by him the moment I transmigrated, what then?”

“……” The dog said firmly, “Death here will not affect your safety and security in reality. You, the host, can rest assured of this.”

Ye Shu became silent.

The dog heaved a sigh. “As for me…… More than ten years ago, I used that dog called A-Wang as my body and came over to check on you every now and then to monitor the progress of the task. At the moment, however, I am being punished by the main system for failing to complete the task for a long time, by staying here for every day I can’t complete it.”

Ye Shu couldn’t take his eyes off its wagging little tail but held back, but still couldn’t resist asking, “Well, haven’t you ever thought that you could be something else, like…..a human?”

“What else could I be if I stayed in the palace, a palace eunuch? I’d rather be a dog then.”

Ye Shu, “……”

The dog scratched its ears and added, “Anyway, that’s the way things are. We are also at the end of our rope. Once the task is completed, whatever reward you want will be provided.”

Ye Shu made no reply.

Then, he sighed softly. “Reward or no reward, let’s set that aside for now.”

“You said that the previous plot deviated from the original plot, so what happened…to him…at the end?”

“At the end of that plot, Jin Wang sent his troops to annihilate the two states; Western Xia and Great Yan, casting the entire Central Plains in great misery. On the night the troops returned in triumph, Jin Wang set fire to this cold palace, and soon…was engulfed by the sea of flames.”

By the time Ye Shu returned to Yangxin Hall, sunset was already upon him.

The inner servants had just helped Ye Shu out of the imperial palanquin, and before they could hold an umbrella for him, he was already striding quickly towards the palace.

Jin Wang was again lying on the small couch that was facing the door of the hall.

Seeing his return, Jin Wang smiled softly at him. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you for almost two hours.”

It was snowing heavily outside, and Ye Shu was already covered in snow after walking for just a few steps. The snow soon melted from the temperature within the hall, and the surface of his fox fur robe was slightly dampened, which, combined with his pale complexion, made him look quite a bit worse for wear.

“What’s wrong?” Jin Wang’s smile narrowed a bit and then he ordered, “What are you all still doing here? Help His Highness change, and prepare a bowl of ginger tea.”

No sooner had the servants received his orders and gone to do so than Ye Shu, in quick steps, walked up to him, leaned down, and hugged him tightly.

—“You were too kind in those years for Jin Wang to face ‘your’ betrayal of and the trauma of executing ‘you’ himself.”

—“He became extremely psychologically disturbed and became a real tyrant, a complete and utter madman.”

—“On the night the troops returned in triumph, Jin Wang set fire to this cold palace, and soon…was engulfed by the sea of flames.”

Ye Shu was slightly trembling. His hug carried such force that it nearly pressed against Jin Wang’s wound.

Jin Wang naturally noticed his strangeness. His voice softened a little as he asked, “What happened?”

Ye Shu, in a muffled voice, “……I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry for leaving you here all alone back then.

I’m sorry for deceiving you like that in the past.

I’m sorry for the wavering attitude before and for putting you through so much grief.

Tears slid down Ye Shu’s cheeks and Jin Wang’s shoulder soon became moist. 

Ye Shu closed his eyes and repeated softly, “I’m sorry.”