Chapter 2
Heaven’s ordained course could not be defied. For a world to continue existing, it had to follow that course. In plain terms, the people blessed with a protagonist’s destiny had to act out their appointed scripts.
The Qi clan of the capital was an illustrious family of officials. Their ancestor had campaigned far and wide beside the founding emperor and been appointed chancellor at the dynasty’s birth. Though the office wasn’t hereditary, every generation of Qi sons had proved so brilliant that the position was theirs by merit. Their family’s power was almost unimaginable.
An emperor would always grow wary of a subject whose achievements outshone his own. That truth had never changed.
Before Qi Huaixu was born, the court established the office of Right Chancellor, dividing the Qi family’s authority.
In the fourteenth year of the Taining era, Chancellor Qi was accused of colluding with the enemy and plotting treason. Overnight, a clan that had flourished in the capital for more than a century came crashing down. In recognition of their ancestors’ service, the emperor of Cang spared them the extermination of their extended family and exiled the whole household to the wild western frontier instead.
Only the family’s sole son, Qi Huaixu, was ordered to remain in the capital as the crown prince’s study companion, a demonstration of the emperor’s boundless grace.
Boundless grace? He was a hostage, nothing more, insurance against the Qi clan’s return to power.
He was only seven that year.
As a villain, he was required to have a miserable childhood in a world full of malice. As the sole son of the traitorous Qi clan, he had no one to turn to. He was bullied endlessly. However cautious he tried to be, he suffered humiliation after humiliation, living without a ray of light, at the mercy of anyone who cared to torment him.
On the surface, he was immaculate and gentle, a gentleman as gracious as an immortal descended to earth. In truth, the ruin of his family had left him deeply disturbed. Behind that beautiful face, he plotted relentlessly for revenge and eventually took the throne, just as he intended.
His purpose as a villain was to sharpen the hero’s resolve and give him the chance to achieve greatness; to be the man the heroine passed through on her way to understanding her own heart. Even the throne he won through so much scheming was only something he would ultimately hand to another man.
A wretched youth, an unsatisfactory end…
That was the life ordained for him.
But plans could always go awry. He fell in love with the heroine, Yu Huan, and contrary to Heaven’s design, he was willing to bow to another man for her sake. He restrained himself, observed every propriety, and after clearing his family’s name, settled dutifully into his role as chancellor. Afraid of making her uncomfortable, he made himself as inconspicuous as possible, watching in lonely silence as the hero and heroine enjoyed their loving marriage.
Without his attempts to seize her and scheme his way to the throne, the hero lacked the trials that should have tempered him. His judgment and his hold on power remained shaky. The heroine agonized over her feelings, wavering between the two men. They didn’t even love each other with the unwavering certainty they were supposed to have.
His departure from the ordained path caused one problem after another.
My mission was to guide him back onto it.
He had to strike at the hero, seize the heroine, and finally be killed by the hero, favored as that man was by destiny.