The Young Marquis is Ruining the Court! - Chapter 1

It was February in the mortal realm; the grass was tall, and the warblers were in flight.

Following the Awakening of Insects, the thick clouds that had lingered for days were finally scattered by a spring rain. Warm, mellow sunlight filtered through the canopy, illuminating a garden where the cherry blossoms were in full, magnificent bloom.

Chi Zhou opened his eyes, raising a hand to shield them from the somewhat piercing glare. As the light dappled through the gaps in the leaves and his fingers, brushing against his eyelids, it felt as gentle as a kiss, devoid of any aggression or force. Yet, Chi Zhou couldn’t help but let out a soft sigh.

It had been three days.

It had been three days since he arrived in this world that felt neither entirely strange nor truly familiar.

Three days ago, he had woken up in a room filled with extravagant scents and luxury. There was no one untoward in bed with him, but his clothes were in disarray, and several empty wine jars lay scattered haphazardly by the bedside. Trails of spilled liquor had seeped into the crevices of the floorboards, staining the wood a darker shade.

A lingering hangover headache had made it impossible for Chi Zhou to immediately realize where he was or why he was there.

The traditional garments were incredibly complicated, and since he didn’t know how to put them on properly, he simply grabbed a thick outer robe from the back of a chair and draped it loosely over himself before stepping outside.

At first, he assumed his project team had held a celebration the night before, and the interns had gotten him drunk before dropping him off at some ancient-themed boutique hotel.

But then, a breeze drifted through a small window in the building, carrying a faint scent of rouge and powder. A graceful girl in period costume emerged from the neighboring room, yawning. She froze for a split second upon seeing him, then offered a natural, bright smile: “Good morning, Marquis. How did you rest last night?”

Chi Zhou: “…”

His brain felt like it had spontaneously combusted. The last traces of alcohol were swept away by the wind and utterly shattered by the woman’s melodious voice. He was wide awake now.

Wait.

Where is this?

What exactly am I doing?

Chi Zhou felt his entire worldview taking a direct hit.

By the time a young servant found him, straightened his collar, and led him into a carriage, Chi Zhou had barely managed to accept that he had transmigrated and that his “original self” was likely a profligate noble who spent his nights in brothels. But the servant’s next sentence hit him with the force of a thunderbolt, making him wish he could transmigrate back to his old life and die of overwork rather than live in this state of constant terror.

The servant peeked at him with a look that was somewhere between a lecture and a plea, whispering: “Young Master, the wedding date is so close. How could you stay out all night at the Pear Fragrance Court? If His Majesty or the Sixth Prince finds out, will this marriage even happen…”

In that instant, it felt as if the heavens had come crashing down. Chi Zhou lost even the strength to speak.

It took a long time for him to recover. Memories of text—data streams of a story he once read, flickered through his mind as he made one last desperate attempt at denial.

Chi Zhou leaned forward, gripping the carriage door, and asked hoarsely, “The Sixth Prince… what is his name?”

The servant looked a bit puzzled but answered dutifully: “The Prince’s honorable name is Xie Mingjing. Master, you absolutely must not ask him his name after the wedding.”

That would be far too insulting.

Granted, their Young Master never had much of a memory. One day he’d hire a young male entertainer at a brothel to pour his wine and flirt with him, and the next day he’d run into the same person on the street and have no idea who they were or which house they worked for.

But that kind of casual disregard reserved for entertainers was definitely not something one should apply to an Imperial Prince.

As the servant, Ming Xi, drove the carriage through the morning market, his mind wandered aimlessly. He was completely unaware that his master, sitting behind him, was already halfway to a nervous breakdown.

Chi Zhou whispered Xie Mingjing’s name over and over, his face turning deathly pale as he recalled a novel an intern had accidentally sent him a while back.

《Mingjing》. A “beautiful, strong, and miserable” revenge-themed male-lead novel. The protagonist’s name was, by some cruel twist of fate, Xie Mingjing.

And even worse, the book featured a villain named “Chi Zhou,” a Marquis.

Exactly what the girl at the brothel had called him.

Chi Zhou still remembered the message the intern had sent and then quickly deleted: Wait, there’s a cannon-fodder character in this book with the same name as our Team Leader! Do you think I should tell him to memorize the whole thing? [Hesitant.jpg]

If it hadn’t been for that comment, Chi Zhou would never have searched for 《Mingjing》, let alone read it.

Xie Mingjing, the Sixth Prince of the Great Jin Dynasty, was born to a lowly maid in the (Ye Ting). The Emperor had drunkenly forced himself on her, and she had luckily conceived and given birth to a prince, being promoted to the rank of Lady.

However, she possessed neither extraordinary beauty nor talent. She was quickly neglected by the Emperor and eventually died of grief.

In the years before her death, she had been cast into the Cold Palace due to a minor mistake, taking the three-year-old Sixth Prince with her to endure a life of hardship.

This was highly unusual. Normally, even if a consort angered the Emperor and it affected her child, the prince would simply be adopted by another consort or raised by wet nurses in the Prince’s Quarters. A young prince was rarely left to fend for himself.

Even if the mother’s crimes were unforgivable, the harshest punishment for a minor prince would be removal from the royal lineage and being sent to live with distant relatives, stripping him of his claim to the throne.

To abandon a prince to grow up in the Cold Palace was unheard of. It was impossible to tell if it was total neglect or a bizarre, unspoken form of protection.

The Emperor’s heart was inscrutable. But when a casual decree fell upon the young Prince, it meant that before he was old enough to remember things, he had learned to smile and beg servants for scraps of food that hadn’t yet gone sour. Before he was tall enough to reach a bucket, he was lugging ice-cold well water back to his room to heat up, just so he could clean the festering frostbite on his mother’s hands…

The childhood years that should have been the most carefree were, for Xie Mingjing, nothing but undeserved suffering.

Later, while waiting for the novel to update, Chi Zhou had re-read it a few times. He usually skipped the early chapters about the male lead’s life in the Cold Palace; he couldn’t stand seeing such a sweet, sensible little child suffer like that.

It wasn’t until the mother, Lady Li, died in the Cold Palace and while other princes younger than Xie Mingjing were already reciting the Three Character Classic, he began plotting his way out and into the Imperial Study, that Chi Zhou could actually enjoy the book.

Because from that point on, the plot finally moved beyond pure suffering and into the territory of “face-slapping” and revenge.

As for the bullying servants, the princes who called him a “mongrel,” or the tutors who intentionally whipped his hands until they bled during lessons…

Those were just the appetizers. They weren’t worth mentioning.

The first real villain, the one who was calculated to death and met a truly horrific end was “Chi Zhou.”

The Young Marquis of the Ningping Estate. Five generations back, his ancestors were the founding heroes who fought alongside the first Emperor of Great Jin. His grandfather was a legendary general who died defending the borders. His father and brothers were all famous commanders who died for their sovereign.

Since the founding of the Jin Dynasty, eleven members of the Chi family, eight men and three women, had perished on the battlefield. They were a family of unparalleled loyalty and sacrifice.

Unfortunately, “good bamboo sometimes produces bad shoots.” By the original Chi Zhou’s generation, all the men capable of leading were dead, and the female relatives were forbidden from touching weapons. There had been an elder brother who gained fame as a teenager and was made a general at sixteen, but he was struck by a poisoned arrow during a campaign against the barbarians and died before he even reached twenty.

When the news reached the capital, the Ningping Estate was draped in white. The Old Matriarch was so devastated she was bedridden for three months.

Perhaps to bring some “joy” back to the house to heal the Matriarch, or perhaps because the Emperor truly felt for the Chi family’s sacrifices, the ten-year-old original Chi Zhou was allowed to inherit the title as soon as the funeral ended. He became the youngest Marquis in the history of the Jin Dynasty.

Naturally, the Matriarch and the Lady Mother didn’t dare let him practice martial arts or archery, fearing he might get so much as a scratch. The Emperor treated him even better—not only were his daily expenses covered by the palace’s private treasury, but he was also frequently invited to stay in the palace. He was treated like the Emperor’s own son.

Actually, even the real sons didn’t have it this good.

The Emperor didn’t test his schoolwork or require him to practice riding. He let him do whatever he wanted, learn whatever he felt like, and play however he chose.

If the boy mentioned in the middle of winter that he craved lychees from the south, the Emperor would send riders galloping three thousand miles across eight exhausted horses just so the Ningping Estate’s table could have a dish of lychee-stewed pork during the New Year’s banquet.

Emperor Chengping had once promised the ailing Matriarch that he would raise Chi Zhou with the treasures of the world. As long as the world belonged to the Xie family, the Ningping Estate would always enjoy a life of splendor and peace.

This gilded upbringing turned the original Chi Zhou into a spoiled, arrogant playboy.

He was illiterate and useless at archery, but more importantly, he was absurdly reckless and dim-witted. A young man devoted only to wine, women, and gambling, the undisputed #1 dandy of the capital.

Usually, his antics in the red-light districts were tolerated because of his family’s status. It was scandalous, but not fatal.

But nobody in the Great Jin Dynasty expected him to become so obsessed with beauty that he would demand an Imperial Prince as his wife.

Even more shocking was the fact that Emperor Chengping, after thinking it over for just one night, actually agreed to this preposterous, treasonous request.

He agreed!

When Chi Zhou had read the book, he treated it as a joke, mocking the author’s plot holes before moving on. But now that he had transmigrated into the brainless villain, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the original Chi Zhou’s final fate.

Chi Zhou had lost track of how many days he had been in the dungeon. At first, he could still scratch marks on the wall to keep time, but once the flesh was stripped from his fingers to reveal the white bone beneath, he could no longer move.

The sound of a dog barking echoed in the corners, clashing with the rattle of iron chains. It created the constant illusion that the beast was about to pounce and tear him apart.

Perhaps it wasn’t an illusion. After all, from his chest to his arms, from his thighs to his feet, every piece of flesh carved from Chi Zhou’s body had been fed to that wolfhound named Jin Ge.

Normally, a pet raised by humans shouldn’t eat human flesh. But Xie Mingjing was a madman, and his pets were just as crazed.

He didn’t care about the taboo of a pet turning on its master after eating human meat. He only cared about giving his enemy the most agonizing, humiliating, and terrifying death possible.

And he succeeded. At least in the matter of Chi Zhou’s death.

First came castration, then the “lingchi” (slow slicing), while the dog gnawed on his remains. For forty-nine days and nights, treated like livestock and viewed as food, trapped in a room with a starving, howling wolfhound… anyone would go insane.

His eyes had long been clouded with blood, but his ears hadn’t been cut off yet. Thus, at the very end, Chi Zhou heard the iron door creak open. The ferocious wolfhound suddenly silenced its barking, letting out a low whimper—a submissive sound, as if bowing to a superior predator.

The dark, damp cage smelled of filth and blood, yet as soon as that person arrived, servants lit expensive incense in the four corners. It was like laying a sheet of fine silk over a pile of mud, as if that could deceive anyone’s eyes.

Then, Chi Zhou finally heard the only human voice he had heard in weeks.

The voice was as clear as striking jade, even carrying a hint of a smile, yet it was laced with a chilling indifference:

“Chi Zhou, I have come to see you off. It’s the least I can do, considering we were…”

“Husband and wife.”

Chi Zhou took his hand away from his eyes. Over the last three days, he had suffered through too many identical nightmares, always waking up just as Xie Mingjing picked up the knife to slit the original villain’s throat.

Initially, he was so terrified he couldn’t sleep. He would light a candle, huddle on the bed with his knees pulled to his chest, and stare at the flame until it burned out, only catching a few minutes of sleep at dawn.

Later, he realized that a wide-open space under the sun was far more comforting than a cramped, dark bedroom.

Unfortunately, the nightmares followed him even there.

Chi Zhou sighed again, stood up from under the tree, and brushed the dirt off his clothes. An uncontrollable thought took hold of his mind:

I have to run.

I really have to run. There is no way I’m going through with this wedding.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t even make it to the story’s finale, he’d die of pure terror and sleep deprivation long before that.

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