Torrential rain poured down.
Rolling thunder engulfed the Western Yong Palace.
The weather had turned sharply cold in recent days; within the downpour mixed pellets of hail, and the howling wind sent the iron ornaments under the eaves clanging in chaos.
Amid such deafening wind and rain, the silence within and around the Western Yong Palace felt all the more profound.
At this moment, over a hundred officials waited outside the hall – yet not a single one dared to speak.
Several months before his death, the late emperor suddenly decided to name his ninth daughter, Wen Yanran, as the crown heir. He publicly announced the decree to the entire realm and forcefully ordered the regional princes and dukes to submit memorials of congratulation, thereby fixing the relationship of ruler and subject for this freshly appointed heir.
The Great Zhou dynasty was not without precedent for empresses succeeding the throne, and the ministers could accept a princess as the next sovereign. Yet in every respect, this particular heir gave them cause for deep unease.
Wen Yanran had just turned thirteen. As the saying goes, “When the ruler is young, the state grows uncertain” – her age alone made it difficult for the ministers to trust in the new sovereign’s ability to govern.
If her lack of experience could perhaps be compensated for through diligent effort and the support of the ministers, her innate limitations in talent were a far more serious problem – one that no external aid could truly remedy.
According to rumors from within the palace, the Ninth Princess was slow-witted by nature, withdrawn in temperament, and not fond of speaking with others. If the late emperor hadn’t suddenly decided to revive an ancient method for choosing an heir, he never would have selected her.
Ordinarily, the next emperor was chosen directly by the reigning one. If, for some reason, the ruler was unable or unwilling to make the decision personally, the task would fall to the State Preceptor, who would seek divine guidance through divination to determine a suitable candidate.
If the emperor raised no objection to the Preceptor’s chosen name, that person would then be publicly declared crown heir. Of course, in the eyes of many, such divinations were nothing more than a ceremonial display meant to emphasize that the imperial house of Great Zhou ruled by Heaven’s mandate.
The late emperor’s final reign title, Yongan – “Eternal Peace” – was bitterly ironic. In the last years of his rule, the struggle among princes and princesses for the throne had led to the Yongan Rebellion. Many of those involved were either executed, stripped of rank, or forced into exile. Among the remaining members of the imperial clan, few still possessed the right of succession – yet even so, appointing the Ninth Princess, Wen Yanran, was an exceptionally imaginative choice.
Inside the Western Yong Palace.
In truth, this was not the late emperor’s usual residence. It had only been hastily cleaned and arranged after the Ninth Princess was named heir apparent. As a princess widely regarded as slow-witted, Wen Yanran’s previous quarters had been far humbler than the royal standard – remote in location, poorly guarded, and altogether unsuitable as the living place of a crown heir.
Now it was late autumn turning to early winter, and this year’s cold front had arrived earlier than usual. When the Director of the Imperial Household found Wen Yanran, she had unfortunately already come down with a chill. She was therefore promptly moved from her old residence at Tongtai to the Western Yong Palace, so that the future sovereign could rest and recover in comfort.
Wen Yanran had been ill for over a month. Sadly, the timing was ill-fated – rather than improving, her condition only showed signs of worsening.
Each day, the head physician of the Imperial Infirmary came to examine her and offer herbal decoctions, while sixteen palace maids bustled quietly about the chamber. Yet through it all, not a single sound of speech or footsteps could be heard.
The court officials outside had already been waiting for a long time. Just as the head physician of the Imperial Infirmary was about to check the pulse once more, a faint rustling came from within the bed curtains – then a bloodless hand slowly reached out and gave a slight wave.
The palace attendants, seeing this, hesitated and stepped back a few paces. Yet none dared retreat too far. They kept a cautious distance – far enough not to disturb whatever lay within the curtains, yet close enough to rush forward at once should anything happen.
Wen Yanran gave no further instructions. In truth, she had no time to bother with anyone else just now – she needed to focus all her attention on the problem at hand.
As an ordinary office worker, she had simply clicked on a popular interactive web novel after work one evening. A line had popped up on the screen: “World Will Authentication: Approved.” And the next moment, she had triggered a full-on transmigration package.
Interactive novels were a new product of the internet age. Compared with traditional web fiction, they leaned more toward games. To Wen Yanran, this particular crossing felt like she had fallen into both a game and a book at once – without cheats or mod tools, burdened instead with a poignant sense of having to survive purely on her own effort.
In that interactive novel, many plot points required readers to make choices based on personal preference, resulting in a multitude of possible endings. Before clicking in, Wen Yanran had even browsed through a few comment threads to get a general idea of what she was in for.
By this point, Wen Yanran had more or less grasped her situation.
She had somehow entered the world depicted in that very book. Not every book corresponded to a real, existing world, but some of the smaller worlds lying close to her own – like neighbors living just beyond a shared wall – could still be faintly perceived if they made enough noise. Those with particularly “keen hearing” could sense such disturbances.
These “keen-eared” people often mistook what they sensed for sudden flashes of inspiration, and wrote them down – turning what they perceived into novels, games, or hybrid works that were half novel, half game.
Wen Yanran stretched out her arms and lay flat on the bed, unable to stop herself from grumbling inwardly – when she’d first realized she shared the same name as a character in that novel, she really should’ve taken precautions: sat up straight, read the whole thing carefully, and memorized it by heart…
She had also asked the so-called “world will” another question: with so many people reading the book every day, why was she the one chosen?
Up to this point, the world will had always answered whatever she asked, though its responses often came with a lag – like a device with a poor connection – and the delays seemed to be getting worse.
As for this new question, the world will had given an answer too: her sudden transmigration wasn’t due to any exceptional talent, nor merely because she shared a name with a key character. It was simply that the “target individual’s” soul quality was relatively weak – making it easier to cross the barriers between worlds. In simpler terms, her soul was just too “light” – the kind of person fate toys with, easily caught up in strange happenings.
Wen Yanran thought back over her past experiences and had to admit – the world will might have had a point…
The reason her soul’s “quality” was so low was because nearly half of it had been left behind in this very world. That was why the Ninth Princess, Wen Yanran of this realm, had lived in a daze – shut off from the world, dull and withdrawn – while she herself had carried the curse of bad luck into every corner of her former life.
To return to normal, she would have to reunite the two halves – become whole again.
According to the world will’s explanation, the world Wen Yanran had entered was currently in a rare state of collapse – put simply, it was hovering right at the brink of death, clinging to its last breath, endlessly lurching back to life like a corpse that refused to stay dead.
The point in time she had crossed into was the late autumn of the eleventh year of the Changxing era – a moment that, in theory, should have long since passed.
Normally, a world’s timeline moves ever forward. But after the new emperor ascended the throne in the eleventh year of Changxing, this one fell into utter chaos – an age of war and devastation, when smoke rose on every horizon and the common people could no longer survive.
In times of turmoil, heroes are born.
The “children of destiny,” those who had sacrificed everything to save their world, refused to accept its doomed end. Their collective will was so strong that it triggered a false rollback of time.
A false rollback meant that time itself hadn’t truly turned back to the eleventh year of Changxing – rather, everyone had fallen into a vast, perfectly convincing shared dream, reliving everything from the beginning.
Yet even this illusionary timeline met a tragic end. So the collective dream restarted, again and again – until this time, Wen Yanran was pulled into it.
At the very beginning, the world will had intended for everyone to experience one long, comforting dream – something gentle enough to soothe the collective trauma of their souls. Once the “children of destiny” found peace, the disrupted timeline could return to normal.
But, just like in that interactive novel, no matter what choices were made at each critical point, the ending never managed to satisfy most people.
And repeated reboots of the collective dream could not come without a price – anything involving the timeline was a matter of grave consequence. Even a “false” restart would damage the world’s barriers, throwing the souls of its inhabitants into confusion and gradual dissolution.
In short, if things continued this way, the entire world would eventually collapse into ruin.
Faced with an all-too-predictable tragic future, the world will decided to revise its original plan – since weaving a pleasant dream had failed time and again, it might as well create a nightmare so dreadful that the “children of destiny” would be forced to face reality.
The world will couldn’t fully control the direction of the collective dream; it could only interfere in limited ways. The most accessible point of influence was right at the beginning of the dream – hence how the imperial heir was chosen.
That was why, the moment Wen Yanran crossed over, she had already reached the peak of her professional career.
As the newly appointed emperor-to-be, Wen Yanran’s task was to help the world will craft a nightmare harsh enough to wake everyone up. To put it simply – skipping all the complicated metaphysics – she had to become a complete and utter tyrant, until everyone agreed on one thing: the Great Zhou was beyond saving.
To help Wen Yanran better accomplish her mission, the world will thoughtfully provided her with a support-type game system.
She had asked why it was called a game system, and the world will replied that, for an internet-addicted young woman, this format would feel more immersive.
“…”
Wen Yanran silently stared at the special interface visible only to her, feeling as though her entire understanding of transmigration had just been rewritten. In this age of ever-advancing technology, she somehow found herself looking at a command-line interface straight out of the DOS era – so primitive that she couldn’t help but wonder if the developers of this system had been working under severe budget constraints.
The support system was meant to provide hints for certain key events, but its prompts matched the interface’s bare-bones aesthetic: apart from the essential information, there were no explanations or details whatsoever. When activated, a single line appeared –
“Welcome to the game assistance system: Guide to Becoming a Tyrant.”
The cursor blinked once, then automatically moved to the next line, displaying what must have been her current objective:
“Ascend the throne.”
Wen Yanran figured that, judging by this world’s usual succession procedures, her own enthronement shouldn’t pose any difficulty at all.
Therefore, if she wanted to become the kind of inept ruler people could easily criticize, she would have to create some difficulties for herself.
As a first-time emperor – and one whose mission was to be a tyrant – Wen Yanran thought that since so many of her fellow transmigrators came with rumors of illegitimate succession, she ought to give herself one too.
