Bye, Playboy! Hello, Throne!

The regent Lu Xiao and the consort Su Yao wanted the throne, and they killed the emperor in front of his ten-year-old son. The boy, Ye Hong, understood that staying alive meant being useless. For the next decade he played the drunk and the wastrel, spending his nights in pleasure houses until the whole capital wrote him off as garbage. What nobody saw was the training he did in private, which went far past anything expected of a prince. Lu Xiao spent those same years grooming his own son, Lu Zhong, for the succession, arranging support at court and preparing him for the heir's examination. Shortly before that examination, Ye Hong lets a piece of his real strength show. It reaches the wrong ears. The regent begins watching him, and the cover story that protected him for ten years starts to come apart. In a series of confrontations Ye Hong wins over Wu Zhong and other officials who had spent years despising him, and the imperial grandfather comes to believe that this grandson, and not the boy Lu Xiao raised, is the true dragon. The people who murdered his father are still holding the court.