The Villain Is Too Charming

Tan Nian and Su Chunhe die and wake up inside the pages of a book, reborn as the Empress and the Empress Dowager of the same court. A system attaches itself to them and gives an order, within three months the regent Xiao Chenyuan and the Eastern Depot commander Qiu Jianqing must be turned into villains, or the two women will bear the consequences. They start on the task the straightforward way, needling and mistreating both men, waiting for the cruelty to show itself. Xiao Chenyuan answers with cold formality but keeps grain moving to flooded provinces and turns down bribes from his own clerks. Qiu Jianqing has the reputation of a torturer and keeps ledgers that show he has been covering the debts of executed men's families out of his own stipend. The villain labels on both of them turn out to be old slander that stuck. An enemy state sends an envoy who plants forged letters implicating Xiao Chenyuan in a plot against the throne. The emperor, already uneasy about a regent with an army at his back, starts reading every report with suspicion. The system counts down the days and threatens penalties if the two men are not blackened on schedule. Tan Nian and Su Chunhe stop following the script. They intercept the forged letters, stand between the men and the emperor's guards more than once, and start feeding the court their own version of events instead of the system's. The forged letters are traced back to the enemy envoy, the ledgers are made public, and the labels of villainy come apart in front of the same officials who spread them. Tan Nian and Su Chunhe go on living in the roles they were dropped into, no longer answering to the system's schedule.