A Viper in the Emperor’s Infirmary

Xie Bufeng, the ultimate boss of harem intrigue novels, was born without the ability to feel pain and was regarded as a monster. The ailing late emperor tested medicine on him and threw him onto the battlefield to fend for himself. Unexpectedly, he crawled out of a mountain of corpses, led three thousand armored cavalry back to the capital, and proclaimed himself emperor. Medical student Wen Qingci had just exclaimed, "So satisfying!" when he transmigrated into the role of the palace physician who experimented on Xie Bufeng, conducting unethical human trials—a black-hearted lotus. With a red cinnabar dot between his brows, he appeared gentle and refined, obsessed with medicine to the point of disregarding good and evil, earning the title "immortal-faced rakshasa." In the original story’s ending, he was dismembered by five horses and fed to vultures. * When Wen Qingci transmigrated, Xie Bufeng had already been captured and brought to the imperial medical hall, fully aware of his fate. Ill and frail, yet his gaze was fierce, like a trapped wolf cub ready to tear out Wen Qingci’s throat at any moment. Under the watchful eyes of the emperor’s confidants, Wen Qingci’s wrist trembled as he slipped a piece of candy into Xie Bufeng’s mouth: "This is a lethal poison. If Your Highness cooperates, you’ll receive one antidote each month." With the emperor monitoring him and the novel’s tragic ending looming, Wen Qingci played along—feeding Xie Bufeng candy while pretending to conduct his experiments diligently. At the same time, under the guise of being a mad medical fanatic, he secretly damaged his own health to detoxify Xie Bufeng, risked execution to pull his mother back from death’s door… All of it calculated, all of it insane. Until the day of the palace coup, when he took a heart-piercing arrow for Xie Bufeng. The new emperor gritted his teeth, forcing out each word: "Once you die, there will be no more antidote… I’ll have no choice but to follow you into death." Wen Qingci coughed up blood and smiled, shaking his head weakly: "…What I fed Your Highness… was always… honey… I made myself…" A single tear of blood streaked down Xie Bufeng’s cheek. * The capital’s streets were lined with red bridal decorations—yet between them, only a thin coffin was carried into the palace gates. Xie Bufeng, who had once despised gods and spirits, knelt for days before the temple, offering blood in sacrifice, begging all deities for just one more glimpse of him. Madness incarnate. Meanwhile, outside the city, Wen Qingci faked his death and escaped. The Valley of Divine Physicians gained a new scholar—a man who wore a white veil over his face, tending to flowers, reading books, and enjoying music in peaceful solitude. Until the day the palace announced the emperor had relapsed into illness, summoning him back to the imperial court. Before Wen Qingci could even think of how to "cure" the situation… The supposedly bedridden young emperor pushed aside the beaded curtains, his fingers cold as snakeskin, slowly unwrapping the veil from Wen Qingci’s face. *** Mini Theater: From birth, Xie Bufeng could hear the darkest thoughts in people’s hearts. He grew numb in a world of disgust, curses, and malicious assumptions—except for Wen Qingci, who was an anomaly. Xie Bufeng refused to believe this black-hearted lotus truly had a pure heart… Until the day the elegant, compassionate palace physician bowed respectfully to the emperor while silently thinking: "Shut the hell up, sob."