What modern person could resist the temptation of ancient gay erotica?
Well… he certainly couldn’t.
He was dying of curiosity.
“So much dust,” he muttered.
Qingxi glanced over and said, “Your Highness, please set it down—I’ll take care of it.”
Fu Ye quickly waved him off. “No need, I’ve got it. You focus on your work.”
Qingxi really was like a machine—focused, efficient, and entirely unaware of anything unusual in Fu Ye’s expression. He simply lowered his head and continued organizing the palace illustration scrolls.
Those scrolls were drawn by Consort Fang. Some had been included in her Palace Chronicles, others hadn’t. The architecture, clothing, and customs in her art were all vastly different from the current Zhou dynasty style. Qingxi clearly had a fondness for these courtly paintings—he handled them with extreme care, sometimes even spacing out while staring at them. Not a single thread moved on his dark cyan robe. He came from Fu Huang’s palace—clearly someone raised in a cultured, refined environment.
Then there was Shuangfu—curled up with a scroll in his arms, mouth open, fast asleep.
Fu Ye kept his eyes lowered. Only after the heat on his face had faded did he quietly reopen the gilded album.
The Night Tales from Jinxue Temple was bound with a silk brocade ribbon woven with cloud motifs. It held twelve sequential illustrations, each vividly colored using lapis lazuli and malachite pigments.
He caught a glimpse of one where the couple was out in a field—no roof, no bed. Just nature.
Talk about wild.
Stuff like this? Absolutely had to be enjoyed alone. That was the only way to do it right.
He poked around the bottom of the cabinet and found an entire stack of similar materials. To his amazement, there were more than a dozen volumes. Two of them were even illustrated storybooks, complete with suggestive, blush-worthy covers that left nothing to the imagination.
Who on earth had been reading these?
The previous Emperor Wuzong was a notorious straight-up lecher—not the type to be into this kind of thing. His sons had all left the palace by their teens. Even if they wanted to peek at these, they wouldn’t have dared to do it inside the palace.
And as for Fu Huang?
One glance and you could tell he was the old-school, uptight type. Probably didn’t even have a libido.
So… could it be the palace girls?
Was this what they were into?!
Suddenly, Fu Ye felt a strange kinship with the palace maids.
He’d read plenty of BL novels before, even his fair share of 18+ manga, but an ancient, hand-painted gay erotica? That was a first.
That Jinxue Temple album was huge and heavy, too conspicuous to sneak out.
Instead, he slipped a slightly more manageable spring painting album titled Scenes of Melting Spring into his stack, along with a small storybook called The Tale of the Jade Hairpin. He sandwiched them between some serious-looking scrolls and quietly smuggled them back to his residence.
He walked all the way back practically flying—unable to contain his excitement.
On the way, he’d already come up with a plan to send Shuangfu and the others off to bed early so he could stay up all night reading by lamplight.
But the moment he stepped into the courtyard, he saw a whole row of palace eunuchs standing under the eaves of the Qingyuan Palace’s main hall—lined up like synchronized machines, all dressed in the same narrow-sleeved crimson robes, bowing to him in eerie unison under the flickering candlelight.
…
Fu Ye quickly shielded the items in his hands and hurried into his bedchamber—only to find Fu Huang lounging there, reading.
He was reading The Zhoubi Suanjing—a dense classic on astronomy and mathematics.
Fu Huang must’ve just come from his medicinal bath. His bare feet were lean and angular, one leg casually bent. His hair was still damp, water soaking through the thin robe with the dragon embroidery. The room smelled strongly of herbs. When he looked up and saw Fu Ye return, he said, “Thought you were going to stay there until dawn.”
Fu Ye tensed. “There were too many manuscripts in there—I barely made a dent organizing them.”
Fu Huang neither supported nor opposed his idea of reorganizing the library, but he did seem curious about what books he brought back. He beckoned with a finger.
Fu Ye immediately handed him an illustrated album.
He’d picked out this one first—a scroll of Immortals Bringing Salvation. The clothes fluttered like they were caught in a breeze, the style reminiscent of Wu Daozi. It was likely done by one of the palace ladies trying to mimic a master’s brush. The piece was elegant, and carried the charm of narrative—depictions of legends like Qin Gao riding a carp and Magu presenting peaches of immortality.
Respectable. Cultured.
Fu Huang flipped through it while still reclined on the divan. Fu Ye quickly stacked the rest of the books to the side and stretched dramatically. “What a long day,” he said with a fake yawn.
Seeing Fu Huang was immersed in The Zhoubi Suanjing, a textbook-level work on astronomical calculations, Fu Ye figured he wouldn’t care for the painting album. Sure enough, after a casual glance, Fu Huang set it aside and stood up. “Will you still be able to get up tomorrow?”
Fu Ye nodded like a soldier: “Absolutely. Don’t worry, Your Majesty.”
Fu Huang had been going to bed earlier lately—at his urging. He’d asked him to keep a more regular schedule.
And surprisingly, Fu Huang had been quite receptive lately.
He left just like that, a whole wave of eunuchs following him out through the hanging flower gate.
It really seemed like he’d come over only to see him before bed. Just a quiet moment, and he was gone.
But there’s no one more heartless than a boy with a crush.
The moment Fu Huang left, Fu Ye went full-speed into nighttime mode.
Back when he first arrived in the palace, Shuangfu and Qingxi had to rotate night watch duties. They’d sit close to his bed, on soft mats that they weren’t allowed to lie down on, always on standby to serve him.
Fu Ye couldn’t sleep with people watching him, so he eventually banished them to the far side of the chamber.
Now, after quickly washing up, he sent them all away again. He peeked behind the bed curtains, made sure it was clear, and then carefully pulled out the spring painting album.
These kinds of erotic pictures were rarely painted by big-name artists, so the craftsmanship was often average. But these palace editions? Clearly made for nobles—the paper, the brushwork, all exquisite.
The first picture: jeweled curtains, green bedding, a carved bed. Two men, dressed in brocade, wrapped in each other’s arms. One was turned with his back to the other, clothes half-off, torso twisted back just enough for their lips to meet.
Decently steamy.
The second: two men, completely naked, lying on a bamboo mat in a garden pavilion, surrounded by pine and cypress trees in full bloom.
A poem was scrawled beside it:
“Behind the court, red stems in dew,
At midnight falls the silver rain.”
Aaaaahhh! So explicit!
Fu Ye was practically blushing.
And once you open one book, how do you not read the rest?
That Jade Hairpin Tale? Now that was the real treat. A BL novella, mostly text, but with tasteful illustrations. The ancient spring paintings were already something, but when paired with a spicy plot? Instant upgrade.
He hadn’t expected much from an old-timey smut story—but the more he read, the more hooked he got.
It told the story of an emperor who fell for a court official named Xu Ying.
“Ying’s face flushed, voice trembled. He refused, weeping bitterly.
Yet the emperor coaxed and cornered him, until the deed was done.”
Xu Ying had vowed to resist, but his body betrayed him.
“As time passed, though his heart defied, his body craved the emperor’s touch.
Each time they embraced, his moans grew tender and sweet, filling the room with passion.”
This setup… was so familiar!
That one line—
“Though his heart defied, his body craved the emperor’s touch”—
was basically the holy grail of “verbal denial, physical surrender” tropes. Better than ten thousand modern smut fics rolled into one.
The illustrations matched the plot beat for beat. The first showed Xu Ying kneeling, with the emperor behind him. Later ones? Total role reversal. Xu Ying was straddling him.
The whole vibe screamed: “How could I? …But God, I love it.”
Pure, delicious chaos.
Oh. My. God.
Even as a modern guy, his face was burning—and his underwear had a wet patch.
Later in the story, the minister tried to flee, so the emperor had a statue carved in his likeness…
And slept with the statue like it was a god.
One of the illustrations even showed statue-play.
Who said ancient people were behind the times?
Give him a bowl of braised pork and he might shrug, but just a few thousand words of this ancient erotica? He was tossing and turning all night.
It had been way too long since he’d read anything this racy.
He glanced around the room but still resisted the urge to reach downward.
After all, he was still a modern soul—not fully adapted to life in this era. Ancient nobles had no sense of privacy; they grew up with servants attending to everything, even when they were in bed with someone. It wasn’t unusual to have attendants standing by while they had sex.
But he couldn’t deal with that. Sex, in his mind, was private.
What he lacked most these days was exactly that—privacy.
So he held it in.
Also, what would he even use to clean up?
That made things even worse. He just lay there, staring at the silver-threaded clouds embroidered on the canopy, face burning against the brocade quilt with a blue luan bird holding a pearl in its beak. He didn’t fall asleep until the second half of the night.
He really was just a poor, tormented 20-year-old guy.
And the price of tossing and turning all night? He overslept the next morning. It was already the third quarter of the mao hour (around 6:45 a.m.) by the time he came sprinting out of the palace, only to run smack into Fu Huang, who was returning from morning drills.
Fu Huang didn’t seem angry. He simply watched him charge by, hair flying, with Shuangfu chasing behind him holding a food box, and Qingxi biting his lip in indecision—unsure whether he should run or follow the rules.
Palace etiquette forbade shouting or running.
Seeing this first thing in the morning, Eunuch Qin was practically beaming. Fu Huang didn’t say anything until Fu Ye was long out of sight—then continued on his way into the hall.
“His Lordship must’ve stayed up too late,” Qin Eunuch said with a smile.
Fu Huang didn’t get what was so interesting about those little books.
But he did like seeing Fu Ye so lively and full of energy.
Maybe it was affection by association, but that day he went to work in the East Annex Hall.
The East Annex now looked like the abode of immortals—so grand and luxurious, perfectly worthy of someone like Fu Ye.
Though he was working from Fu Ye’s residence, he brought his usual eunuchs from Qingyuan Palace to serve him. He liked quiet while working, and the entire hall stood in disciplined silence.
The weather had warmed. These days, Fu Ye took lunch at Cien Palace, and usually napped there afterward. But today, before lunchtime even arrived, Fu Huang heard someone sprinting across the courtyard.
Since it had gotten warmer, the roses were blooming. Fu Ye often had the windows opened so the fragrance could drift inside.
And truly—who else in the palace would dare run like that?
Through the window, Fu Huang saw Fu Ye dart into the courtyard, with a gasping Shuangfu close behind.
An eunuch at the door announced quickly, “His Lordship has returned.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Fu Ye burst inside.
He had nearly died of fright when he heard that Fu Huang had gone to work in his room!
Hiding something in plain sight was supposed to be the safest move. After getting up late, he’d simply shoved the erotic painting album and the naughty novella into his desk, sandwiched between the Four Books and Five Classics.
He shot a glance at the table.
Thank God—everything was exactly where he’d left it.
Fu Huang was lounging by the window table. He no longer went around with his hair loose in the daytime. Now his hair was tied with a black jade pin, and he wore a spring robe of deep black brocade embroidered with twelve imperial dragon emblems in gold thread. The gold and black set each other off—he looked more regal than ever. The rose-pink blossoms framed him through the vermillion window lattice, like a painting come to life, fragrant and surreal.
Fu Ye’s mind blanked for a moment.
Then Fu Huang looked at him and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be dining with the Empress Dowager?”
Fu Ye, still catching his breath, said, “…I came back to grab something.”
He couldn’t possibly focus with that spring painting just sitting there out in the open, right under Fu Huang’s nose. Reading in that room had become a full-on psychological battle.
Better to just take the whole thing and be done with it!
“Imperial Brother, what are you doing in my palace…?” He put on a smile as he walked toward the desk, his crimson robe flowing through a hall piled with gold and jade.
He thought he was being really clever. There was no way he could carry the whole stack of books—if he tried, Fu Huang would definitely notice they weren’t proper reading material. So he acted open and casual, saying, “I’ve finished these storybooks and was about to trade them for some new ones. Do you want to read one? This one’s about unofficial tales of favored concubines throughout the dynasties—it’s so good.”
Fu Huang would never be interested in storybooks written for palace women. He often said he’d rather go riding or practice archery than waste time on those.
If Fu Huang refused, he could just walk away with them—perfect plan.
But then Fu Huang reached out his hand.
His fingertips were calloused, his hand scarred and dry—not the soft hands of a noble. Yet the bones were flawless, the shape of the hand strikingly beautiful. His fingers were long, like the rest of him—slender, strong, and sharply defined.
The hand was, in some ways, more elegant than the man himself.
But in this moment, it didn’t feel elegant at all.
It felt like the hand of a demon.
Fu Ye instantly regretted everything. If he’d known it would turn out like this, he never would’ve tried to be clever in front of Fu Huang!
Had he forgotten who Fu Huang really was? Lately, the emperor had been doting on him so much, he’d forgotten how much like a demon he used to be.
Eunuch Qin approached with a smile, ready to hand the books over for him.
Fu Ye was frozen, grinning blankly at Fu Huang like an idiot.
Seeing his reaction, Fu Huang was even more certain something was off. He crooked his finger at Eunuch Qin.
Qin took the books from Fu Ye’s hands and presented them to the emperor.
The emperor clearly saw right through him. Reclining lazily on the zitan couch inlaid with jade, he flipped through the books one by one and tossed them onto the heated table.
The Comprehensive Records of Literature and History.
The Immortals Who Saved the World.
The Chronicles of One Hundred Heroes.
Several memorials to the throne fell off the table—each one concerning the affairs of state and war.
Then Fu Huang flipped to The Tale of the Jade Hairpin.
The cover featured a very suggestive image of a coiled dragon pillar—its body spiraling upward, the shaft thrusting boldly into the clouds.
The relaxed look on Fu Huang’s face vanished instantly.
