Memoirs of a Salted Fish Hidden Guard’s Promotion

Chu Shi has been transmigrated for twenty years. Currently, he serves as a hidden guard for a Prince’s Mansion. His daily job consists of squatting in trees and spacing out while watching others drink and have fun. With morning and evening shifts on rotation, the work is leisurely (aside from the occasional field mission to kill someone). His primary hobby is saving up money to buy back his freedom.

Recently, Chu Shi got a boyfriend. This boyfriend is a student who came to the capital for the imperial examinations. He is elegant, handsome, as radiant as a bright pearl, and carries himself with a noble grace. He is the most beautiful person Chu Shi has ever seen.

Chu Shi is utterly infatuated with him. Knowing that the student is short on cash, Chu Shi took the initiative to fund a private courtyard for him, cooks for him, and heads straight to his boyfriend’s place the moment he gets off duty. Worried about distracting him from his studies, Chu Shi even exercises extreme self-control regarding their daily intimate time.

Chu Shi firmly believed that with his boyfriend’s talent and knowledge, he would surely top the imperial rankings. However, on the day the results were posted, his boyfriend’s name was nowhere to be found.

At that time, rumors were circulating in the capital that the spring examinations were tainted by corruption and fraud. In a fit of rage, Chu Shi masked his face and broke into the residence of the Chief Examiner, the Minister of Rites, in the middle of the night. He wanted to see exactly who had the audacity to blacken his dear boyfriend’s future!

Under the glow of glazed lamps, several high-ranking officials were kneeling fearfully on the floor. Meanwhile, his usually scholarly, “weak-and-unable-to-care-for-himself” boyfriend was dressed in a dark gold python robe, sitting regally in the seat of honor. The dim light swept across his profile, his face—as exquisite as jade and gold—was set in an expression of absolute authority over life and death.

It turned out he wasn’t some poor scholar from the countryside; he was the current Crown Prince of the dynasty.

On the way back to the Prince’s Mansion, Chu Shi was in a daze, wondering if he should continue playing dumb and date the Prince, or be bold enough to dump the heir to the throne.

The next day, when his boyfriend asked him with a face full of concern why he didn’t come over last night and if he was sick, Chu Shi shuddered and followed his heart—choosing to keep playing dumb.

After fifteen years in the Prince’s Mansion, Chu Shi finally saved enough money to redeem himself. He could finally be a free man. On the day he left the capital, he didn’t tell anyone, including his boyfriend.

As the first light of dawn broke, Chu Shi, dressed in commoner’s cloth, rode his horse out of the capital. Not long after passing the city gates, a squad of black-armored cavalry appeared silently at the end of the road like ghosts. The leader, wearing black robes and a dark crown, sat atop a divine steed. The corners of his lips were slightly upturned, like warm jade glowing in the sun.

He opened his mouth, his voice as gentle as a spring breeze: “Where is Brother going? Leaving without saying goodbye… could it be that you intend to abandon your Little Lin?”