Absolute Sovereignty - Chapter 18: A Crown of Blood.

Upon opening his eyes, there before him was a bridal chamber adorned with red candles and windows.A bride dressed in a phoenix coronet and robes of rank sat upright on the nuptial bed, her face covered by a red bridal veil.Zhao Rong rubbed his sleepy eyes, “Have I become a groom? Oh, and a junior one at that.”Understood.His facial expression brewed for a moment before he twisted his mouth into a smile, “Wait a second...”Huh, something's amiss.The bride is my childhood sweetheart who also harbored a crush on me?Oh, then that's alright.This is very fitting.Zhao Rong stepped forward, happily lifting the red bridal veil, “Hey hey, my lady, where are you running off to?”-------------In the great era of contention, the tide of the times surged forth, and Confucian Scholar Zhao Rong bravely faced it head-on. Not only did he seek to catch up to the footsteps of his childhood sweetheart turned Sword Immortal Lady, but he also wished to witness firsthand the dispute that engulfed more than half of the Cultivation World, the strife among the various schools of thought...—————[Slow-burn], [Non-cliché], [Non-level-up], [Romance plot], [Sweet without the angst]This book is also known as “I Have a Fox Fairy Wife”, “Rebirth: I Deliver Parcels in the Otherworld”, “Zhao Ziyu, The Smirking Scholar” “I Really Don't Want to Be a Kept Man”...

Ukei Kaito fought a desperate struggle in order to fulfill his role as a summoned hero. He defeated the Demon Lord and saved the very world, only to meet an end filled but with betrayal. The companions that he’d trusted throughout his journey betrayed him and killed him by sticking a blade through his chest.

The journey of a generation’s male empress started because of four words.

“Send a dowry escort.”

During the 19th year of Yuanqing, Qi Yunruo boarded a carriage and entered through a corner door of the second prince’s estate. Then, across the watery corridor, he gazed at the prince from afar.

Notes:

For aristocratic women in imperial China to marry into a family part of the upper nobility, they must be of the legitimate line and must also have an escort/dowry maid that married into that family. That escort would be a “ying” (媵) and could be considered a concubine.

- Description from Novelupdates