Chapter 1 – The Crown Prince’s Longevity

Author’s Note: This is a fictional alternate history. The Female Lead dresses as a boy until age ten. No romantic pairing. Since the Author is fond of laying groundwork, the first 80 chapters are entirely foreshadowing — please bear with it. Trust that logical consistency is the baseline of this story.

Fan-made song: “Taiyi War Chronicle” — searchable on NetEase Music and Bilibili.

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“That mountain over there — what is it called.”

Zhan Changfeng’s voice carried a steadiness that did not belong to someone her age. Even a question was spoken like a statement, laced with a faint air of authority.

She was merely bored, asking on a whim, but the head steward beside her launched into a flurry of fussing. “Your Highness, please hurry and put your cloak on. If you fall ill from watching the snow, how will this servant answer to the Emperor? How will I answer to the people? Oh dear, let me look — what mountain? Our Imperial City is situated on a plain, Your Highness.”

“How impudent. You’re deceiving me.” She paused for a brief moment, her brows furrowing slightly before relaxing again, a faint shadow of vexation crossing her face.

The Star-Plucking Terrace rose a hundred zhang[1] high, standing within the Imperial City, pointing toward the sky. From its heights, one could reach out and pluck the stars, overlooking ten thousand li[2] of rivers and mountains.

The wind up here was fierce, laden with snow, tangled with swirling, fluttering curtains of gauze — an utterly wild and unrestrained scene.

At her words, a row of attendants carrying warming braziers and cloaks all knelt down at once, trembling like a leaf, crying out in unison: “Please calm your anger, Your Highness!”

The head steward pressed himself to the ground. A few snowflakes drifted onto the black zhangrong-velvet beaded cloud-tipped boots before his eyes. Suppressing the urge to wipe the cold sweat from his brow, he strained his eyes as far out beyond the white jade balustrade as he could, reasoning inwardly that his memories of half a lifetime were not wrong — there was no mountain in the Imperial City. Within three or four hundred li outside the city walls, there was no mountain to be seen either.

“Your Highness…” Unable to read the little ancestor’s mind, he ventured cautiously, “There is a mountain. Yes, there is one. This servant misspoke just now — please punish me as you see fit.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” The corner of her mouth lifted slightly, but there was no warmth in it — only cold mockery.

Zhan Changfeng turned away from the head steward and looked at the others. “I will ask once more. That mountain — what is it called.”

“Please calm your anger, Your Highness!” The crowd dared not lift their heads; their Faces nearly pressed to the ground, terrified of provoking her fury.

Zhan Changfeng had not truly been in any mood before, but now they had managed to stir a trace of real irritation in her. She cast her gaze into the distance. There stood a mountain, towering and majestic. It seemed to have merged with heaven and earth itself, yet existed in this world with such unmistakable clarity — a single glance was enough to feel its vast and surging presence.

It had always been there. From the time she had babbled her first words to the days she read poetry and debated statecraft. From her Weiyang Palace to the emperor’s study. From every waking moment since she had first opened her eyes.

It had long since become a part of her life — as ordinary as every brick and tile of this Imperial City — so much so that she had forgotten to ask its name.

And yet now, upon a casual mention, everyone told her there was no mountain.

Then what was it she had been seeing?

“Zero-Three!”

“Subordinate is here.” From the shadows, a voice responded — dark, hoarse, and firm.

“Tell me what that mountain is called.”

The wind and snow grew stronger. Heaven and earth turned vast and desolate, blanketed in silence.

The normally sharp and efficient shadow guard hesitated for a moment. “Master, there is no mountain in the Imperial City.”

The head steward’s heart lurched with dread. He stole a glance at the Crown Prince. Her expression was unreadable. Though she would not yet be ten after the New Year, even he — who had served her since she was small — could no longer fathom her thoughts.

“If there is no mountain, then there truly is no mountain…”

The loneliness between her brows startled the head steward. Could the young Highness truly have been asking whether there was a mountain?

Oh heavens — could she have been possessed by something?!

The head steward opened his Mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it. “Your Highness… what is it that you see?”

“I…” Zhan Changfeng curled the middle finger of her Right Hand inward slightly. Her expression gradually turned cold. With a sweep of her Sleeves, she said: “Return to the palace.”

Upon returning to the palace, Zhan Changfeng developed a fever, throwing the entire imperial household into a panic.

The old Emperor was even more anxious than her mother consort. Seeing his Grandson unconscious, he simply had his memorials moved to her Weiyang Palace to review, determined to stay by her side and watch over her at all times.

“How have you all been attending to the Crown Prince? What use are you?!” The old Emperor’s rage triggered an asthma attack. Attendants rushed to pat his chest and soothe his breathing, calling back the imperial physician who had been about to leave.

The head steward was on the verge of tears. “Your Majesty, we have been wronged. His Highness fell ill suddenly — he was perfectly fine when he lay down.”

Something struck him then, and he said in alarm: “His Highness asked about a mountain, but where would there be a mountain in the Imperial City? Could it be that His Highness has encountered some malevolent spirit?”

“When did this happen?”

“Just before the fever came on.” The head steward kowtowed repeatedly while wailing, as though the Crown Prince had truly been seized by some evil specter.

The old Emperor, both anxious and vexed from listening to all this, declared: “Issue a decree — summon Buddhist monks and Daoist priests into the palace!”

Looking across history, there were few imperial sons as deeply favored by an emperor as this. And even those who were favored owed it to their own talent, to being beloved by association with a cherished consort, or simply to having a pleasing appearance.

But in Zhan Changfeng’s case, things were a little different. The old Emperor had, quite completely, come to regard her as his very lifeline.

The Yi Dynasty had endured for eight hundred years. By the generation of the old Emperor’s Father, it had already begun to unravel — a reign of wind and rain, teetering on the edge.

The old Emperor was a great master of painting and lyric poetry, but in politics and military affairs he was careless. In his early years, his greatest hope had been for his Son to grow up quickly so that he could toss aside his responsibilities and lose himself in landscapes and rivers.

Perhaps the fortunes of the Yi family had been squandered by the reckless rulers of previous generations. Offspring were sparse — for three successive generations, there had been only a single male descendant.

The old Emperor had finally managed to have a Son, only for that Son to die of illness before reaching seventeen, leaving behind but one child.

That child was Zhan Changfeng.

The old Emperor wept before the memorial tablet of the former Crown Prince. This was the Yi family’s sole Heir to the throne — how was he to face his ancestors?

The Yi line was on the verge of dying out entirely!

After weeping, the old Emperor fixed his gaze on the former Crown Prince Consort’s swollen belly. There was still hope — still hope. His Grandson was still inside.

What the old Emperor did not know was that the Yi line had already died out — for the current Crown Prince was, in fact, female.

One must speak here of Zhan Changfeng’s mother consort: Li Yunqiu.

Li Yunqiu came from a great clan, with hidden talents in both civil and martial arts. Yet trapped within the dark confines of the inner palace, she could only give herself to matters of sentiment. Once the former Crown Prince was laid to rest, she cradled her high, round belly and sighed. For the sake of the dynasty — and for her own sake — this child could only be a boy.

And so it was under these circumstances that Zhan Changfeng was born. Her first loud cry had barely carried far before she was named Crown Prince — the future Emperor of the Yi Dynasty.

With renewed hope, the old Emperor abandoned the muddling ways of his earlier years and attempted to govern with diligence and ambition. Yet the Yi Dynasty’s realm was riddled like a Sieve — there was simply no patching it up in a short time.

Ah, but no matter — if he could not patch it, he still had his Grandson. And his Grandson’s Grandson.

This made things terribly hard for Zhan Changfeng. At twelve months old, she sat cheerfully in the old Emperor’s lap, sucking on her Fingers and drooling, listening to a full court of civil and military officials ramble on.

At three she was forced to learn Characters. At four she read historical texts. At five she was surrounded by celebrated Confucian scholars reciting statecraft. At six she studied the arts of kingship. At seven she helped the old Emperor review memorials. By eight, she had taken on the proper bearing of an Heir apparent.

The Badge of that bearing was this: through both open stratagems and hidden schemes, she had sent the head of one of the Yi Dynasty’s greatest corrupt officials rolling.

Warm Blood had sprayed up the golden steps, splattering onto her black ceremonial robes, swallowed up beneath the cries of “Your Highness is wise!”

That day the snow had fallen heavier and heavier. By the time she left the Grand Purity Hall and made her way to the Star-Plucking Terrace, all that filled her Eyes was the vast, blank white — and the mountain.

But that mountain did not exist.

In the void,

Two Children were curled like Infants, facing each other in the open — one sleeping peacefully, one awake.

“My family name is Yi, my given name is Zhan. My imperial grandfather bestowed upon me the honorific ‘Changsheng,’ but Mother Consort said Changsheng was too bold, so she gave me the childhood name Changfeng. You are me, and so I will give you half my name. From this day forward, you are Zhan Changfeng, and I am Yi Changsheng.”

Those words from long ago remained vivid in memory, yet Reality had become something unrecognizable. Zhan Changfeng reached out and touched the face that was identical to her own, her voice soft and distant: “You get to be free of every burden… Yi Changsheng.”

That’s right — the Female Lead has multiple personalities. This story follows Zhan Changfeng as the primary. This is neither a rebirth, nor a transmigration, nor a Soul Possession. She is an original, home-grown case of split personality.

[1] zhang is a unit of measurement equal to 3.3 meters, so 100 zhang is 330 meters, or as tall as the Eiffel Tower in France.

[2] li is a unit of measurement equal to approximately 500 meters, so ten thousand li is quite close to how wide modern China is.