After The Scumbag Alpha Consort Chose To Lie Flat, The Princess Rebelled - Chapter 1

Gu Xianyu sat alone in her room for four shichen, from morning all the way into the afternoon.

The servants of the consort’s estate were afraid she might die inside, so every now and then, someone would come over to deliver tea and snacks.

After all, this Sixth Consort had been weak since childhood. On the very day of her grand wedding to the Sixth Princess, she had fainted halfway through the ceremony, turning herself into a joke for the entire imperial family.

An Alpha weaker and more delicate than even an Omega—so weak that even Betas looked down on her.

And yet the consort’s heart was higher than the sky. She believed marrying a princess was an insult to her, that taking the Sixth Princess as her wife had cut off her path to glory.

The consort had sharpened her skull trying to worm her way into the Second Prince’s estate. She stole the princess’s residence account books as a token of allegiance, and in a sense, the Second Prince really had accepted her.

Gu Xianyu rather looked down on the consort too.

But after a while, she remembered that she was now this useless consort.

“Sigh!” She let out a deep sigh. If she had known this would happen when the beast tide arrived, she would have run away with the new base chief.

She had stayed behind to cover the retreat, saving a bunch of ungrateful wretches. Not only had she been eaten alive by mutant beasts while she was still breathing, but after death, she had even been dragged into another world to suffer.

“Sigh!”

The person on the roof made another stroke in the little booklet.

“What’s wrong with the consort today? She’s sighed 1,745 times already. I’m honestly afraid she’ll fail to catch her breath one of these times and just die.”

“This is the consort, our master. Show some respect. …Hurry up and write it down. She sighed again.”

Gu Xianyu lifted her head a little. She kept feeling as though there was something on the roof, but she had no ability now and could not examine it closely.

Although she had not been an ability user with especially strong offensive power, she had still been a seventh-rank wood-type ability user responsible for logistics and resources. Two-thirds of the food in the base had been provided by her.

The remaining third consisted of meat livestock like cattle, sheep, and horses—but even their fodder had been provided by her.

So even though she was a high-level social recluse who never went out on missions and never interacted with the other higher-ups, she had never lacked resources.

But the leaders of the base had never treated her like a person either. She was simply an untiring, unstoppable grain-producing machine inside the base.

The leaders had always been very generous when feeding her crystal cores. After all, she counted as the base’s property, and who had ever heard of someone being stingy when upgrading their own equipment?

Despite her young age, she could still be considered a veteran who had served three generations of base leaders.

She had been an artificially created ability user born two years after the apocalypse began. At two years old, she was found to have an ability and was raised at the old base chief’s side. At three, she began producing grain. When she was seven, the old base chief died, and her good days ended with him.

After the second base chief took office, he believed ability users like her should be placed under unified control. So he locked her in a cage, providing only a small amount of food and water, as well as the crystal cores required for grain production.

She lived like that for ten years. When she was seventeen, a zombie tide broke out. The second base chief died, and the major factions in the base began fighting for power. She, too, became one of the things they fought over.

It was not until the new base chief won over all the ordinary civilians and the experts from the research institute that he successfully took power.

After that, the civilians called for civil rights. Pressured by public opinion, the new base chief released her.

But the good times did not last. Only a year later, a beast tide broke out. The base truly could not withstand it, so the upper ranks fled overnight with the research institute.

But she chose to stay behind and live or die together with the ordinary civilians.

Only, she had forgotten that people were different from one another. The group of people who had once called for her release had gone through far too much over the past year. For the sake of power, for the sake of the base, many people had gradually lost their humanity. The ordinary people now only hated her for being an ability user yet lacking the power to save everyone.

She used every bit of strength she had to protect those people, but when they saw that she was nearly done for, they pushed her straight off the city wall.

Ability users also had crystal cores inside their bodies, so they attracted zombies and mutant beasts far more than ordinary people did.

The mutant beasts that had climbed up the city wall all turned back one after another, rushing toward the ability user who had been torn apart in an instant. Even a sliver of flesh small enough to get stuck between their teeth would be an enormous tonic.

Not to mention that wood-type users also had healing abilities, making them even more attractive to mutant beasts than a walking blood bag.

Many people found the chance to run.

Perhaps they escaped successfully. Perhaps they were caught by the beast tide before they got far.

But Gu Xianyu knew nothing about any of that. The moment she saw a mutant wolf with four heads scrambling over itself to rip and bite at her, she could no longer feel anything.

“Just as well.” Gu Xianyu sighed softly again. Being eaten by a mutant wolf was fine too.

Gu Xianyu was so adaptable that even dying did not matter. After all, had she not come back to life again?

She had revived in a melodramatic novel as a cannon-fodder consort.

The princess’s fiancé, the strongest Grand General of the current dynasty, had suddenly gone missing on the battlefield. The enemy kingdom’s offensive was fierce, and with no other choice, the emperor could only seek peace. To humiliate them, the enemy then demanded that the Grand General’s fiancée be sent for a political marriage alliance.

Naturally, the princess refused. So she hastily found a top scholar from a poor family and married her.

“Sigh.”

The person on the roof made another stroke.

Gu Xianyu brought out a small wooden box. Inside was the evidence that the original owner had colluded with the Second Prince.

The original owner did have ability. After all, she was the new top scholar, so she certainly did not lack cultural knowledge. It was just that she lacked a bit of sense.

Gu Xianyu could not understand her ambitions, nor could she understand the Second Prince’s ambitions.

What was so good about being emperor? Every day, you had to get up before dawn to attend court, facing a room full of ministers. Just imagining that scene made Gu Xianyu so nervous that her breathing grew rapid and her palms began to sweat.

The emperor worked herself half to death all day, and every night she had to be sent off to a different Omega for their amusement.

Sleeping naked beside another living, breathing person.

That person would even breathe beside her ear.

Gu Xianyu only had to think about it to feel so terrified that her chest tightened. She wanted to hide in a wardrobe, under a bed, in a basement… in any corner she could find.

Too frightening.

Gu Xianyu did not understand the Second Prince’s ambitions, but the original owner had already boarded the Second Prince’s pirate ship.

Early that morning, the Second Prince had sent someone with a letter.

He wanted her to send him another token of allegiance.

This was also the first time Gu Xianyu learned that one could submit two tokens of allegiance.

According to imperial rules, on the first and fifteenth of each month, the princess had to summon the consort to make children together. At all other times, the consort was kept in the consort’s estate, while the princess could bring her male attendants to live in the princess’s residence. Once the princess became pregnant, the consort would need to move into the princess’s residence and serve the princess around the clock.

Even if the princess’s child sometimes might not be the consort’s, the consort was still the only person officially recorded on the imperial jade register. No matter whether the child was hers or not, by status, the child could only be hers.

That fool of a Second Prince wanted her to drug the princess tonight, then arrange for someone to enter the princess’s residence and get the princess pregnant as soon as possible. That way, she could rely on the child to gain status and move into the princess’s residence.

The Second Prince only told her to drug the princess. He did not tell her to personally go and make the baby, because she was too weak and sickly. No one believed she had that ability.

The princess did not believe it either. The reason the princess had chosen her was precisely because she “couldn’t perform.” That was why the princess had picked her as consort—easy to control, and likely to die early.

In truth, the princess had long had someone she loved: the Grand General of their country, who had gone missing on the battlefield. Some said she had died for the country; others said she had been captured by the enemy kingdom.

No one knew the specifics. Gu Xianyu had not seen any news about the Grand General when she was reading the novel either.

All she knew was that the neighboring kingdom wanted a marriage alliance. The princess did not want to become a marriage-alliance princess, and she also wanted to wait for the Grand General to return. So she had deliberately chosen a sickly consort.

“Sigh.” Gu Xianyu sighed. The moment she thought about how she would soon be washed clean, packed up, and sent to the princess’s residence, she wanted to run.

But right now, she had no ability. She had only inherited the original owner’s sickly body. She could not run at all. Even walking took her three steps to gasp and five steps to rest. If she ran two steps, she might keel over on the spot.

Riding a horse was even more impossible. The original owner had been jolted to death on horseback on the day of the wedding, and then Gu Xianyu had taken her place.

She had not fainted while entering the bridal chamber at all. The moment she entered the bridal chamber, she had been knocked unconscious by one punch from the maid beside the princess. They had even tied her up and stuffed her under the bed.

Thinking about it, Gu Xianyu understood why the original owner had been so heartbroken after receiving the imperial decree that she had directly defected to the Second Prince.

If it had been her, she would not have been able to bear being tied up and shoved under a dust-covered bed either.

She could accept being shoved into a wardrobe. It was cleaner there, and very soft.

“Sigh! It’s still the princess’s fault for being too careless about cleanliness.”

The two people on the roof instantly perked up.

Finally, they had something proper to write down.

“What did she say?” Silver One asked.

Gold Sixteen said, “She said Master isn’t particular about cleanliness? This… should I record it?”

The only person they could call Master was naturally Her Highness the Princess.

Silver One thought for a moment. “Record it! Master said even a burp has to be written down.”

Gu Xianyu sighed again and tugged at her hair. “What am I supposed to do tonight? The princess isn’t clean. What am I supposed to do?”

She was going to be stuffed under the bed again. That bed’s underside had not been wiped either. It was covered in dust.

The hand Gold Sixteen held her brush with trembled. The brush tip left a black blot on the little booklet, the ink spreading across the page.

“Record this too?” she asked cautiously. The consort dared to say it, but she did not dare to write it.

Silver One gritted her teeth and forced herself not to go down and kill someone.

“Record it!” The word flew off the tip of her tongue like a dart, carrying murderous intent.

Gu Xianyu shuddered. She kept feeling that something over there was strange.

Her fingertip tapped against the tabletop. Since she had to sleep under the bed tonight, she needed to wear something thicker. It would be bad if she caught a chill.

In this era, even a minor cold could be fatal.

Although she did not especially want to live, she did not especially want to die either. Since she had come here, she had to properly finish this journey. She needed to take good care of herself.

Besides, if she got sick, she would have to see a doctor.

And the doctor would have to inspect, listen, question, and palpate. She could not accept a single one of those four diagnostic methods.

A living person would speak to her, look at her face, and even touch that small patch of skin on her wrist.

Heavens.

“Just let me die instead.” Gu Xianyu let out another deep sigh.

She did not like talking to other people, but she quite liked talking to herself.

Back when she still had her ability, she would also talk to mutant plants. Plants could not speak, but she could understand what they meant.

They would read novels together, gossip about other people together. Plants would not tattle, would not dislike her for talking too much, and would not get so worked up that they sprayed her in the face with foul spit reeking of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

Another line was added to the little booklet on the roof.

“If only there were a place where I could farm.” Gu Xianyu found some thicker clothes, then remembered that she would soon be taken away to bathe, and immediately felt disgusted all over again.

“What’s the point of washing me? The princess isn’t particular about cleanliness. She’s sloppy and filthy and so dirty that washing me clean is still a waste.” Gu Xianyu sighed. “The princess’s maids are dirty too.”

Who knew where they had recycled the rope used to tie her up? There had even been blackened, stinking bloodstains on it.

Gold Sixteen put down the brush and little booklet in her hands, then threw herself over to hold Silver One down.

“Calm down! The consort is an imperial relative recorded on the imperial jade register! Killing the consort is a capital crime that will exterminate nine generations of your family!”

“Let go of me! I’m the only one left of my nine generations!”