Half a moat of spring water, a city full of blossoms — smoke and rain darken a thousand homes.
Early February in Hangzhou was a painting come to life. A fine, whispering rain nourished the pale green buds on every branch, the gauze-thin curtain of drizzle so soft and weightless that one could not tell whether the rain was too light or the mist too heavy. Mountains and waters half-vanished into the haze, the sky hung low, the earth glowed a deep green, and everywhere there was only cloud and smoke.
It was early morning. The breakfast stalls lining both sides of the street billowed white steam, making this great and bustling city feel even more ethereal — like a pavilion suspended in midair, wrapped in rosy mist.
At the far end of the hazy street, an old horse struck its hooves against the damp bluestone road, each step ringing out with uncommon clarity. Upon the horse’s weary back sat a bamboo-framed book chest, but the one leading the horse was no scholar.
The figure wore his long hair loosely scattered, half-concealing his face. His clothes were the worn garb of a martial wanderer, and strapped across his back was a long bundle wrapped in cloth, roughly four feet in length. The get-up drew a few glances, but in the teeming bustle of Hangzhou, it did not exactly make him stand out.
The people of Hangzhou had seen everything. No one thought it strange. The stall-keepers and vendors along the way called out to him as usual, lifting the lids off steaming baskets, doing their best to sell him breakfast.
Man and horse walked on through the streets, growing noisier by the minute, and before long arrived before the gate of a grand estate.
The estate carried neither the quiet elegance of a scholarly household nor the brash vulgarity of a nouveau-riche merchant. Its understated air concealed unmistakable wealth. The two characters on the gate plaque — Su Manor — radiated the composed authority of a family with deep roots.
An early-rising servant, eyes still heavy with sleep, yawned lazily as he swept the path before the gate. He glanced at the rather forlorn sight of man and horse, and looked away with a bored indifference.
The wanderer seemed to let out a quiet laugh. He led his horse onward and stopped before a small steamed bun shop diagonally across from the Su Manor.
“Get me a clean room.”
“We sell buns. We’re not an inn.” The one who answered was an old man. Beside him stood a young woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties — passably attractive, neither a delicate beauty nor plain, with a tall and full figure. Yet in an era when girls were married off at fourteen, she still wore her hair unbound in the style of an unmarried maiden. Clearly, she was what people called an old maid who couldn’t find a husband — which perhaps explained why she spoke so bluntly.
“I’ll buy buns. But I also need a room.”
The wanderer drew a silver ingot from inside his robe and placed it quietly on the old man’s table.
The old man didn’t dare touch it at first, only studied it a moment. The wanderer’s long hair half-hid his face; his expression was unreadable. His words were forward, even pushy, yet they carried no pressure, no hostility — only the simple sense that he wanted a room, nothing more.
“What kind of person just shows up and— we told you, we sell buns, not—” The young woman had her hands on her hips, already irritated, but the old man raised his hand and stopped her.
“Qinghua. Show this… hero to the guest room in the back courtyard.”
“But Father!”
“Go on!”
“Hmph.” Lu Qinghua shot her father a resentful glare, then turned and walked into the courtyard without looking back. The wanderer showed not the slightest smugness. He calmly clasped his fist in a bow toward the old man and followed her.
The old man, surnamed Lu, picked up the silver ingot and hesitated — then turned it over. A small slice had been shaved from the bottom.
He ran a modest little business, but he had an eye for things. The silver’s quality was identical to official treasury ingots, and the shaved bottom told him everything he needed to know.
This was a person he could not afford to offend. But since the man had shown no ill intent and had walked openly down the street in broad daylight, Old Lu decided to take him in. After all, he still needed to save up for a dowry — to finally marry off that sharp-tongued daughter of his.
Lu Qinghua, of course, had no idea her father was already scheming to be rid of her. Cursing the stranger under her breath the whole way, she finally reached the back-courtyard guest room and was about to leave when she heard him issue more instructions.
“Find some bean cakes and water for the horse. Get me something to eat. And prepare hot water — I need to bathe.”
“We sell buns! We are NOT an inn!” Lu Qinghua was nearly in tears with fury. Never mind the man’s rough, wanderer’s appearance — she slammed the door on her way out, muttering angrily.
Hangzhou was, after all, a great city of the south — well-governed, steeped in scholarly culture. Wanderers passed through constantly, but few ever caused real trouble. Even the city’s ruffians preferred to spend their time listening to storytellers and drinking songs. Lu Qinghua genuinely wasn’t afraid of this man getting rough with her.
“No wonder she can’t get married…” Su Mu shook his head with a quiet laugh, pushing the hair back from his forehead. He unslung the cloth bundle from his back, didn’t even bother removing his shoes, and fell straight onto the bed.
The bedding smelled of sun-dried cotton flowers. Su Mu let out a soft groan, allowed the exhaustion in his body to seep down into his limbs and drain away, and let his thoughts slowly rise to the surface.
He had been in this world for half a year now. The dynasty called Da Yan bore a resemblance to what later generations would call the “Blazing Song” — the Song Dynasty — said to be the most economically prosperous era in history. But fate, it seemed, had not been especially generous to Su Mu.
In his previous life, he had been no cunning corporate titan, no elite scholar in some high-powered field. Not a doctor, not a special forces soldier. Just an ordinary young man scrambling to make a living — white-collar worker one year, hauling bricks the next. He’d been pushed around, and he’d pushed back. In his spare time he read and practiced his writing, feeding his mind to make up for never having gone to university.
To support a younger brother and sister still in school, he had given up his chance at a prestigious institution and thrown himself into the working world early. He had met with failure at every turn — the jagged, unyielding stone had been worn, over time, into a smooth and rounded river pebble.
He had regrets about this. But only regrets — not remorse. Because though life had beaten him again and again, he had never beaten himself. He had never bowed his head.
When the terrible accident happened, fragments of his twenty-odd years flashed through his mind. In that final moment, he had felt only a strange lightness. I’ve done what I could. The rest is Heaven’s will. Everything that needed doing had been done. If this was fate, then perhaps it was also a kind of release.
Then he woke again — and found himself inside a different body. He and an old manservant who had traveled with him were being held captive in a bandit’s den, both badly wounded. He had crawled out of a pile of corpses in the end, but in his heart there was still a flicker of excitement, even gratitude. Perhaps Heaven, in giving him this second chance, was showing him a kind of grace. He could finally live freely, for himself alone.
As for the loyal old servant — he never woke up. Su Mu could only piece together the identity of this body’s original owner from a travel permit and a few personal effects, and had made his way, by a roundabout path, to Hangzhou.
People say that reading ten thousand books is no substitute for traveling ten thousand li — but the previous occupant of this body had been short on judgment. With bandit uprisings running rampant across the south, he had still gone wandering with an old servant in tow. And besides — with parents still living, one should not travel far. It seemed the “original Su Mu” had not exactly been the sort of son who gave his parents peace of mind.
Thinking all this through, the fatigue that had accumulated along the road now surged in like a tide. Su Mu was just on the verge of drifting off to sleep when a tremendous bang against the door jolted him awake. Lu Qinghua had arrived, carrying hot water.
The girl had evidently received a lecture from her father. Her expression, naturally, was as sour as ever. She set down the hot water, retrieved a food box from outside the door, and wasted no time making her exit — muttering under her breath as she went: “Scald yourself, you pig! Choke on your food! And if you don’t choke, then stuff yourself to death!“
“Ha.” Su Mu smiled in helpless resignation. He had been in the wrong first, coming here the way he did — he couldn’t really blame the old maid for her attitude. He cast a glance at Lu Qinghua’s retreating figure: narrow shoulders, a slender waist, and below that— Su Mu couldn’t help but sigh to himself: “It really isn’t just the temper that’s the problem…”
A woman in her mid-twenties was, by the standards of the Da Yan dynasty, a “super leftover warrior” — but by the standards of his previous world, she was at the peak of her youth, the perfectly ripe age of a mature young woman. For Su Mu, who had always had a weakness for that type, there was simply no reason to find Lu Qinghua disagreeable.
He soaked in a comfortable hot bath, changed into a fresh scholar’s robe, opened the food box, and ate his fill. He checked on the old horse — found it snorting contentedly as it chewed its bean cakes — and returned to bed with a peaceful mind.
The young do not yet know the moon. Beneath Lu Qinghua’s scorn and silent contempt, Su Mu ended up staying in that back courtyard for more than half a month. They rarely crossed paths, and spoke even less. Su Mu left early and returned late, and no one could tell what he was up to. Lu Qinghua wanted to sneak a look through his things while delivering his meals, but in the end never quite worked up the nerve.
In her attempts to drive out this unwanted guest, she deployed every manner of petty trick — adding unexpected “seasonings” to his food, using the horse’s washing water to heat his bath, and so on. Yet Su Mu showed not the slightest unusual reaction. Every time they passed each other, he simply smiled and nodded, which earned him a fresh round of eye-rolls and complaints from Lu Qinghua.
Then one day in mid-March, Lu Qinghua returned from an errand outside to find Su Mu packing his things. She should have felt pleased — but somehow she didn’t, quite. Her face, of course, still wore its usual expression of someone in dire need of a good scolding.
Perhaps that was simply who she was. Unmarried, spending her days selling buns with her old father, not a single close friend to speak of, perpetually frowning and cursing the mangy dog next door at the Wang family for being ugly — yet when that dog died and stopped pestering the bun shop, she felt out of sorts anyway, and blamed Old Wang for not feeding it properly.
“I’ve imposed on you long enough.”
When she heard Su Mu say this with a quiet smile, she meant to say it’s nothing — but what came out was: “Good, you should know!”
“Free for a moment?”
“Hm?”
“Help me carry something.”
“Fine, I’d love to see you go!”
Su Mu smiled, shouldered his long cloth bundle, took his old horse by the reins, said his farewells to Old Lu, and left the bun shop — walking straight out onto the street.
“Where are you going?” Lu Qinghua hugged the book chest to her chest, looking rather like a woman nine months along, and watched him head toward the gates of Su Manor. “Wait — Su Manor? Have you lost your mind?! That’s one of Hangzhou’s great families! You think they’re as easy to push around as our little bun shop?! Dreaming of living at Su Manor — what a joke! Is our place really so terrible? That little bit of silver you have wouldn’t even cover one night crouching at their front gate! You must be going there to work as a gate guard or something — you don’t look like an honest person to me, though with those skinny arms and legs of yours, you’d be beaten like a dog within three days…”
Lu Qinghua chattered on behind him, so caught up in her tirade that she didn’t even notice Su Mu had stopped walking, and nearly ran straight into him. He was wearing that same faint smile, watching her as she stood there wide-eyed, face flushed red with embarrassment.
“Finished?”
“Tch… what’s the point in being a gate guard, you’ve got silver, why would you… don’t come crawling back to our place when they throw you out!” She pursed her lips and muttered dismissively.
Su Mu watched the old maid with quiet amusement. Lu Qinghua met his gaze defiantly — then bit her lower lip and looked away.
“Why… why are you so set on living at Su Manor? The Su family are one of Hangzhou’s ten great clans, you know. Not people to trifle with…”
“Why do I want to live at Su Manor?” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Because it’s my home… ha…”
“Oh— wait, what?“
Su Mu looked at her expression — equal parts stunned and mortified — and could only shrug, spreading his hands in a gesture of helpless resignation.
Goblins Words: With this the site is once again balanced, with 5 project release every alternative days. This is the last project I will pick up, and there wont be another for a long time.
Sun-Tue-Thu = FSM+TWR+AM+IDT+TDS
Sat-Mon-Wed = FSM+HP+DCFD+MML+MDG
Now for the webnovel itself. It’s rare to find a webnovel that captures both the epic sweep of history and the intimate struggles within it. The Drunken Sovereign is one such gem.
It thrusts you into a world of stark contrasts: the decadent allure of painted pleasures and fragile peace on one side, and the brutal reality of the northern front…where survival is a daily battle against wind and enemy steel…on the other.
Into this divided world steps our protagonist, Su Mu. He isn’t someone overpowered; he’s an observer who “came,” “saw,” and “endured.” His slow transformation from passive onlooker to a man who decides there are things worth doing is the heart of the novel. His motivation is grounded: not a quest for ultimate power, but a stubborn determination to leave a mark. You’ll root for him because his struggles feel real.
The plot masterfully weaves political intrigue, large-scale warfare, and profound personal moments. One chapter might find you on the edge of your seat as armies clash under a moonlit sky; the next, captivated by a tense conversation where words are the sharpest weapons. The pacing allows its vast world to breathe, perfectly matching the protagonist’s defiant, weary spirit. It’s a story about finding your place amidst the noise, about choosing to engage with a broken world rather than simply watching it fall.
If you love historical dramas, deep character studies, and moral grey areas, you will enjoy this.