Yurivan Journal
Lower Dynasty (Chao Xia / 潮夏) Manhua Guide: Read All 64 Chapters Free
Read Lower Dynasty online, Lily Club's adopted-sister-to-lovers yuri manhua by Huan Le Ge Xi and yaua. All 64 chapters of Lu Yang and Su Gui's slow-burn romance, free in English on Yurivan.
Lower Dynasty (Chao Xia, 潮夏) by Lily Club is the Chinese yuri manhua that has quietly become one of the genre's defining slow-burn romances of the past two years. The premise is one of the genre's most loaded setups, two teenage girls raised in the same household whose 'sister' framing the romance has to work against, but the execution is what sets it apart. Sixty-four patient chapters and 2,418 pages of full-color webtoon art map the exact arc from Su Gui's first 'I'm Jiejie' to the moment Lu Yang realizes she is no longer pretending. The manhua never rushes a beat and never lets either character off the hook for what they actually want. Yurivan mirrors the current English archive in continuous vertical reader form.
Lower Dynasty: Chao Xia
64 chapters · 2,418 pages
What is Lower Dynasty?
Lower Dynasty is a Chinese yuri manhua published by Lily Club (橘姬社), serialized on Bilibili Manga with script by Huan Le Ge Xi (欢了个喜) and art by yaua. The series sits in the soft-modern slow-burn corner of Chinese GL manhua, alongside titles like Bai Lijin Among Mortals and the lighter volumes of the Lily Club catalogue, with full-color webtoon art and a contemporary high school setting that the genre uses as a comfort baseline.
The premise opens on Lu Yang, a teenager whose parents have just divorced. Her mother sends her to live in her best friend's house, where Lu Yang meets Su Gui, the adopted daughter the family has been raising since both girls were small. Su Gui is gentle, perceptive, and infuriatingly patient about the 'Jiejie' role she takes in Lu Yang's life. Lu Yang spends the early run pushing back on every soft gesture, partly because she is fifteen and partly because Su Gui keeps making it hard to pretend. The story works because Huan Le Ge Xi treats Lu Yang's resistance as the romance, not as the obstacle to it.
What Does the Title Mean?
The title is a deliberate bilingual pun. The Chinese characters 潮夏 read literally as 'summer trend' (潮 = trend/tide, 夏 = summer), which is why some early translation circles use the English title 'Summer Trend.' But in Mandarin pinyin, 潮夏 is pronounced Cháo Xià, which is a perfect homophone of 朝下 (Cháo Xià, dynasty below) — the reading the current fan translation team chose to render as 'Lower Dynasty.' Neither translation is wrong; the manhua itself never resolves the pun, and both readings circulate in Chinese fan communities. Yurivan uses 'Lower Dynasty' as the primary English title and 'Chao Xia' as the romanization alongside it, so search works for either form.
Story Overview
The opening arc establishes the household and the dynamic. Lu Yang arrives at Su Gui's family's home with all the defenses a divorced teenager can muster. Su Gui meets her with the soft persistence that has clearly worked on the household for years. The first ten chapters are devoted to small-stakes domestic friction, the bedroom-sharing logistics, the just-neighbors deflection, and the slow erosion of Lu Yang's certainty that this is a 'sister-and-sister' arrangement. The early-run highlight chapter, 'Straight Girl Trap,' is the manhua telling on itself about the genre it is working inside.
The middle arc opens up the cast. Lu Yang's friends, school context, and the slow recognition that maybe Su Gui has been carrying her side of this much longer than Lu Yang realized. Around chapter 18 the story hits its first explicit articulation, the 'do you like girls?' beat, and Huan Le Ge Xi handles it with the care the genre often skips. The middle chapters are where the romance shifts from 'will they' to 'how will they,' with Su Gui taking the lead in a way the foster-sister framing has been quietly preparing for the whole time.
The back half of the available 64 chapters brings in Xiao Lan, the antagonist who shows up around chapter 51 with the kind of sharp confidence the slow-burn has been protecting itself against. Her arrival forces both Lu Yang and Su Gui to put words to what they have been performing, and the chapters that follow ('Let me seduce you now,' 'Su Gui, let me tell you, today,' 'Bad girl potential') are the manhua finally saying out loud what every panel since chapter 14 has been pointing at. The currently translated 64 chapters end at a chapter break, with the central pair openly negotiating what they are to each other.
Main Characters
- Lu Yang (YangYang): The protagonist and viewpoint character. Sent to live in Su Gui's family's house after her parents' divorce. Brown hair, expressive eyes, and the kind of defensive reflex that reads as straight-girl panic in the early run. Her arc is the slow concession that the act she has been performing is the act, and that the soft thing Su Gui keeps pointing at is what she actually wants.
- Su Gui: The romantic lead. Black hair, calmer register, the adopted-daughter figure who has been waiting for Lu Yang to arrive without quite knowing it. Su Gui takes the 'Jiejie' role early, partly out of habit and partly because she figures out before Lu Yang does what this household is becoming. The manhua gives her the dignity of being the one who steers the slow-burn, not the one who is being pursued.
- Xiao Lan: Antagonist introduced in the back half around chapter 51. Blonde, club-coded, deliberately sharp, the kind of love-triangle entrant who exists less to threaten the central pair than to force them to admit the central pair exists. Her presence pushes both Lu Yang and Su Gui out of the deferral mode the first 40-something chapters were built on.
- Shen Tingxue: Secondary cast introduced around chapter 48. Lower Dynasty's supporting cast is small but specific, with Shen Tingxue, Lu Yang's school friends, and the parental figures who are around enough to remember that this is a household, not a romance vacuum.
Why It Resonates
Chinese GL manhua is a crowded shelf, and the foster-sister setup is one of its most loaded templates. Lower Dynasty is the version of this template that takes the foster-sister proximity seriously rather than treating it as flavoring. The household is not background, it is the engine, and Huan Le Ge Xi writes the daily rhythm of two girls sharing a roof with the same care other manhua reserve for the will-they-won't-they confession. The result is a yuri romance where the slow-burn is structural, not stylistic.
What sets it apart from the broader genre is the writing's interest in Lu Yang's defense mechanisms. Most slow-burn yuri picks one beat (the panicked first kiss, the public-private reveal) and runs at it. Lower Dynasty writes Lu Yang as a teenager whose reflexes are doing actual work, and Su Gui as someone who is patient enough to wait Lu Yang's reflexes out without ever making it feel like patience. The two characters are written as two people, not as one romance with two faces.
The art is the third reason. yaua's clean digital webtoon style with soft color washes, flower motifs around emotional beats, and the kind of facial expression work in the small moments (Lu Yang's defensive squint, Su Gui's slight head-tilt) is unusually confident for an artist this early in their career. The recurring visual motifs, the hydrangea backgrounds during pivotal scenes and the use of the title card 潮夏 as a chapter punctuation device, give the manhua a visual signature that holds across all 64 chapters.
Art Style & Format
Lower Dynasty is a vertical-scroll Chinese manhua in full color. The art style sits in the polished digital webtoon tradition with watercolor-soft palettes for the domestic scenes, deeper jewel-tones for the night and club beats, and the kind of attention to faces and small body language the slow-burn needs to land. The chapter pacing is on the long side for the format, with several chapters running 50-plus pages, which gives Huan Le Ge Xi room to breathe between major emotional beats.
Format-wise it is a full-color vertical webtoon designed for phone or desktop scrolling. The 2,418-page total across 64 chapters averages out to roughly 38 pages per chapter, which matches the Lily Club house style. Yurivan's continuous reader stitches all 64 chapters into a single uninterrupted vertical scroll, with chapter markers preserved.
Read Lower Dynasty Online Free
Yurivan hosts all 64 currently translated chapters of Lower Dynasty in our continuous vertical reader. No account, no paywall, just an age check, then the entire available archive scrolls.
Lower Dynasty: Chao Xia
64 chapters · 2,418 pages
Content Warnings
Lower Dynasty is a Chinese yuri manhua rated suggestive. Themes include the foster-sister dynamic, the romantic and physical tension that builds across 64 chapters of slow-burn pacing, and the gradual articulation of an attraction the central pair has been deferring since the household formed. The currently translated chapters do not contain on-page explicit content, but the back half pushes hard into the kind of sensual coding (the 'let me seduce you' beat, post-club intimacy chapters) that signals the manhua may go explicit in later releases. Yurivan flags any chapter that crosses the threshold with a heat indicator in the chapter list.
Other themes include the love-triangle complication Xiao Lan introduces in the back half, the parental-divorce backstory that frames Lu Yang's defensive reflexes, and the slow erosion of the 'sister-and-sister' boundary the household has been trying to maintain. All romantic content is between adult or near-adult women in the high school setting standard for Chinese yuri manhua.
Is Lower Dynasty Finished?
No, the series is still ongoing in China. New chapters arrive on Bilibili Manga roughly every other week. The 64 currently translated chapters on Yurivan represent the available English archive and end at a chapter break rather than a series finale. Yurivan picks up new chapters as the L1v's Translations group continues releasing them.
More Slow-Burn Yuri Manhua
Browse our hand-picked library of Chinese yuri manhua, from foster-sister slow-burns to ancient-Chinese-court romances and modern-Shanghai slice-of-life.
Browse Yuri Manhua →Similar Recommendations
If Lower Dynasty's foster-sister setup, modern setting, and patient slow-burn work for you, these yuri titles share its DNA:
- Bai Lijin Among Mortals. Chinese GL manhua with a similar tonal register and the same Lily Club polish. Closest comp on Yurivan for Lower Dynasty's appetite for soft-coded slow-burn. Read on Yurivan →
- Lilith: Side Story. Lily Club's other modern slow-burn pairing, the quieter half of the Lilith universe. Different cast, same patient emotional groundwork. Read on Yurivan →
- Bloom Into You. Japanese yuri manga about a student council vice-president and the senior president who confesses to her. Different country and longer run, but the same interest in the gap between performed identity and interior want. Read on Yurivan →
- Bad Thinking Diary. Korean GL manhwa about a wife of two years who can't stop thinking about kissing her best friend. Tonally adjacent slow-burn with the same emotional patience. Read on Yurivan →
For broader picks, our 2026 yuri manga roundup and best lesbian manhwa guide sit alongside this one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Lower Dynasty answered below.
Read manga, GL webtoons, and watch yuri videos, all free on Yurivan.
Read on Yurivan
Read matching stories now
Jump straight from this guide into our highest-rated long-form yuri manga and webtoons.