The Scheming Beauty Is the Crown Prince’s White Moonlight

Sheng Yao had a noble consort for an aunt and her cousin as her betrothed. If nothing went wrong, once the Crown Prince died of illness, she would become his Crown Princess, and perhaps even the most honored woman in the realm. But the very year she came of age, her cousin was implicated in Prince Kang’s rebellion, and her aunt lost the emperor’s favor. She fell from the clouds. Everyone waited to laugh at her and kick her while she was down. In her desperation, her aunt even urged her to seduce the Crown Prince. The Sheng family’s plan to make their legitimate daughter, who had once been betrothed to the Third Prince, the Crown Princess became a laughingstock. The Crown Prince had lived in seclusion for years and kept away from women. Master Kongming had once predicted he would not live past twenty. Why would he marry the daughter of a political enemy? No one knew that on the day her younger half-sister celebrated her birthday, she had drunk too much and hidden in a heated side hall, where the Crown Prince, raised in the lap of luxury, picked up her embroidered shoe and carefully slipped it onto her foot. Whatever she said, he agreed. So Sheng Yao accepted her aunt’s request without hesitation and entered the Eastern Palace, just as her aunt wished. But she didn’t need her aunt to grant her that future, and she was tired of watching her aunt occupy the high seat and treat her like a puppet on strings. Sheng Yao only wanted to trick him into giving her a child. Once he died of illness, the Sheng family would install that child as emperor, and she would become the empress dowager ruling from behind the curtain. To Xia Xuan, Sheng Yao was the most deceitful woman in all of Great Qin. When she was little, she got lost after first entering the palace and promised she would come keep him company often, only to forget all about it as soon as she left. As a teenager, she pretended to be drunk to lure him close. Though she knew how he felt, she still treated him like a stranger. After they married, she tearfully claimed she only wanted them to live happily together and to bear him a child, while secretly hoping he would die. And yet, every time, he fell for her tricks. Content warning: the heroine is adored by everyone; the hero is possessive and hopelessly lovestruck