[No Official Couple + Female Disguised as Male + Ambitious Heroine + Alternate Ancient Setting + Not a Mindless Power Fantasy]
Author's note: Each volume features a new character, with short story skits in the author's afterword.
In a brutal age where people devour one another, Yan Xiaowen disguises herself as a man and takes her dead younger brother's place, becoming the prince of Fuzhou. Every day, she faces a court held in check by powerful ministers and colleagues who form cliques for their own gain. She must carry out the emperor's assignments without offending everyone around her. By the time court is over, there's only one word on her mind: exhausting.
Yan Xiaowen can't help regretting it: “I should have just died with my brother back then.”
But when she sees fields where not a blade of grass grows, rice paddies withered and barren, bandits and local bullies preying on the weak, and people driven to eat their own children, for the first time Yan Xiaowen feels she must shoulder the burden of being a prince.
“For myself, for the people, what’s wrong with risking my life to overturn this chaotic age? If I spill three feet of blood today, then tomorrow the Golden Throne Hall can collapse completely. The flesh and blood of fallen corrupt ministers will become nourishment for the rice fields and river valleys. For the cries of this troubled world, I, Yan Xiaowen, am willing to devote my whole life.”
