The Skilled Healer: The Prince, Go Easy on Her

She is an herbalist from a small frontier town, as calm and elegant as an orchid in the mountains.

He is an unfavored prince, and this remote city is his fief. He thought the emperor was far away and the capital’s power struggles had nothing to do with him. Who could have guessed someone would still resent his good fortune? They secretly poisoned him, severed the tendons in all four of his limbs, shattered his ribs, and threw him into the river.

Early one morning, she came to the riverbank to wash clothes. He drifted right up to the rock where she stood. Their meeting and parting had long since been ordained by fate…

“I’ve already marked you as mine. You can’t seduce me and then abandon me!”

“You’re just a kid. What do you know about seducing someone and then abandoning them? You can’t abandon someone if you never started anything. Stop talking nonsense.”

“Emperors are all heartless, have you forgotten? Your birth means you’ll never have a love that lasts a lifetime between just two people. Once you take the throne, your person and your body will belong to every woman in the imperial harem, and your whole life will be bound to theirs. I won’t become one of them. I want freedom and independence. I don’t want to be constrained, and I hate scheming against one another. I hate having to consider what other people think of everything I do, and constantly worry about their feelings.”

“Xue Lingwei, trust me. I can work miracles, truly. Just you wait. I’ll offer you the whole realm as a betrothal gift, and build you a one-of-a-kind harem that belongs to you alone.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to repay you by giving myself to you?”

“No. Money is much better than having you give yourself to me. Men can’t be trusted. If they could, pigs would be climbing trees by now.”