After I Hid My Identity, the Crown Prince Fought to Win Me an Empire

Su Yuntang, a concubine-born daughter, lay low for fifteen years. With one hand, she exposed the dark secrets of powerful clans; with the other, she wielded silver needles to save the dying emperor. Yet on her wedding night, her legitimate elder sister poisoned her to death. Reborn on the day she was sent to marry into the Eastern Palace in someone else’s place, she swept aside her veil and held a golden needle to the Crown Prince’s throat. “Work with me, or be buried with me?”

Everyone knew Crown Prince Xiao Mingyan as a frail, gentle man, but no one knew he held military tallies for three provinces at swordpoint. Smiling, he tucked the tiger tally into her medicine pouch. “My realm needs the healing touch of a benevolent physician.” Within the bridal curtains, they schemed together: she exposed the Noble Consort’s false pregnancy, while he purged corrupt officials from the Revenue Bureau. She wielded the scent of medicine to fight epidemics, while he led the charge to Jiangnan and put down a rebellion.

Then an imperial genealogy from a previous dynasty surfaced in a dry well, and a bloodstained peacock gall exposed the lie surrounding her birth.

“So Your Highness always knew I was a remnant of the previous dynasty?”

He crushed the imperial jade seal and forged it into a pestle for her medicines. In front of an army, he took her bloodied hand. “Why not ask this Blackbird Banner? Does it recognize Princess Jinghe, or my wife?”

A healer and poison expert who plays the pig to eat the tiger × a deceptively innocent, dark-hearted, sickly Crown Prince

Both reborn, each unmasking the other’s secret identity. Every move, on and off the board, is deadly.

The realm is the board. We shall play this game together.

Also known as The Hidden Phoenix Plays for the Realm