Everyone in the palace's backyard knew that the new Aunt Su was breathtakingly beautiful.
But so what? The prince hates the rich and colorful look, and only loves clear porridge and side dishes.
I sleep until midnight every day, looking in the mirror and feeling sorry for myself: "This face... Is troublesome."
Until the princess made me kneel in the snow, he kicked open the courtyard door and wrapped me in a cloak: "Who gave you the courage to touch my heart?"
He turned around and pinched my chin and sighed softly: "Good boy, don't be lazy, learn to compete for favor... Even if you're just pretending?"
---
In the 19th year of Taiping's reign in Dayin, winter was deep.
The cold wind of the twelfth lunar month was like a knife, blowing across the rows of rooftops in the capital, and pouring mercilessly into the spacious east corner gate of Prince Yi's Mansion. The rough women, with their necks hunched and their hands cuffed, stepped on the frozen gravel road and hid in the row of narrow rooms next to the corner door specially designed for servants to enter and exit. The white breath coming out of their mouths was instantly torn apart by the cold wind.
"Tsk tsk, have you heard? They are 'choosing to see' inside." A woman lowered her voice and glanced deeper into the mansion.
"Choose? Isn't the prince always impatient with these things? The two that were rewarded by the Queen Mother at the beginning of the year are still in the small courtyard to the west, and they have not been able to see the prince several times a year." The other one curled his lips, obviously not caring.
"This time is different," the mother-in-law who spoke before became more energetic and lowered her voice, but she couldn't hide the excitement of spying on the secret. "She is from the south. It is said that her family used the connections of gold and silver to force her way in. She is the only daughter of the Su family, the richest man in the south of the Yangtze River!"
"Merchant girl? She should be born as a concubine, right? It's a great blessing that she can be brought in to be a concubine." Someone said.
