The Ruthless Chancellor Dotes on Me Relentlessly

In the twenty-eighth year of Yongding, the old capital fell and the emperor was taken prisoner. The year the Khitan cavalry trampled the land, countless people had their fates ground into the dust. Pei Ji had once been a dashing young general, the heir of Duke Pei, born to a family of loyal servants. He could govern the country and bring peace to the realm with his learning, and defend the borders against the Khitans with his martial skill, until that one battle. Whipped, dragged, branded... He survived, but both his legs were crippled and he was poisoned. He became a helpless invalid who could not even relieve himself without assistance. His grandmother, dressed in her imperial-bestowed noblewoman's robes, knelt in the snow on ninety-nine steps to win him a chance at survival. He could only hide away at a manor outside the city, relying on a few elderly servants with nowhere else to go as he endured whatever remained of his life. Then Wei Wanzhi arrived. She was a young woman from a mountain village, with a peach-blossom face and no notion of modesty. For a hundred taels of silver, she was sent to the bed of this crippled general to serve as a “surrogate.” She would give birth to a child, collect her hundred taels, and then they would each go their separate ways. One was a young general fallen into the dust, most of his pride shattered, yet still clinging desperately to the last of his defiance. The other was a country girl who had climbed into his bed for money. She had no education and knew nothing of proper etiquette, but her heart was clearer than anyone else's. In that isolated manor, during a winter when the snow never seemed to stop, they slowly drew closer. All she wanted was a hundred taels and the bright future she imagined. All he wanted was to live long enough to find the real culprit and win justice for the Pei family. But fate never follows the path anyone lays out for it.