She was once a maid in the general’s household, pushed into a lotus pond by his own hand.
Five years later, she stands atop the city wall, looking down at the general kneeling at her feet.
“My lady says she no longer wants this position.”
Sold into slavery at six, forced to become a concubine at eighteen.
Shen Wanyin was her closest friend, and the one who pushed her into the water with her own hands.
“A Ruan, I’m sorry… You have to die.”
She closed her eyes in the icy water, believing this was how her life would end.
Then Crown Prince Xiao Linyuan pulled her out.
“Do you want them dead?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I want to live better than they do.”
Five years.
From the Laundry Bureau to the Kunning Palace, from slave to empress.
When General Zhou Jingming kneels outside the palace gates and begs to see her, she says, “I won’t see him.”
When word arrives that Shen Wanyin has died of illness, she says, “I see.”
She is now Xiao Linyuan’s one and only. Who still remembers that she was once the lowliest concubine in the general’s household?
“In this world, there is only A Ruan saved by His Majesty. The general’s A Ruan is gone.”
