The Legitimate Daughter Returns: His Highness Is Willing to Bend for Her

Lin Yunshu, the eldest legitimate daughter of the Hou family, was switched by a midwife on the day she was born and spent fifteen years growing up in Jiangnan. After her adoptive mother dies of illness, her stepmother tries to force her to marry an elderly widower who beat his first two wives to death. With nowhere else to turn, she clutches half of a jade pendant carved with intertwined lotuses and travels a thousand miles to the capital to claim her family. Her birth mother makes her kneel outside the Hou residence for an entire day. Lin Xueyuan, the despicable younger sister who stole her identity, smashes the token and calls her a fraud trying to climb the social ladder. She kneels until a high fever makes her pass out, yet still cannot get that vermilion-red gate to open. When she opens her eyes again, the person who saved her is Xiao Yan, the crown prince. He takes off his black cloak and wraps it around her, then rebukes the Hou family: “If she dies, the Northern Guard Marquis’s residence will answer for it.” From that day on, Lin Yunshu never kneels to anyone again. With an account book, she exposes a fifty-thousand-tael deficit in the Hou family and takes control of the household. With the broken jade and the birth records, she establishes her status as the legitimate daughter before the elders of the clan. She sees through the arsenic-laced tea and joins forces with the Court of Judicial Review to expose the mastermind. The plot to switch the babies was orchestrated by the Anyuan Marquis’s household and her own aunt, who lives in the imperial harem. Lin Xueyuan had been raised in the Hou residence as their weapon since she was eight. Xiao Yan stays by her side, protecting her all along. He repairs her pendant and carves her a jade hairpin. At their wedding, he breaks with tradition and personally comes to escort her, clearing away every hidden threat for her. He never says he loves her, but everyone in the capital knows: Anping County Lady is the apple of the crown prince’s eye. After fifteen years away, the legitimate daughter returns. From a helpless orphan kneeling outside the gate to the crown princess wielding the imperial phoenix seal, she takes back everything owed to her, stolen from her, and used to harm her, with interest.