Synopsis
[A vengeful, ambitious Hu woman × a brilliant, seemingly gentle but secretly scheming Crown Prince]
{Everyone's darling + pseudo-forced pursuit + unconventional conquest story}
Aya Lan looks like her late Hu concubine mother, strikingly beautiful but with a tender, delicate quality. A cinnabar mole at the corner of her eye is especially dazzling.
Life as a herdswoman on the grasslands is no easy thing. A natural disaster takes Aya Lan's family and leaves her deeply in debt.
But life must go on. After working herself to the bone for five years, she finally pays off her debt.
Her “benefactor” still thinks it isn't enough, sizing up her worth with a greedy gaze. “Elder Yan is over sixty and still needs a beautiful concubine.”
No, she won't! Fury blazes in Aya Lan's eyes.
She does everything she can to escape, but is captured and enslaved again. Covered in wounds, she can only trick a handsome young male slave into helping her flee.
The two of them run for their lives, in a pitiful state.
The weakened youth slowly opens his eyes from a daze. The first thing he sees is the dazzling, beautiful face of a young woman.
Aya Lan feels she's done more than enough for him, and turns to leave the male slave behind as she heads alone for the grasslands.
The youth's breathing is faint. His voice is hoarse and dry from lying unconscious for so long. He speaks softly: “Did you save me?”
Amazement fills his eyes, but she is looking at the jade pendant hidden in his pouch.
The bright-eyed, pearly-toothed young woman hesitates for a moment, then changes her mind and smiles. “That's right... So how are you going to repay me?”
Crown Prince Li Zhen brings a peerlessly beautiful woman back from the western frontier and keeps her in the Eastern Palace, tending to her with great care day after day and never leaving her side.
But rumors have recently begun to spread through the palace: the beauty who disappeared for days has apparently run away from the Eastern Palace with the hostage prince of Wei.
Everyone whispers about it in private, but when they catch sight of the Crown Prince's impassive expression, they all fall silent.
At first, Li Zhen only looks after her because she once saved his life.
But with the young woman constantly at his side, whispering sweetly to him, he assumes that her heart is full of admiration for him.
As time goes by, he gradually falls for her too, and can't help letting his gaze linger on her.
Until the night of the palace banquet, when he sees with his own eyes the way she gazes at the hostage prince of Wei, her eyes full of affection. The joy and passion in her expression are unlike anything he's ever seen from her before.
Rage surges through his heart, but before he can act, she takes advantage of the dark and the chaos of the flames to vanish from the depths of the palace.
Three years pass in a flash. The Crown Prince of old is now an emperor who rules the world.
Then, at a horse-racing ground, he sees her dressed in luxurious clothes, holding a child in her arms.
Their eyes meet, and she trembles, shrinking away in fear.
Years of suppressed love and resentment surge to the surface. The kindness they once shared has long since been drowned out by the turmoil in their hearts.
This time, he will never let her escape from his side again.
From a powerless Hu woman to empress, Aya Lan does two things right:
First, she exploits the balance of power between the two nations and brazenly pretends to be a foreign princess.
Second, she makes the Crown Prince lose his head over her, and he welcomes her as his empress in a grand wedding procession.
Reader's guide:
1. Both leads are virgins, happy ending.
2. A story about a calculating heroine's conquest.
Theme: My fate is mine to decide, not Heaven's
