The Little Eunuch Takes the Prince to Nanyang

A stranded heiress from a family of maritime merchants & an unpredictable Ninth Prince

Ning Ruoxi is the eldest daughter of a family of maritime merchants. When her father is imprisoned for going to sea during a maritime ban, she disguises herself as a young eunuch and boards an official ship bound for the Western Ocean, all to save her family.

She conceals who she is, taking on one secret identity after another, anxious and forever making clumsy mistakes. She is the young eunuch, a Siamese woman, and the well-informed eldest daughter of the Ning family. She changes her identity and gender not to make the Ninth Prince lose his head, but simply to reach the old port safely.

She thinks she has planned everything well enough to navigate their master-and-servant act and get away unscathed. But she never imagined that although she could leave in the end, her heart would stay behind.

Qi Jue is the Ninth Prince, abandoned by the imperial family.

Suspicious by nature and prone to seasickness, he is surrounded by enemies. He keeps that clumsy young eunuch by his side only because she seems the most trustworthy.

He teaches her manners and obedience, personally training her into the most agreeable servant.

But he doesn't know when it happened: he has begun to miss the person who dared to crane her neck and look him straight in the eye at the Yuegang docks.

“Who are you, really? Xiao Jiu'er? Jasmine? Or Ning Ruoxi?”

“Your Highness, they're all your servant, and none of them are your servant.”

Enough.

He doesn't want to think about it anymore, or keep guessing.

At last,

she no longer has to hide or run away.

She can go south in search of treasure, with him by her side. She can navigate between foreign nations and pirates, with him protecting her. They can trust each other with their backs and stay together every step of the way.

If he is the sea king of this new world, then she is his finest diplomat!

Reading notes:

1. This is a one-on-one romance with no rivalry between women or men over love. It features a master-and-servant dynamic that shifts from unequal to equal, with a little sweetness and a little bitterness.

2. The story is set in an alternate history around the end of the sixteenth century, approximately 1595. The setting is based on the Ming Dynasty, and the routes are inspired by the real voyages of Zheng He, with some changes. After all, the story takes place more than a century after Zheng He's final voyage.

3. There are multiple secret identities. The heroine has several identities that confuse the hero a little, and even confuse the author a little. But this is still a boy-girl romance, so don't get on the wrong ship, haha!

Theme: I choose you because you are irreplaceable.