Princess Hengshan is wildly debauched. Though she has yet to take a husband, she already keeps twenty-nine male lovers at her estate. But she is deeply favored by the emperor, so no one dares criticize her openly.
Only Pei Shuo, the young general of the Northern Frontier, never misses a chance to mock and insult the princess. Everyone can see the disgust in his eyes. It is only because the Pei clan commands a powerful army that he has never been punished.
But before long, the Pei clan is wiped out. With all his protection gone, Pei Shuo is seized by the princess and made her thirtieth male lover.
At the princess's estate, Pei Shuo is forced to his knees. The woman in black, her raven hair falling around her, looks down at him coldly. With a pale fingertip, she casually lifts his chin and says in a chilly voice, "Young General, you used to oppose me at every turn. Did you ever imagine this day would come?"
From that day on, the once dashing young general falls into the dirt, enduring contempt and humiliation with no power to fight back.
Until, a year later, the princess is attacked, badly wounded, and loses her memory as she drifts among the common folk.
*
Pei Shuo finds the princess before anyone else does.
The once haughty princess seems to have truly lost her memory. For the first time, those beautiful eyes look at him intently. "Who are you? Do you know me? What are we to each other?"
Pei Shuo stands in the wind and snow, gazing at her solemnly for a long while. Then a gloomy smile appears on his face. "I'm your husband, and you're my thirtieth concubine."
Pei Shuo really does treat the princess as his concubine, apparently to avenge the contempt and humiliation she inflicted on him over the past year.
He makes the princess serve him tea and water, do servants' work, play the zither and entertain him like a performer.
He even makes her undress and serve him with her beauty.
The wind sighs softly, the candlelight dim. Pei Shuo's dark hair hangs loose as he looks down at the woman, her hair loose as well, obediently undoing his sash.
He bows his head and kisses the corner of her eye, coaxing her gently. "A Ling, what comes next?"
*
Day after day goes by.
The princess's bodyguard watches Lord Pei, who had never shared her bed before, become more and more shameless in his deception of the princess. Hesitantly, he wonders:
Should I tell Lord Pei that the princess is only pretending to have lost her memory?
When the princess no longer has to pretend, what will happen to him after he's pushed his luck this far?
[Reader's Guide]
1. A cool, scheming princess and her obsessive, gloomy, love-struck male lover.
2. A very flexible setting, where a princess might legitimately ascend the throne.
3. There's a reason she has twenty-nine male lovers.
4. One-on-one romance.
Theme: The petty have no principles and abandon what matters for what is trivial.
