With the Emperor's Uncle

[The main story is complete. Thank you to everyone who supports the author by reading the official version. Her in the Mortal World is now underway. Please add it to your collection.]

After her father was framed and killed by a villain, Chu Ning became the daughter of a disgraced official overnight and narrowly escaped being enslaved. Fortunately, the Crown Prince took pity on her and honored their original engagement, marrying her as his principal consort.

Chu Ning thought that marrying the Crown Prince was the luckiest thing that could happen to her in this life.

Who could have known that the husband she regarded as her benefactor was the very culprit who had killed her father?

Not long afterward, the emperor fell gravely ill. Prince Qin Xiao Kezhi, the Crown Prince's sixth uncle, suddenly led his troops into the capital and seized the throne that should have gone to his nephew.

Looking at this taciturn, wolf-eyed imperial uncle, Chu Ning bravely reached out a tentative hand.

**

Xiao Kezhi had spent fourteen years on the frontier, surrounded by blades and bitter weather. He had always been decisive, ruthless, and merciless.

As soon as he ascended the throne, he ruthlessly purged the Crown Prince's faction, wielding power with such force that it chilled the blood.

And yet he did not lay a finger on the Crown Prince himself.

Rumors ran rampant among the people, but nobody could fathom the new emperor's intentions.

Only Xiao Kezhi knew that he had spared the Crown Prince for one reason alone: the delicate, beautiful Crown Princess by his side.

**

Later, the Crown Prince tried to seize power and forced Chu Ning to give up her position as principal wife.

Chu Ning stayed calm and turned around to request permission to enter a Taoist temple and cultivate.

Everyone thought she was merely putting on a brave face. But on the day the Crown Prince took another wife, the emperor made a nighttime visit to the temple.

The next day, she took off her Taoist robes, put her hair up again, and entered Taiji Palace. She smiled faintly at the stunned Crown Prince and his new bride.

A little scene:

In the dead of night, Chu Ning knelt on the ground, dressed in plain clothes, her hair loose, her head bowed.

The new emperor held his imperial brush and lifted her chin, his gaze deep and unfathomable. "What does your father's death have to do with me? What can you offer in return for my helping a criminal who is already dead?"

Tears shone in the beauty's eyes as she bit her lip and whispered, "I will do whatever Your Majesty commands."

The new emperor stepped down from the dais and leaned toward her. "Leave him. Come to my side."

Please note:

1. This is a historical romance, not a rebirth story. The heroine is not a virgin; the hero is. Readers who insist on both leads being virgins, please quietly move along.

2. The leads have an age gap of seven years.

3. The heroine is a woman of her time, and no saint.

Here's another blurb: Spring Comes Again

Blurb:

When Shen Yuefu was sixteen, she married Du Yanze, the second son of the Duke of Liang. Barely two years into their marriage, Du Yanze was ordered to travel south. When he returned, there was another woman by his side.

Surrounded by servants and dressed in fine silks, she was highborn and imperious: a princess of the reigning dynasty.

The princess sat in the Duke of Liang's reception hall, holding a teacup. She smiled leisurely at Shen Yuefu and said, "Du saved my life. I wish to repay his kindness. What do you think, Madam?"

Shen Yuefu looked at Du Yanze, standing nearby with a despondent expression, and said nothing.

The next day, she left behind a letter releasing her husband from the marriage, took her dowry, and returned to her parents' home.

Shen Yuefu thought that with her family's protection, she could live a peaceful life even if she never remarried. But a dream revealed what lay ahead...

Her stepmother, eager to secure a bright future for her son, would force her to remarry as the second wife of the elderly, gravely ill Marquis of Dingyuan.

The marquis was already halfway in his grave. He would die just half a month after the wedding, leaving her, a young and beautiful widow, with his eldest son, who had a strict wife at home but remained a notorious womanizer...

Shen Yuefu awoke in a cold sweat.

With no other choice, she took a dangerous gamble, staking everything just to draw that man's attention.

That man was the fiance her stepmother had painstakingly secured for her younger sister.

Zhao Heng was the reigning emperor's sixth son. He had guarded the frontier for years and did not return to Chang'an until he came of age.

The emperor had arranged his marriage three years earlier. He had returned simply to obey his parents' wishes and marry the young woman chosen for him. Whether she was beautiful or plain, gentle and virtuous or sharp-tongued and fierce, made no difference to him.

After all, he would leave Chang'an again as soon as they were married.

Who could have expected that, before the wedding date had even been set, he would meet another woman at a temple?

The shadows of bamboo slanted across the ground, and a shallow stream flowed nearby. The woman seemed to stumble by accident, falling straight into his arms. Dressed plainly, with only a simple hairpin and no makeup, she nonetheless had spring in her eyes and a captivating, delicate charm.

She was his fiancee's own elder sister.

Theme: Love means acceptance and respect, not restriction and control.