I Dug Wild Vegetables for the Crown Prince

Clear-headed, composed, career-focused heroine x scheming, power-hungry hero who humbly pursues his wife

**[Feng Chunsheng always thought her name sounded terribly rustic.]

One day, while idly attending to the ink and brushes, she chatted and laughed with Crown Prince Zhao Qun. "Senior Brother, when I come of age, how about giving me the courtesy name Zhuo'er?"

The Crown Prince looked up from a stack of stern, war-filled memorials. "Why?"

Feng Chunsheng ate the bird's nest congee offered as tribute at the head of the table and replied casually, "Because Zhuo'er means 'outstanding among others.' I want to come before you, Senior Brother."

The Crown Prince neither agreed nor disagreed. He only said, "You cannot, as long as you are merely the sword in my hand."

Feng Chunsheng did not press him to explain how she could. It had only been a joke. Why take it seriously?

When she came of age, the Crown Prince gave her the courtesy name Nizhi.

Where the Way lies, even if a thousand stand against it, I shall go forth.

Unfortunately, Feng Chunsheng disliked it. Nizhi, Nizhi: the character for defying the Way was also the character for rebellion. The name proved prophetic.

On the day of the rebellion, she wielded her sword and nearly cut her way through the imperial guards. At the palace, she faced her father, who had come to rescue the emperor, with swords drawn.

The chance to master her extraordinary martial arts had been a wager on her own life. If Crown Prince Senior Brother took the throne, she would live. If he died, her master would kill her to accompany him in death.

Nizhi meant defiance, but also rebellion. She would decide her own life. No one else could make plans for her.

If she was willing to be the sword that opened the world, she would no longer allow herself any other ties to the Crown Prince.

So when the Crown Prince discovered her origins and thought she was his half-sister, she did not tell him the truth.

**[Zhao Qun once wavered between the realm and her.]

That day, wearing chain mail in the military tent, she demanded to know why he refused to spare Daji's life. She was willing to give up her chance to leave and remain in the army to quell the turmoil, in exchange for even the slightest chance of survival for Daji.

Later, after she had won battle after battle and was about to put an end to the unrest, she flew into a rage over the young General Wang being surrounded and cut off half of her imperial robe.

Zhao Qun was not angry at her defiance. He resented her loyalty to one man after another! So he resorted to a love poison, forcing her to fall deeply in love with him.

But lies are bound to be exposed. Even when the poison made her love him passionately, she was willing to cut open her chest to extract it and sever her own hair in order to learn the truth.

He could not tell love from possession. All he knew was that watching her resolutely walk away hurt as much as if his own heart had been ripped out.

How could he imprison her for life?

**[Feng Chunsheng finally died, killed during the coup her father, Chancellor Feng, a former court loyalist, launched.]

She leapt from the towering city wall, ending with her own hands the life of a woman with a name she had always found so rustic.

Her martial arts had been ruined, and the Feng clan had been wiped out. With hatred surging through her, how could she ever be truly free?

In the third month of that same year, Bai Zhuo'er was welcomed back to the inner palace with a ceremony befitting the empress's coronation.

Zhuo'er, outstanding among others: Feng Chunsheng had always liked that name.

Now she was utterly alone, with nothing left to lose. Wasn't this the beginning of taking everything for herself?

It did not matter how indulgent her aloof young Senior Brother had been, how lenient the emperor had been with her as a young man, or what exclusive favor and glory Crown Prince Zhao Qun, now an emperor ruling all under heaven and her husband, had bestowed upon her.

Feng Chunsheng had to admit that she had never fallen deeply in love, lost herself in love, or given herself up for love.

All she had ever wanted was freedom. But if she needed imperial power to secure that freedom, the sword that pierced the former emperor's chest during the palace coup could just as easily pierce Zhao Qun's heart.

**The first to fall in love is destined to become the other's subject.

Content warning: Both leads are sexually inexperienced. The heroine has never fallen in love with anyone.

[If you like Feng Chunsheng, you can check out the companion novel, The Battle with You. This is the main couple's conclusion.]

Please add it to your reading list!!

Theme: Everyone has to grow up and endure hardships to become a ruler.