Broken Blade

Flirtatious little princess × Fallen noble-born military officer

Princess Fujia is the legitimate daughter of the late empress and the Crown Prince's full sister. She is lovely and noble, but sadly, her father died young. After her younger brother ascended the throne, he was assassinated, and she was kept under house arrest for years at a palace outside the city.

A solitary lamp burned inside the palace while misery reigned beyond its walls.

At last, rebels reached the city walls. She found a chance to escape, but was struck by a volley of arrows and died on the spot.

When she opened her eyes again, she had returned to the year when both her father and her younger brother, the Crown Prince, were still alive. At the time, her weak father had appointed a new empress, and her rebellious younger brother was sulking and gloomy all day, angry with them both.

When she awoke, she heard the palace maids chatting: "His Majesty wants to find a good match for the eldest son of Governor Lan."

Fujia asked casually, "What was his name again?"

The maid replied, "Lan Feng."

Lan Feng?

Fujia sat bolt upright. Wasn't he the rebel leader who had once tried to imprison her?

Back then, he was the leader of a ragtag bunch. Now he was still a poor little nobody whom no one wanted.

Why not take him in and raise him? He might come in handy one day.

*

In the twelfth year of the Yuanzhen era, the famous imperial favorite Governor Lan died of overwork.

When he died, the family was left destitute. All that remained of the Lan family were his seventeen-year-old eldest son, Lan Feng; his sixty-year-old bedridden grandmother; and his eight-year-old little brother, a mischievous monkey of a boy.

To show the emperor's favor, the empress planned to choose a woman from the imperial clan to marry him. Noblewomen from the great families wanted nothing to do with the match. Who could have expected Princess Fujia to volunteer to marry him? "It is my duty to ease Mother Empress's burdens."

That day, Lan Feng rolled up his trouser legs, carried his elderly grandmother on his back, and dragged his little brother along. After a month of traveling over mountains and across rivers, he finally reached the decadent capital of Xijing from Bingzhou.

On their wedding night, red candles flickered.

Fujia had thought she was exchanging favors with a boor, a man with a face full of jowls and boundless greed.

She never expected that the future rebel general, though only seventeen, would have such unyielding pride. He stood quietly beside the wedding bed, his expression cool, with the unmistakable awkwardness of a young man. Seeing his hands curl with unease, Fujia decided she would treat him well, even as they each got what they wanted from the arrangement.

*

Note: They marry first and fall in love later. The male lead secretly falls for her and rises to power.

Set in an alternate Northern Song dynasty. The plot has no connection to actual history.

The male lead appears restrained, but is actually a madman hopelessly in love!

The male lead has no previous love interest, and neither does the heroine, though she was once engaged.

Both are each other's first love. HE. A sweet romance with a bittersweet push and pull.

Theme: Change your life through hard work!