Princess Ruiyang

Please add my upcoming companion novel, Childhood Friend with a Jealous Streak Wants to Climb the Ranks, to your collection! Blurb below. If you “hate” him, write him into a storybook. A childhood-friends-to-lovers romantic comedy featuring Yuan You!

After years of crawling out of mountains of corpses, Yuan You learned one thing above all: how to survive.

When her uncle ascended the throne, she became the most honored Princess Ruiyang. She was neither a scholar nor a fighter, and she was always getting into trouble, yet she alone enjoyed the emperor’s favor.

Everyone laughed at her for being an idiot, but she spent ten years playing a part in this gilded cage.

Until her imperial uncle used her engagement as bait to send her elder brother off to a border post where death was all but certain.

Only then did she realize that imperial favor was nothing but poisoned bait meant to lure her into a trap.

If that was the case, she was done pretending to be an idiot.

The top graduate Liu dies under mysterious circumstances? She tears away the mask of her hypocritical family.

The hunting grounds’ medicinal supplies are mysteriously cut off? She turns the tables with one hand and snatches victory from the jaws of death.

A shocking case at the Firearms Battalion? She follows the clues to their source.

One old case after another comes to light, all pointing to that blood-soaked city that fell years ago.

The wronged souls of Wencheng wail through the night, thousands crying as one:

Kill him! Kill him! Kill that monster!

[Bonus Scene]

Yuan You: I thought you looked better when you were a little Taoist priest. You had a face like jade, but now you look like a lump of coal.

Chen Zhuhe, who had been serving in the army so long that he’d turned dark and would never regain his fair complexion, heard her and went even darker.

Yuan You: Oh dear, you’ve turned into charcoal.

Companion novel Two Fighting Roosters Sing Among the Green Willows: the heroine is Yuan You’s cousin, and Yuan You has a substantial role too~~~ It’ll start once the entire novel is written!

Childhood friends reveal their secret identities / Is the female adviser hiding her secret identity today? / A top scholar’s secret crush / Bickering sweethearts

Cen Dingmo, the newly appointed censor, has had a headache lately. The renowned storyteller Mr. Liu Tang has published three new erotic tales, portraying the Jade-Faced Censor as a hapless romantic bullied by his widowed sister-in-law, imprisoned by a fox spirit, and toyed with by a prince. The poor fool even has a cinnabar mark between his brows identical to Censor Cen’s. Everyone can tell who the stories are about!

Now his colleagues give him knowing looks at court, young ladies shower him with fruit whenever he leaves the office, and even the yellow dogs on Imperial Street bark at him three times more than usual. The day he receives his posting to the provinces, Lord Cen climbs through his childhood friend’s window in the middle of the night. “Lu County needs an adviser!”

Wu Heqing does the math in her head. “How much is the monthly salary?”

“Everything I have is yours!”

“Deal!”

Who could have guessed that after tying up her hair and dressing as a man, she’d become the dream lover of the entire county in just three days? She goes to a teahouse to buy tea and gets handed a sachet. She solves cases outside the yamen and receives rouge and embroidered handkerchiefs. Even when she’s patrolling the riverbank, young ladies “accidentally” fall into the water. County Magistrate Cen is so furious he smashes his gavel, and from then on, he drags his adviser around wherever he goes. “I say, you must be a fox who’s spent a thousand years cultivating in those storybooks!”

It’s only when he returns from investigating a case on a rainy night and finds the manuscript for the next installment of The Blackhearted Prince and the Clever Censor under her pillow that he discovers who Mr. Liu Tang really is.

The candle crackles. Wu Heqing backs away step by step. “How about I split the royalties with you... give you half? Hey, don’t burn it! I spent half a month writing that, ”

The next day, two pounds of ash appear in the county yamen’s brazier.

A month later, a drunken constable lets the truth slip: “The magistrate keeps making the adviser write new chapters of The Magistrate’s Furious Interrogation of Mr. Liu Tang. He says he’s going to print eight thousand copies and sell them back in the capital!”

Bonus Scene One: Exclusive exposé from the Lu County Gazette:

"A Warning to Anyone with a Handsome Young Man at Home!"

County Magistrate Cen is dashing and charming, but there are rumors he’s a cut-sleeve. The Wu adviser by his side may be his “prey.” They work cases during the day and “work overtime” at night, yet only receive one monthly salary. Even I feel sorry for them.

"Scandalous! The Magistrate Isn’t a Cut-Sleeve, He’s Just Exploiting His Staff!"

Adviser Wu appears in women’s clothes in court and reveals her identity, putting an end to the rumors about the magistrate. It turns out he’s simply a “man who eats what’s close at hand”: gender doesn’t matter, but looks do.

Bonus Scene Two: Lip friendship

Lu County’s gossip-loving crowd goes wild shipping the magistrate and his adviser: “The magistrate and the adviser are together!”

Adviser Wu firmly denies it: “Impossible! I’m not interested in him at all!”

The crowd teases her: “How would you know if you haven’t tried?”

So Adviser Wu spends a fortune to book the most expensive restaurant in town and invites Magistrate Cen to dinner.

While he’s not looking, she kisses him on the cheek, then checks his pulse. His pulse is steady.

She kisses the corner of his mouth, then checks his pulse again. It’s just a tiny bit faster? Nothing to worry about!

Adviser Wu confidently declares, “Just as I thought, I have absolutely no romantic feelings for you!”

But one dark and stormy night, Magistrate Cen sneaks into the adviser’s room and kisses her again and again.

Adviser Wu bristles. “Are you crazy?”

Magistrate Cen calmly shoots back, “If you can try it, why can’t I? I have absolutely no romantic feelings for you either. This is just a ‘lip’ friendship!”

Theme: Social conventions and bad habits shouldn’t keep you from finding happiness. In a limited lifetime, fight to make room for more possibilities.