The Crown Princess's Elopement

(Complete and ready to binge.)

A Zhen was the man Su Su, a courtesan at the Cuihong House, kept hidden away in her boudoir.

He had been a beggar, found unconscious in the brothel's back alley with the tendons in his hands and feet severed.

To pay for his treatment, Su Su gritted her teeth and sold the autumn pond jade zither she had bought with the money she had painstakingly saved from performing.

For his sake, she was forced to leave her bright, comfortable quarters and rent a tiny, shabby room in the countryside, where she was often bullied.

But because she had something to look forward to, she never felt that life was too hard. She took on embroidery work during the day and returned to the Cuihong House to perform at night.

Her body was always marked with dark bruises from being pinched,

but she would always smile and say, "A Zhen, I managed to protect my virtue again today."

"When are you going to marry me?"

Li Longzhen gave her a cool glance.

What a joke. How could the crown prince of the mighty Great Jin Dynasty marry a prostitute?

But he smiled gently. "All right."

Once his subordinates had finished gathering evidence of the crimes, he would return to the pinnacle of power in the Forbidden City. That was no place for a woman like her to dream of going.

When that day came, he would not let this fool become a stain others could use against him. He would deal with her himself.

But before he could, she sensibly drank the medicine his subordinate gave her.

As he watched her body slowly grow cold, Li Longzhen kept smiling until he suddenly threw up a great mouthful of blood.

·

Su Su was a popular courtesan at the famed Cuihong House in Suzhou. She hated the false faces of men and thought there was little point in living.

One of her fellow courtesans offered her some advice: Men came to her to pretend at romance and have a good time, so she could do the same and enjoy herself too.

So Su Su decided to give it a try, choosing as her first target a disabled beggar who seemed helpless, in the alley behind the brothel.

She hadn't handled it well the first time and had fallen in love, sincerely giving him her whole heart.

Thankfully, she remembered her original intention in time and calmly walked away after learning that his true identity was far beyond her reach.

·

Today, she was enjoying a pleasant outing among the mountains and rivers with her lover, Xiao Lang, when she overheard a strange story: the crown prince of Jin had married a memorial tablet as his principal wife.

Su Su curled her tongue around a grape between Xiao Lang's fingers and laughed so hard she nearly doubled over. "What a fool!"

When she turned around, she came face-to-face with a man holding a memorial tablet. The name engraved on it was unmistakably hers.

#My crown princess won't behave. Can I lock her up?#

#What use do I have for your crown princess's position if I can't fool around?#

#Of course I'll run away from the wedding. Only a fool would marry him...#

Below are upcoming novels. If you like them, please add them to your reading list~^_^

Upcoming 1: After Losing Her Memory, Her Enemy Becomes Obsessed with Her

There was once a saying among the capital's elite: If you're going to marry, marry Su Xixi.

The legitimate daughter of the Duke of Ning, Su Xixi was clever, virtuous, talented, beautiful, and graceful, a paragon for women throughout the realm.

Everyone said no one would regret marrying her. But Su Xixi accidentally overheard her fiancé confessing his feelings to Miss Feng: "Xixi is wonderful, but she's nothing compared to you."

After hearing this, Su Xixi upheld the standards of a noblewoman. She covered for her fiancé, who had secretly met Miss Feng inside a rockery, and even magnanimously forgave him when he later offered a tactful apology.

But on the day the Duke's household fell, her fiancé joined forces with others to set her up and throw her to bandits, hoping to ruin her virtue and break off their engagement.

Su Xixi had read all the works of women's instruction. She knew the Three Obediences, the Four Virtues, the Three Chastities, and the Nine Virtues. How could she let bandits defile her?

She would rather die than submit. After a desperate struggle with the bandits, she hit her head and lost consciousness. When she woke, she had lost her memory, with only a diary nearby to give her a general idea of her situation.

Looking at the tall, silent man before her, she froze, her eyes shining.

"Are you... the big brother I love so much that I'd spend eight lifetimes trying and still never love you enough?"

The man frowned. "What are you talking about?"

·

The deposed crown prince, Li Yi, was forced to become an outlaw. While fighting local bandits for territory in Mount Wu, he accidentally rescued Su Xixi, the woman he had hated most in the world.

Li Yi and Su Xixi had once been engaged, before the Rong family fell from power.

Later, the Rong family was implicated in a conspiracy and executed to the last person. Crown Prince Li Yi was deposed, and Su Xixi obeyed her mother's orders, taking the initiative to break off the engagement and saying cruel things to him.

Fortunes change. Now Xixi had fallen into Li Yi's hands, and he had planned to make her suffer.

But the girl couldn't resist reaching out to rub his waist, sighing in admiration. "Brother, you have such a great figure."

"Yi Lang, I think I've really fallen in love with you. Every time I think of you, my heart aches, like someone has punched me hard."

"Little Brother Yi, I think I'm sick. Whenever I see you, I can't help wanting to kiss you. I must have lovesickness."

"My darling Yi, I will never part from you, even if the mountains crumble and heaven and earth unite."

So when Li Yi looked at the girl who had snuggled under his arm to act sweet, he thought... perhaps their old grudges could be put aside after all.

Later, afraid that the proud, aloof, self-important Su Xixi would deny everything once her memory returned, Li Yi carefully wrote down every one of her outrageous declarations, one by one.

#How a high-born capital beauty, polished into perfection by her times, regains her true nature after losing her memory and unwittingly wins over her mortal enemy#

#Her enemy loves her shameless declarations so much that he becomes hooked on them#

#Want to go back to being the bland, boring top beauty of the capital? Ha...#

#Not a chance#

Upcoming 2: Desired for Years by My Childhood Friend's Older Brother

In her previous life, Liu Xiyi gave her heart to the wrong man and ended up physically ruined.

Her husband held a grudge against her and set her on fire, dying with her.

Meanwhile, the eldest prince Lu Yun, whom she had once falsely accused of flirting with his younger brother's wife and thereby ruined, rose again, murdered his father, seized the throne, and ordered Prince Rong and his consort's graves dug up.

Just as Liu Xiyi thought he meant to whip her corpse in revenge,

he ordered his men to whip Prince Rong's corpse instead.

With trembling hands, he picked her up. His black-and-gold cloud-patterned sleeves wiped the soot from her face.

In a hoarse voice, he said, "Xixi, you asked Big Brother to help you. But is this really what you wanted?"

Liu Xiyi watched him dress her in an empress's robes, defying the ministers' protests to grant the rites of an empress to a charred corpse and seat her on the phoenix throne. The palace servants outside the hall could not help covering their noses with their sleeves as they passed.

She remembered that when she had forced him to withdraw his troops, she had told him that her life's wish was to be empress, just once.

She knew Lu Yun had always treated her like a younger sister, cherished her, and granted her every wish.

Reborn, she decided to dump her faithless childhood sweetheart and repay Lu Yun for the dignity he had given her in her previous life.

Back then, she, Prince Rong, and Lu Yun were all children living together in the central palace.

She and Prince Rong were the treasured darlings of their maternal aunt, the empress, while Lu Yun, born to a bandit's daughter, was of lowly birth. He could only live in a dilapidated side hall of the central palace, where the roof leaked, wearing clothes that had been patched over and over.

Looking at this boy she had never treated well, whom she had used as a pawn, she quietly teared up. She stitched a cute little rabbit over the hole in his knee and invited him to eat the sweet steamed milk pudding she had made herself.

The boy was overwhelmed by her kindness. From then on, he kept the old trousers she had mended at the bottom of a trunk. On his desk, he always kept an exquisite handmade wooden box that stank horribly. Inside was the enamel porcelain bowl patterned with magpies and a bridge that she always used. Its contents had turned green and moldy beyond recognition.

Little Scene:

"Big Brother... Your Highness, I may really be leaving this time."

Lu Yun smiled. "Xixi, are you asking Big Brother to come up with another way to help you win over Third Brother?"

She shook her head. "I'm really leaving this time. Your Highness, take care."

Lu Yun's smile, once as gentle as moonlight, vanished.

Later, in the middle of the night, he stormed into her chamber dressed in bloodstained black, holding a severed head. His beautiful features were twisted with cruelty and desperation.

"Xixi, Big Brother has killed the female assassin who wanted to seduce Third Brother. I'll help you be with him. Please come back, all right?"

"Xixi, why don't you call me Big Brother anymore?"

"Xixi, if you want it, Big Brother will cut out his heart and give it to you..."

Liu Xiyi was so frightened that she knocked over her sweet soup, spilling it over herself. "B-because I don't want to marry Lu Sheng anymore..."

Lu Yun looked anxious and lost. "Then who do you want to marry? Big Brother will kidnap him for you. If you don't know who you like, Big Brother will kidnap them all."

Terrified he would really go kidnap someone, she hurriedly shouted, "You! I mean... you!"

Upcoming 3: The Black Moonlight Can't Escape

Pei Jin was the pampered legitimate daughter of the Marquis's household, raised to be spoiled and overbearing. She couldn't stand Mingyu, who had been raised by her father's mistress.

When Mingyu entered the household, she was nine years old. She threw a fit and refused to let him in until he drank her bathwater.

Mingyu drank it without saying a word.

She gave the beggars the money he had painstakingly earned by carrying sandbags to pay his tuition, tore up the precious books he treasured page by page to make paper dolls,

and joined her friends in mocking his legs.

Whenever she was in a bad mood, she made him kneel before her and serve as a footstool.

One day, little Pei Jin dreamed of scattered scenes from a whole lifetime, both vivid and unreal.

In the dream, she had grown up and discovered that she had stolen the place of the rightful heir.

Mingyu was actually the dazzling young heir of the marquis's household,

while she was merely the bastard daughter of a mistress and some other man, born to blackmail the marquis. Worse, when her real father tried to marry her off as a second wife to an old county magistrate, she set her sights on the eldest young master of the marquis's household.

She got drunk and went into the wrong room, then forgot all about it afterward. On the day she married Mingyu's cousin, her husband was killed in the palace. Before the red candles could be replaced by white ones, Zhong Mingyu came to her wedding chamber.

From then on, a noblewoman became a caged plaything, spending the rest of her life behind bars. Meanwhile, Zhong Mingyu made his own way through one obstacle after another, rising to the highest ranks of government. Even the marquis's household had to rely on him.

Little Pei Jin woke drenched in cold sweat. She hadn't understood much of the dream, but she vaguely knew she had to treat Mingyu well.

So their daily routine changed. When Mingyu knelt shirtless in her room to serve as mosquito bait, she would bring over a stool and smile sweetly. "Brother, thank you for taking care of me. Otherwise, the mosquitoes would eat me alive."

When Mingyu warmed ice in his arms on winter days to make her tea, she would frown earnestly and say, "Brother, you should keep training like this. Then you'll be able to protect me in the future."

Mingyu smiled, his dark eyes chillingly cold.

Pei Jin thought this would be enough to shake Mingyu off.

Little did she know, when protecting someone becomes a habit, that's when it becomes most dangerous.

Later, when Pei Jin had grown up, she no longer had to live in a cage, but she still cried miserably. "Young Master, Jin knows she was wrong!"

P.S. The leads have only a familial relationship while their family ties remain. Romance begins only after those ties are severed.

Theme: Strive to become a better version of yourself