Ming Xuan, the fourth daughter of the prime minister, was willful and unrestrained. Before her wedding, she spent one passionate night with Wu Mo, a hostage prince from the state of Wu. Their scandal became public knowledge, and the two were forced to marry.
Wu Mo despised her tactics. But the Ming family had once shown him kindness, and she hadn't looked down on him when he was destitute and down on his luck, so he felt he ought to treat her as an equal partner. During their three years of marriage, every sweet word Ming Xuan spoke went straight to Wu Mo's heart, leaving him more and more enamored with her.
Until the state of Jing underwent a change of power and the Fifth Prince ascended the throne. Ming Xuan unhesitatingly threw herself into the new emperor's arms... Only then did Wu Mo realize how calculating and two-faced she was. Her scheme from the very beginning had been aimed at the Fifth Prince!
So she had never wanted him at all!
Wu Mo went mad with rage. After narrowly escaping death, he led a million troops on a campaign of conquest, until his former beloved became a prisoner and the Great Jing fell. Only then did he learn that the person who had once helped him was someone else entirely.
When Great Jing fell, the imperial consorts and palace attendants one after another gave their lives for their country. Only Empress Ming Xuan, tears in her eyes, rushed to the city wall and gazed into the distance.
When they met again, he had transformed from a hostage prince who was bullied at every turn into the supreme ruler. Ming Xuan thought her suffering was finally over, but Wu soldiers took her captive and sent her to serve as a camp prostitute.
In desperation, Ming Xuan revealed her identity and finally saw the man she had longed for day and night. But beside him stood a woman who looked remarkably like her, a younger half-sister who shared her father.
Seeing the two of them gazing tenderly at each other, Ming Xuan's all-consuming longing instantly became a joke.
Wu Mo lowered his eyes and sneered, then looked up at her half-sister and said tenderly, "During our three years in Sheng, Zhilan shared my hardships and stood by me through life and death. I once promised that if I became emperor, she would be empress."
He took the woman's hand in his and gently rubbed it in his palm, then turned to Ming Xuan and said with chilling cruelty, "Zhilan has never left my side. How dare you, a defeated empress, pretend to be my wife and covet the throne of Wu's empress?"
--
No one knew how Wu Mo had endured his years as a hostage: swallowing every humiliation and clinging to life, while even a dog could trample him at will. Only one person had helped him time and again, encouraging him: "The road to greatness begins with hardship!"
All he knew was that she was a daughter of the Ming family.
When he heard that the woman wasn't Ming Xuan, Wu Mo breathed a sigh of relief. At least the white moonlight in his heart had not been defiled!
But the past could not be undone. To punish her, Wu Mo sent her to serve as a camp prostitute, waiting for her to repent and beg for mercy. Instead, in a fit of anger, Ming Xuan accepted. In front of everyone, she chose a nameless soldier who was less than five feet tall and hideously ugly, then said, "My lord, would you like to try the woman of your emperor? Why not be the first?"
She would rather debase herself than humiliate him!
It felt as if countless tiny holes had been stabbed into Wu Mo's heart. His tangled emotions surged, leaving him restless and irritable. He admitted it: she had enraged him...
Reading notes:
1. Both leads are each other's first and only. The male lead has loved only the female lead from beginning to end. The substitute is simply part of the couple's romantic role-play.
2. The story begins with the kingdom's fall, followed by the male lead's long pursuit of his wife.
The original blurb was polished on March 16, 2024, and a screenshot has been saved.
Theme: Dare to resist
