[Mad, Ruthless Ruler of a Foreign People x Delicate Princess Sent to Marry Him] (Forcible Possession x Marriage Before Love x The Husband's Long Road to Winning Her Back)
Princess Anping of Southern Liang was blessed with exquisite beauty and cherished by her father and brothers from childhood, yet she was forced into a political marriage.
Her husband, Tuoba Chen, was the ruler of Xia, famed for his mercurial temper and sinister cruelty. He had once spent ten years as a hostage in Southern Liang, where he suffered endless torment and humiliation.
After the marriage, the delicate flower was mercilessly battered. Anping feared the savage ruler, and dreaded even more his excesses beneath the bed curtains at night.
She spent her days yearning for home, sunk in gloom.
At the New Year's Eve palace banquet, Anping offered Tuoba Chen wine of her own accord for the first time.
Moments after drinking it, blood spilled from the corner of his lips. His eyes reddened, and he showed signs of poisoning.
He pinned Anping, whom he had always indulged, against the imperial throne and said in bitter fury, "Could all my kindness to you never warm your heart, not even a little? Do you hate me that much?!"
Anping had never poisoned him, but no one would listen to her explanation. She was confined to her bedchamber, where every day she heard that the ruler was marching on Southern Liang because the princess he had married had poisoned him and tried to kill him.
Overwhelmed by fear and despair, she slipped out of her chambers on the night of the Lantern Festival and stood within the palace walls, gazing toward Southern Liang. She fell amid a gust of wind and blowing sand.
Tuoba Chen was shattered. He carried Anping back, her body covered in blood, and stayed by her side, refusing to give up.
Anping finally awoke, but had forgotten everything about her past, as if newly born and bewildered.
During the ten years Tuoba Chen spent as a hostage in Southern Liang, Anping had been the only warm ray of sunlight he ever touched.
He longed for her, but he also resented her.
After years of enduring hardship and biding his time, he waged a war, won glory for his country, and claimed the woman he had yearned for.
But Anping feared him, loathed him, and even hated him.
When he learned that Anping had lost her memory, Tuoba Chen, once a ruthless ruler, did not know whether to feel glad or grieved.
Setting aside the pride he had guarded for so long, he modeled himself on the Southern Liang Crown Prince's tutor, whom Anping had once admired, and changed himself little by little until he gradually found a place in her heart.
The people said the ruler and empress were deeply in love, and that fair weather and bountiful harvests were a great blessing for the nation.
But no one knew that the ruler, who made ruthless decisions at court and fought across the land, suffered from nightmares every night.
He feared that when he awoke the next morning, the empress he treasured above all would remember the hatred of the past, and the man he used to be.
On another day when the wind whipped sand across the sky, Tuoba Chen asked again and again beneath the bed curtains, "Am I the sort of man the empress likes today?"
One-on-one romance, both leads' first time, happy ending!
Also known as: Let Your Spring Grass Grow Deep
Note: "In a single direction, let your spring grass grow deep." From Wang Wei's "The Chan Master of Yanzi Shrine"
Theme: I set out to save all living beings, only to be saved by them in return.
