Your Younger Brother Pays His Respects to the Empress

On the night of the new emperor's wedding, Shen Mingzhu, the young master of the chancellor's family, was summoned to the palace. His younger sister, the empress, knelt before him and asked him to act in her place in the imperial harem. It turned out the emperor was impotent and, afraid that anyone would find out, had asked the empress to cover for him and deal with the three thousand eyes and ears in the harem. Prince Ling, who commanded a powerful army, would soon return to the capital with his eyes on the throne. If he got hold of any leverage, the imperial power could change hands. Shen Mingzhu's younger sister was meek and naive, not suited to handling anything important. The Shen family had served the emperor faithfully for generations, so Shen Mingzhu had no choice but to disguise himself as his sister and take her place as empress. He ruled the harem with an iron hand and had considerable influence over the court as well. But Prince Ling, now back in the capital, was bearing down on them. The emperor ordered Shen Mingzhu to produce a few heirs at once to silence the gossip. Shen Mingzhu could only secretly select tall, strong substitutes to take the emperor's place in the bedchambers. Somehow, Prince Ling Xiao Tiannan found out. The tall, handsome man cornered the slight, frail empress in a remote, abandoned palace. His smile never reached his eyes. "Sister-in-law, if you need a donor, why not ask me?" * Xiao Tiannan had recently discovered that Shen, the eldest young master of the Shen family who appeared at court, was the very same person as the high-born, icy empress in the inner palace. Excellent. That saved the historians from having to record a younger brother stealing his elder brother's wife, and a subject stealing the emperor's wife. * Prince Ling declared that the empress had to either ask him for a child or reveal that the emperor was impotent. Either way, it was a plot against the throne. Shen Mingzhu had run into the biggest headache of his life. Three months later, an even bigger headache arrived: he discovered his belly was growing. Theme: True love