As the Southern Zhou dynasty nears its end, the realm is in turmoil and divided among competing powers. Ambitious heroes abound. Yan Zhi, a princess of a different surname, wants to stake her claim too, but to build her power, she first needs money. As it happens, the Rong clan, a minor family in Yunzhou, controls a small salt field. Too weak to defend it from those who covet it, they hear that Yan Zhi has arrived and approach her to propose a marriage alliance.
For the sake of her ambitions, Yan Zhi agrees to the marriage and takes Rong Heng, the Rong clan's eldest son, as her secondary consort. The price is eight hundred of her personal guards.
On their wedding night, she sees the nervous man sitting beside the bed, hiding behind a fan. She says only one thing:
"Take off your clothes and lie down."
In the glow of the red candles, his face slowly turns pale.
She treats him like a plaything she's bought, summoning and dismissing him on a whim. The words she often repeats are: "You're something I bought. Everything has to be the way I want it."
When they make love, he endures all her rough treatment without crying out. Only when she pushes him too far do tears stream down his face, and he trembles as he tries to push her away.
Strangely, Yan Zhi always finds him beautiful at times like that.
Little by little, she summons him more and more often, and not just to her bed. She wants to see more of his expressions.
He's honest, dull, quiet, and melancholy, but she realizes she's starting to like him.
Later, he gets pregnant and gives birth to a child. Holding the baby, she thinks: Fine, I'll do him the favor of making him my primary consort.
But he dies because of something she says.
_
Rong Heng is the eldest son of his clan. His family is weak, and life is hard in these troubled times. One day, an elder tells him that the family needs to marry into an alliance with a princess of a different surname to gain protection. His younger brother has been chosen. The brother loves someone else and cries day and night, so Rong Heng can't bear the thought of him marrying a stranger. He asks the elder to let him take his brother's place.
That decision brings on a nightmare that lasts his entire life.
After their wedding, she subjects him to endless cruelty. He has no dignity. In the prince's manor, whenever she wants, wherever they are, he has to undress for her.
Living this way, he grows depressed and bitter. It comes as no surprise that his pregnancy later ends in a difficult labor. He gives everything he has to deliver a son, only to hear her cold voice outside the door: "It's only a boy. What's there to be happy about?"
His heart turns to ash, and he fakes his death.
After fleeing south, he buys a small house and settles down. He thinks he's finally free, that their lives will never cross again. But rumors about her blow closer like a terrifying wind, growing nearer by the day.
Then one day, the city gates are suddenly locked on all sides, and a group of armored soldiers finds his home. As he watches in shock, a haggard Yan Zhi pushes through the crowd, grabs his sleeve tightly, and says in a trembling voice:
"Ah Heng, come back..."
One-on-one, both virgins, male pregnancy, the heroine chases her husband after driving him away.
Theme: Her partner ran away.
