After Becoming the Eastern Palace's Concubine

[Refined scoundrel: a cold-faced, secretly flirtatious emperor with a doglike streak x gentle and lovely, honest woman]

[Melodramatic romance / Love by force]

Emperor Xiaoming, Xue Min, possessed peerless talent in both civil and military affairs. He was also as graceful as an orchid tree, unmatched in beauty, and as noble as the moonlight: a perfect gentleman and the greatest ruler of his age.

There was only one stain on his life.

When he was still a prince, the late emperor had forced a concubine upon him.

She was a low-ranking palace maid from a farming family, completely uneducated. The late emperor had deliberately humiliated the Eastern Palace by assigning her there.

Thus, after ascending the throne, the emperor held an official wedding and took a virtuous, beautiful empress who was a good match for him. The imperial couple lived together in perfect harmony.

The palace maid was simply sent to the cold palace. She was not blessed with good fortune, and soon fell ill and died in bed. All things considered, it was a reasonably merciful and dignified end.

*

Fang Cao was a young palace maid. Her family was poor, and she was sold into the palace so her brother could afford to marry.

As a child, her greatest wish was to grow up and eat meat once a month, marry the honest and hardworking boy next door, buy a few acres of land, raise children, and live a quiet, stable life.

She returned home and did indeed live that kind of life, content and at ease.

So when she saw again the refined, noble man who should have been seated high upon the golden throne, but was now standing by the rice paddies and smiling at her, the basket fell from her hands and she was scared out of her wits.

That night, beneath the gauze curtains, he pinched her chin and examined her inch by inch with his fingers before asking with a soft laugh, "Didn't you love me most of all?"

He gently brushed her earlobe, then suddenly turned cruel. "Run away one more time, and for every extra mile you go, I'll send someone down to keep you company. How does that sound?"

Xue Min was a demon wearing human skin.

Fang Cao trembled with fear whenever she saw him.

She didn't want the palace or the jewels he offered. She didn't want to be empress, and she wanted nothing to do with his exclusive favor.

She only wanted to escape.

*

Xue Min was born without a heart and was especially skilled at political scheming. He murdered his father and elder brother to seize the throne. He lived without affection or loyalty, showed no reverence for gods or Buddhas, and was stained with countless deaths.

Yet he never understood why she could bear to leave so resolutely, abandoning her husband and child.

Why had the woman who once kept telling him she loved him and would never leave him changed her heart and gone, too?

That foolish, naive woman had become a copper pea stuck in his heart, impossible to bite through.

"Yesterday's sun cannot be kept; today's sun brings so many worries."

Theme: The truest feelings in the human heart are beautiful