It's Okay, Just Take Me Away

[A princess with no courtly upbringing × an untamed, untrained secret guard] Li Mianyu is the only daughter of the late crown prince. Doted on by the Emperor since childhood, she is granted the title of Princess of Ning and raised within the palace. The Emperor arranges everything for her. The eldest son of the Cui family, the most eligible young man in the capital, is her childhood sweetheart. All that remains is for her to come of age and marry him. But a month before she is due to come of age, foreign forces invade. Her grandfather, the Emperor, lies gravely ill, while several uncles rebel or flee. In the chaos, the young secret guard follows the Emperor’s instructions and tries to get Li Mianyu out of the capital and into hiding. Li Mianyu cries and refuses to leave her grandfather. The taciturn guard is immensely strong, and carries her off by force. Outside the palace, the city is in chaos. Checkpoints are strict as people search for fleeing members of the royal family. The guard plans to hide her in a vegetable barrel and smuggle her out, but Li Mianyu would rather die than go along with it. She has no survival instinct whatsoever. The guard says, “I saw the Twelfth Prince get out by hiding in a dung barrel.” Li Mianyu changes her mind. A vegetable barrel is still better than a dung barrel. They follow a group of refugees to a mountain village. Li Mianyu can’t do anything, can’t stand rough clothes or coarse food, and wants to go back to her grandfather every day. The guard has no choice but to earn money to buy soft cloth and fine rice. When he returns and finds her still sulking, the young man says, matter-of-factly, “We can’t afford better now, but we will later.” Seeing his grim face and remembering his great strength, Li Mianyu doesn’t dare argue and hurriedly nods. … Later, her childhood sweetheart finds her and says he’ll take her away to find her grandfather. Li Mianyu follows him without hesitation, not even looking back. But she learns that her grandfather is dead, and her seemingly noble and upright childhood sweetheart intends to offer her to the new Emperor to prove his loyalty. The new Emperor is said to be a fifty-year-old man who drinks blood and eats people. Li Mianyu’s world collapses. Locked in a courtyard, she suddenly thinks of her secret guard and begins to miss their life in the village. Chen Chunhua, the village beauty, liked him. She has been gone for three months. Could he already be with Chen Chunhua? Li Mianyu regrets leaving. Just as she is about to cry, the window opens. She jumps in fright, then sees her secret guard slip inside with graceful ease. She bursts into tears. The guard rushes over, hoists her onto his shoulder, and leaves. His voice is low and muffled. “I’m sorry, but I still have to take the princess away.” Li Mianyu clings to his neck, sobbing. “It’s all right. Just hurry and take me away.” * Later. Raising a princess costs too much. The secret guard counts his savings and is convinced they won’t be enough. He sets his first goal: secure a mountain. -- A proud, stubborn princess with no courtly upbringing who is easy to placate × a naturally cunning, taciturn, capable, handsome, and untrained secret guard Reader’s guide: 1. This is not a story about a powerful female lead, and she is not a strong heroine. She is not a perfect character. The focus is romance, with a slow pace. To repeat the leads’ one-line descriptions from the blurb: “a princess with no courtly upbringing × an untrained secret guard.” It’s an adorable, sweet romance about a couple, with lots of everyday interactions between them. 2. My writing is amateurish. This is a self-indulgent ship-fic, with simplistic court intrigue serving as background. To be clear, it’s very simplistic and won’t be explored in detail; it’s only there to set the scene! Everything is in service of the romance, and I won’t dwell on the other elements. If it’s not for you, simply don’t read it. Let’s respect one another’s tastes and keep things harmonious. Thank you for reading. (Cover background image used with permission from [Santailing].) Historical romance coming soon: I Can Cure Her Blindness == Fantasy novel coming soon: The Male Lead Is Finally Reborn. A silly, sweet comedy. Synopsis: A sweet girl who seems innocent but is cunning × a proud, confident, handsome man Fusui is a notorious female demon, ugly and cruel. Through underhanded means, she takes Bai Liyu, the immortal realm’s unrivaled beauty and its unattainable ideal, for herself. After their marriage, she locks him in her cave. Later, word spreads that she has tamed Bai Liyu, who now loves her with unwavering devotion. They become one of the most celebrated couples in the Three Realms. Bai Liyu has something to say about that before he dies. “I can’t beat her in a fight, and I’m not as ruthless as she is. If I don’t behave, she won’t feed me, and she even makes me take aphrodisiacs. If I don’t get along with her, I’ll explode and die. What else can I do? I just have to hold my nose and play along.” “What? Run away? You think I’ve never tried? Every time I ran, she threatened to chop off my legs. Chop them off, mind you, not break them so they could be healed! I immediately fell to my knees in tears and served her for three days and three nights. That was the only way I got her to drop the matter.” “You say there’s no point in living like that? But she said that even if I died, she’d turn me into a puppet corpse and lock my soul inside. I’d forget everyone and remember only her. Then I wouldn’t have to do anything except spend all day doing this and that with her.” “If I could live again, I’d definitely…” Bai Liyu never expected his words to come true, but he really is reborn, a hundred years before he first meets Fusui. At first, he’s overjoyed and spends three carefree months enjoying himself. Then one night, he dreams of Fusui. When he wakes in the middle of the night, he is a little dazed. He thinks about how much she loved him, and how she even took a sword for him before she died… Though it went straight through her and didn’t actually protect him, at least they had once been happy together. So he decides to secretly take a look at her and help her before she is disfigured, hoping to keep her from becoming twisted by her appearance and put a stop to her taking him by force. -- When Bai Liyu finds Fusui, she is still a quiet, well-behaved junior disciple at an obscure mountain sect, beautiful beyond compare and delicate in manner. She is nothing like the ugly, overbearing woman she will become. On the very first day he secretly follows her, he discovers two things. First, Fusui likes her senior brother. Second, Fusui’s senior brother looks almost exactly like him. Bai Liyu: “…” This blurb first appeared on 2024.10.27. Screenshot saved. Theme: True love conquers all.