Did the Crown Prince Just Blow His Cover?

That year, heavy snow sealed off the mountains, and her father froze to death in the wilderness. For ten taels of silver, Yao Xue'an was sold into the man-eating imperial palace.

To survive there, she set her sights on Zhou Yi, the cold-faced guard at the Crown Prince's side.

A handkerchief embroidered with mandarin ducks, a sachet stuffed with fine incense, brocade boots with soles painstakingly stitched over sleepless nights... She gave him, one by one, the secret feelings a young woman keeps hidden in her heart.

But the man remained as silent as a mountain, not a ripple showing in his eyes.

Until the night of the palace banquet, when someone forced her to swallow a drug and she stumbled into the Crown Prince's bedchamber.

A hand with long, distinct knuckles reached out from behind the gauze curtains and gently lifted her chin.

In the flickering candlelight, that face was unmistakably Zhou Yi!

He wore a four-clawed golden python robe, and his eyes roiled with a possessiveness that sent a chill through her.

"My sachet is worn out. When will you embroider me a new one?"

The next morning, a candidate for Crown Princess collapsed in tears outside the hall. When the Empress heard the news and arrived, she issued an edict elevating Yao Xue'an to the rank of concubine.

But for an entire year after that, the Crown Prince never once set foot in her room.

Rumors spread through the palace, mocking her for exhausting every scheme only to end up discarded.

On the day the new emperor's enthronement ceremony took place, noblewomen from the former court fought tooth and nail for the position of empress.

Yao Xue'an clutched the silver she had saved over the years and ran toward the palace gates without looking back.

Armored guards stopped her beneath the vermilion walls.

As the imperial carriage rolled over the bricks, the emperor himself helped her up and promised her the position of empress.

But Yao Xue'an, who had long since seen through people's hearts, only smiled and reminded him of the kindness she had once shown him.

"I beg Your Majesty, in remembrance of the medicine I gave you back then, to grant this common woman leave to depart the palace and reunite with her family."

Theme: Turn your fate around through your own efforts.