Please check out and bookmark my new story, The Little Bodhisattva Refuses to Marry (also known as After Breaking Off the Engagement, My Ex Went Crazy at My Wedding)!
This story:
A reborn little princess and her devoted knight.
The court officials often say, "The Ninth Princess, Wu Na, is remarkably clever for her age. She's the best candidate to rule Utu." In Utu, both men and women can rule, but she has never cared about the throne.
In her previous life, Wu Na only wanted to live carefree as a little princess under her elder brother's protection.
Her father the king died, her mother consort was buried with him, and her beloved elder brother betrayed her, giving her to two tribal chieftains. She was brutally abused to death in the palace hall.
Only when her brother's arrow pierced her heart did she understand that the only person she could rely on was herself.
Reborn, she walks every step with extreme caution, figuring out how to survive the tangled struggles for power, how to take revenge, and how to claim a world of her own.
She never forgets the lessons of her previous life: trust no one, rely on no one, and always love herself most.
But she doesn't know that one person sees all her schemes and fears, her arrogance and sincerity.
Through mountains of blades and seas of fire, through rebellion;
Chopping wood, feeding horses, cooking meals;
I loved you where no one could see, and I will never change my heart, in this life or any other.
- Hei Shan
Memories of a past life:
"A Zhu, let's go see that slave market today!"
Little A Zhu followed the Ninth Princess, chattering away as she tried to dissuade her. "Princess, the King of Utu and the queen consort won't let us come here."
"We'll only go once. It'll be fine. If you don't tell and I don't tell, no one will know!"
Ten-year-old Wu Na, the Ninth Princess, stepped into the slave market for the first time. It was another world.
"Why are you crying?"
"And why are you crying?"
She asked everyone who was being sold, and only then learned that none of the slaves had been sold willingly.
There was just one boy, fifteen years old, who said he had volunteered. But he had told the man selling him, "If you sell me, you can't sell my mother!"
The man agreed, and the boy turned and knelt before the Ninth Princess. "I volunteered!"
Volunteered? The Ninth Princess bought him on the spot.
There were plenty of guards in the palace. She didn't need a guard, much less a slave. She just felt she ought to do something after coming all this way.
The boy insisted on following her, but she waved him off again and again. "I don't need a slave. You're free!"
The young girl beamed and tossed him a money pouch. "Here, this is for you. Buy yourself a meal. For my sake, be a good person, okay?"
The fifteen-year-old boy stubbornly honored the terms of the sale and followed her all the way from the slave market at the southern edge of the royal city, through its bustling Sogdian market, to the northern edge, and on to the palace gates.
"I really don't need a slave! Go home!"
Then she grabbed A Zhu and ran into the palace as fast as she could.
Left behind, Hei Shan heard her say to her maid as she ran, "Little A Zhu, do you think he'll be a good person?"
He didn't know whether he had become a good person.
He launched a war to destroy her brother's kingdom, slaughtering many on the way, then killed many more after taking the throne.
But he abolished the slave market, opened up trade, and broke down the barriers between tribes and ethnic groups. The people of Utu enjoyed fifty years of peace under his rule.
Utu's population doubled, but he never married. He died in the royal city in his eighties, with the birthday present he had received at fifteen on his chest: the money pouch, its decoration long gone and its original color no longer discernible.
An eighty-year-old scheming soul in a fifteen-year-old's pure heart: that was Hei Shan in this life.
Everything Hei Shan learned in his previous life became the prologue to the Ninth Princess's life in this one.
Theme: Loving yourself is the beginning of being loved.
Hahahahaha, what do you think of three beds in one room?