Jie Dongshou

"Sign the divorce agreement. She and I have already been intimate. Besides, who in Jiangnan doesn't know you keep a penniless scholar in your courtyard? A fickle woman like you could never be worthy of me!"

The fiance she had spent three years nurturing and financing had finally passed the imperial examinations, only to show up with a pitiful white-lotus beauty and demand that she end their engagement. He even made a huge issue of her reputation.

Ji Shulan didn't so much as raise an eyelid. She neither cried nor made a scene. Instead, she used his own words as leverage and ruthlessly extorted the two most lucrative business lines from his family.

What good are men? Making money is what matters!

And as for the "white-robed scholar" in her courtyard, the one she'd kept around to relieve her boredom?

To avoid holding back his future prospects, Ji Shulan casually tossed him a parting sum and smiled coolly.

"I've had my fun. You were just a diversion in my spare time. Get out."

The aloof, otherworldly scholar's eyes reddened as he stared at her.

"Do you truly have not the slightest bit of affection for me?"

Ji Shulan shut the gate without looking back.

She thought their brief affair was over for good, until she went to the capital to spend the holiday with her maternal grandfather.

At the imperial banquet, her once-arrogant former fiance knelt trembling in the hall, not daring to lift his head.

And seated high above in the grand hall, holding the power of life and death, the Crown Prince of Dayin idly toyed with a jade thumb ring, wearing a faintly amused smile.

His cool, stunning face was exactly the same as that of the penniless scholar she had once cast aside!

After the banquet, the Crown Prince, whose power eclipsed the entire court, pinned her in a corner against the palace wall, madness and obsession burning in his eyes.

He gripped her waist tightly, his voice low and dangerous.

"Shopkeeper Ji once said she'd rather not be a wealthy family's matriarch than suffer with me in poverty..."

"Now I offer you this vast realm as a betrothal gift. Am I finally worthy of being your caged bird, Shopkeeper Ji?"