Princess Royal Rong Li was ordered by imperial decree to marry Zhan Qin, the Commander of the Jinwu Guard. Unexpectedly, the two felt nothing but mutual distaste. In their two years of marriage, there wasn’t a hint of marital affection; rumors even claimed the Princess Royal wouldn’t let the Imperial Son-in-law near her, and the marriage remained unconsummated to this day.
Everyone in the capital was betting on when this resentful couple would finally divorce. However, during a grand hunt, Rong Li fell off a cliff, hit her head, and fell into a deep, unresponsive sleep.
The day Zhan Qin returned to court coincided with the Princess Royal’s awakening.
He didn’t even bother to change out of his armor before heading to the Princess’s Manor, intending to merely go through the motions of showing concern. After all, in the past, he couldn’t even get through her door; he’d usually just check in at the courtyard and leave. Why waste time shedding his gear?
To his surprise, Rong Li poked her head out of the small latticed window. Those phoenix eyes, usually cold as ice, suddenly brimmed with tears the moment they landed on him.
Having not seen him for months, the little Highness ran out barefoot and crashed into his arms: “A-Li’s head hurts so much.”
After saying that, she reached out to unbuckle his armor, her lips pouting with immense grievance: “It’s so hard, it hurts when I bump into it. Take it off.”
Zhan Qin: “…?”
Since that fall, Zhan Qin felt that the gaze the Princess Royal once reserved for disgust had undergone a quiet transformation.
–
The Princess Royal had hit her head. While the rest of her memories were perfectly intact, she had misremembered one thing—she believed she and her Consort were a pair of “mandarin ducks,” deeply in love and perfectly harmonious. No matter how the servants insisted they were originally planning to divorce and had even drafted the papers, she wouldn’t hear it.
Nonsense! Utter slander!
She suffered from a serious “ailment”—a fire in her heart that required “yin-yang harmony” to soothe.
Since she needed a cure, and given her Consort’s looks and physique, how could the Princess Royal—who had been pampered since childhood—possibly let him go?
The Consort was meant to be used by the Princess!
To treat her illness… no, to prove she and her Consort were the best couple in the world:
When the Consort was on duty, she sent ice to cool him down; when she ground ink for him, her eyes were full of hearts.
When the Consort went to the palace, she followed close behind; when she was drunk, she grabbed his sleeve and refused to let go.
When the Consort was injured, she sobbed piteously, insisting on stripping his clothes to apply his medicine.
When the Consort tried to leave the manor, she acted spoiled and coquettish, finally succeeding in dragging him onto the Princess’s bed.
The bets in the capital changed again. Everyone speculated whether the wilful Princess Royal was intentionally using this method to disgust the Consort, forcing him to ask the Emperor for a divorce first. Yet, someone noticed that the Consort’s Manor had quietly lost its master, while the parrot in the Princess’s bedchamber was moved out overnight.
–
Hearing that the Princess and her Consort were deeply in love, the Empress Dowager gratifiedly bestowed the Manual of Male Virtue. Commander Zhan studied it for a long time before finally stepping into the Princess’s bedchamber under the moonlight.
Unexpectedly, before he could demonstrate the results of his studies, he was swept out the door by the cold-faced Princess Royal.
Gazing at the familiar arrogance and indifference on the Princess Royal’s face, the Consort’s eyes darkened.
On the twelfth time he was about to be driven out of the bedchamber, he leaned over her. Rong Li’s elegant brows knitted, but the Consort’s hands—hands meant for wielding a sword and killing—guided her own hands to untie his raven-blue brocade cloak.
His face remained as cold as frost and snow, yet the Flying Fish Robe he usually wore with meticulous order was now being pulled open by his own hand, revealing a glimpse of his pale, lean chest.
Gold and silver chains wound around the muscles of his neck, shimmering against her porcelain skin under the candlelight of the hall, before he finally pressed them into Rong Li’s palm.
His calloused fingertips brushed against her pinky finger, and his breath coiled around her ear like a damp, snowy night:
“Does Your Highness no longer have a use for me? That ‘ailment’… are we curing it or not?”
–
Well, having a Consort who is too useful isn’t great either.
Reading Guide:
1.
Small Li is young, but she has reached the age of hair-pinning (legal adulthood) when the story starts.
2.
Her condition is essentially a higher level of Skin Thirst Syndrome.
3.
The male lead is incredibly “strong” with a huge personality contrast. He loves being a cold-faced “male virtue” servant for her.
4.
All-fictional setting with many private headcanons.
