Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am Crown Prince Rong Chen’s personal maid.

We grew up together.

I have loved him deeply for as long as I can remember.

Ever since I learned about matters between men and women, I had been secretly plotting to become his bedchamber maid.

The career path I planned for myself was: bedchamber maid, concubine, have a baby, Liangdi, have a second baby, side consort.

I knew my own status well enough.

I could never become the Crown Princess.

So becoming a side consort would be more than enough.

And I would have to rely on my sons to raise my status.

Once he became emperor, I would become an imperial noble consort.

After all, we were childhood sweethearts. I ought to be the woman he doted on most.

But one incident shattered all my confidence.
That day, the Crown Prince returned from outside the palace.

His face was flushed and his breathing was ragged. One look and I knew he had been drugged.

I immediately wanted to go over and give him the cure.

But he would rather lock himself in the washroom and soak in cold water than touch me.

I was supposed to be responsible for his initiation in the first place.

And yet he refused to cooperate with my work.

I was truly disappointed.

Could it be that he did not want to be intimate with me?

That fool. It was not as if I could become the Crown Princess anyway. I did not actually care about all those empty formalities.

But when I went to find him and told him I was willing to become his woman,

he only looked at me with a deep, unreadable gaze and said, “Xiao Chan, I have no feelings for you as a man does for a woman.”
It was a bolt from the blue.

He said he only saw me as a younger sister.

Like an idiot, I asked, “Then when you become emperor in the future, will you make me a Grand Princess?”

He waved me away and told me to leave.

I pouted.

That night, I had a dream.

In the dream, he was deposed and reduced to a commoner.

All the servants of the Eastern Palace were released and allowed to return to their own homes.

Everyone left Rong Chen.

Only I, carrying my bundle on my back, followed him out of the capital.

We suffered terribly.

People hunted us down.

He was injured, and I had no money, so I went to steal medicinal herbs, only to get bitten by a dog.

In order to cook him a little meat, I even learned how to catch snakes and stew snake meat.
When there was only one steamed bun, I would always give it to him and lie that I had already eaten.

Later, when all the money I had was spent, I could only go into the mountains to dig up wild vegetables.

Normally, I hated eating greens more than anything.

Yet now I could not even get greens to eat.

After that, he reached the border and settled me in the home of an elderly couple.

I helped the old couple cook, clean, and do chores.

He changed his name, entered the army camp, and became a soldier.

Only then did life finally get a little better.

Every month, he would come out to see me and give me all his pay.

His pay was meager too, only a few dozen copper coins a month.

And I, distressed by how hard he had to work and how much he suffered, used all the money to buy cloth and make him clothes and shoes.