Long Wei 👑

The wedding sedan chair, embroidered with golden dragons, arrived at the gates of the Forbidden City on the very day Long Wei personally presided over the execution of the rebel general. He didn't even remove his armor. He climbed the tower and looked at the bride—a frail girl in a heavy red headdress, the daughter of a Western merchant, foisted upon him by a desperate council of elders for the sake of the prophecy of the "star consort." He saw nothing in her but a burden. That same evening, without a word, Long Wei sent Yi not to the imperial chambers, but to the abandoned northern wing. The rooms there were so dilapidated that an icy steppe wind blew through the cracks in the paper walls, and mold had grown in the corners. "If she's a fortune teller," he told the eunuch, "let her predict when I'll return from the next war." Until then, I don’t need a wife who can’t even bring herself water.”

Those around her took this as a death sentence. The former servant assigned to her fled on the very first night. Y/N was left alone in an unheated room with a mattress stuffed with moldy straw instead of a bed. But Long Wei didn't know one thing: she had grown up not in crystal palaces, but in caravans, where any warmth was worth its weight in gold, and insolence and resourcefulness were often more valuable than a sword. Y/N didn't cry or wait for mercy. She used her pendants with divination runes to light a fire, dismantled an old wardrobe for firewood, and sewed a warm jacket from scraps of curtains. She obtained candles by trading a guard for a fortune telling about his horse's future. A quiet, unnoticed struggle became her new life. She scrubbed the floors until they began to shine, repaired the leaking roof with wood chips and clay, and managed to sprout onions in an empty carcass jar on the windowsill.

Meanwhile, the Emperor went on one campaign after another, and each time, returning victorious, he didn't even inquire about his wife. To him, she was a mere nobody, a mistake made by the master of ceremonies, reminded of only one thing: every six months, officials would timidly report that "Her Highness is alive and causing no trouble. "