After Becoming the Cannon Fodder Live-in Spouse A (GL) - Chapter 1: First Day

Chapter 1: First Day

In the depths of winter, during the Lantern Festival, Yong’an City was adorned with colorful lights and decorations. Dragon and fish lanterns hung from tree branches, and festive colors spilled into Prince Qi’s mansion.

Unlike the joyous celebrations elsewhere, Prince Qi’s mansion was preparing for a grand event, yet the servants moving in and out wore faces as pale as mourning cloth. Half a year ago, Prince Qi’s defeat in battle was known across the nation. The emperor, to ransom her back from the enemy, ceded sixteen western border cities. Now, even with the emperor’s guards constantly by her side and tending to her injuries, the rotten vegetables and stinking eggs swept daily from the back street of the mansion showed what people outside thought of Prince Qi.

Moreover, this joyous event was somewhat absurd.

Although Prince Qi was a Dikun, she was the first Dikun to be titled a prince for military achievements during the late emperor’s reign. No matter what, she was a highly esteemed member of the royal family and the current emperor’s younger sister. Even if the emperor, eager to protect his sister, believed the folk healer’s idea of “marriage to ward off illness,” he shouldn’t have chosen a Qianyuan from a minor family to be Prince Qi’s side consort.

Before the noble families of Yong’an, the Ye family, even tracing back three generations, wasn’t worthy of carrying the royal family’s shoes.

This marriage decree from the emperor was unclear in whom it was meant to humiliate.

“Of course, it’s humiliating me!”

The other protagonist of this marriage, Ye Fuguang, the legitimate Qianyuan daughter of the Ye family, who wasn’t even deemed worthy to carry Prince Qi’s shoes, slammed the table in anger before the family head. With arrogance and contempt, she declared, “There’s only ever been Dikun marrying Qianyuan. What logic is there in making a Qianyuan marry into a family? I don’t care how glorious Prince Qi was before. Who doesn’t know now that she’s a useless failure who lost a battle and cost our great dynasty its pride? A Dikun should just learn the virtues of obedience. She doesn’t have a Qianyuan’s fate but caught a Qianyuan’s disease, causing such a disaster. She’s lucky she didn’t die on the battlefield, but now she’s come to harm ordinary people like us?”

“I don’t believe in this nonsense about warding off illness. I only know that as the heir of the Ye family, the next pillar of our house, if I become a married-in disgrace and a mere side consort, I won’t be able to hold my head up before our ancestors! This grand opportunity to connect with the royal family—let whoever wants it take it.”

Her rebellious words nearly made her old father spit bl00d in rage.

“Absurd!”

“Take her away, lock her in her room to reflect, and have her copy ‘The Laws of the Great Dynasty’ five hundred times! Until the people from Prince Qi’s mansion arrive, if she hasn’t sincerely reflected and finished copying, even if she hangs herself or starves, don’t let her out!”

…

Ye Fuguang caused a commotion in her room.

Even her core seemed to have changed to a different soul, but the servants strictly followed the family head’s orders and didn’t let her step out of the room.

Knock, knock.

Under the edge of a woven gold and cloud-patterned red sleeve, a pale jade hand politely knocked on the pearwood door. A gentle voice came from within, “May I ask, what year is it now?”

The old woman guarding outside answered in a flat tone, “Eldest Miss, pretending to have amnesia won’t work. The master gave a strict order. If we dare open the door before you finish copying ‘The Laws’, we’ll be dragged out and beaten to death with sticks.”

“…”

Was it possible that this amnesia was real?

The owner of the pale jade hand expressionlessly withdrew her knocking hand, lowered her eyes to stare at the rich peony pattern on her wrist, then turned to look at the broken Qing Dynasty crystal plum blossom vase in the corner, the Yuan Dynasty gilded phoenix jade vase by the window, and the Song Dynasty gold-inlaid floral plate holding a fruit arrangement. With a thud, she knelt lightly on the ground.

“I was wrong. I was truly wrong.”

Ye Fuguang clasped her hands together, repenting devoutly.

As a history student, she shouldn’t have ignored historical facts while writing her final paper, fabricating nonsense with a春秋 pen style. When her professor rejected it at midnight with the comment, “If you’re so good at making things up, why not write a novel?” she had angrily opened an ancient novel and passionately critiqued, “This is nowhere as good as my writing!”

“What kind of absurd ancient setting with three additional genders? This is clearly a deformed social structure! From the perspective of sociology, history, or strategy, such a society would collapse! This author can’t write—let me do it!”

The moment she hit send after typing those words, the scene before her eyes twisted and changed. Her phone vanished, leaving only this antique room, filled with illogical details that could drive a history major to despair.

Ye Fuguang decided to dedicate herself to learning from that day forward.

No more ranting or raging.

In her heart, she made promises to the gods, swearing that if this fantastical scene disappeared, she would reform herself, dive into the sea of knowledge, and never go mad even if she drowned in it.

Three seconds later, Ye Fuguang opened her eyes.

The room, with its chaotic mix of artifacts from different dynasties, was still there.

The only change was the sound of hurried footsteps outside.

After a low murmur, the old woman who had spoken harshly through the door suddenly said, “Eldest Miss, the auspicious hour has arrived. The wedding sedan from Prince Qi’s mansion is here.”

Ye Fuguang: “?”

—

Due to Prince Qi’s severe injuries, she was recovering in the mansion, and her personal guards and soldiers remained at the border, so the wedding procession consisted of the emperor’s imperial guards and palace attendants, grand and imposing.

However, since this marriage was for warding off illness, despite being Prince Qi’s side consort wedding, there were no royal celebration’s ten-mile music or red decorations. The splendidly dressed, solemn-faced imperial guards stood silently, resembling a eerie silent film.

Ye Fuguang was tied up like a hog by the Ye family servants who rushed into the room, forced into a wedding robe, and escorted to the sedan. After being untied, she made no attempt to escape.

She couldn’t move a single step.

The imperial guards were all robust Qianyuan from noble families. Even in the icy snow, though they restrained their presence, the overwhelming scent of their pheromones was more than enough to intimidate a Qianyuan from a minor family.

Ye Fuguang’s knees went weak. She dazedly grabbed the wooden pole in front of her, but with one push from a Ye family servant behind her, she tumbled into the sedan.

“Lift—the sedan—”

The steady voice of a Zhongjun palace attendant rang out.

The sedan rose from the ground. Ye Fuguang, like dough on a board, was jostled left and right by the unbalanced force. She barely managed to cover her bruised head and sit steady, realizing the palace attendants moved without a sound, and there was no noise outside.

The cold wind, sharp as a steel blade, slipped through the sedan curtains, clashing with the overheated warmth inside, making her dizzy.

Ye Fuguang clutched her head, thinking: ‘Who is Prince Qi? Which Prince Qi?’

But the situation made the answer clear.

When she received her professor’s critique and opened the novel to calm herself before bed, she had been reading ‘The Rise of the Dikun’. The story began with a minor character sharing her name and surname, a reckless female Qianyuan.

According to the author’s setting, this Ye Fuguang was of an advantaged gender, even the legitimate daughter of her family. But after her birth mother’s death, she was unloved by her father and stepmother. They sent her birth chart to the palace, where the imperial astrologers chose her as the candidate to ward off Prince Qi’s illness.

She hated the Ye family for abandoning her and despised Prince Qi, the defeated general scorned by the world. She not only bullied the female protagonist, who was miserably working in Prince Qi’s mansion at the time, but also abused the gravely injured, comatose Prince Qi. In winter, she withheld blankets; in summer, she dragged Prince Qi to the footrest at whim. Occasionally, when irritated and reminded that her marriage was tied to Prince Qi, she would impulsively prick her with needles.

She resented her ruined reputation, unable to enjoy Prince Qi’s past glory and wealth, yet bound to the fallen mansion for life, carrying the stigma of a married-in consort. She could neither take the imperial exams to become an official nor marry into a noble family in Yong’an.

Until Prince Qi died—

Ye Fuguang felt a sense of relief.

But then, the emperor visited Prince Qi’s mansion incognito, met the beautiful and charming Dikun maid, and learned of Ye Fuguang’s disrespectful actions toward Prince Qi. In a rage, he ordered the Ye family’s little beast to be dragged out and executed by a thousand cuts, not one less.

Even the Ye family was implicated.

…

As if seeing the glint of approaching blades, Ye Fuguang forgot to breathe until the sedan jolted against the ground, and the gauze curtain by the window fluttered, snapping her back to attention.

“The mansion has been reached. Please, Lady Ye, step down.”

The Zhongjun palace servant’s voice sounded outside.

The sedan curtains parted, and a cold wind hit her face. Ye Fuguang, wearing a red phoenix-patterned wedding robe with misaligned buttons, stepped onto the thick tiles of Prince Qi’s mansion.

The red lanterns hanging in the courtyard were spaced far apart, their light dim and muted. In the twilight after sunset, they looked like demons overlooking the living from the underworld.

The imperial guards had withdrawn, and the mansion’s servants stood silently with bowed heads. The only sound in the world seemed to be her own heartbeat.

A gust of wind passed, and Ye Fuguang shivered.

She felt as if she had come to a ghostly marriage.

The thought struck her, and she realized it wasn’t entirely wrong—

Looking at the small courtyard by the mansion’s side gate, she thought of her role as the one to ward off illness, yet Prince Qi would never wake. Even if she didn’t commit those degrading acts, once Prince Qi died, could she possibly have a good end?

She might not even qualify to live as a widow.

“Lady Ye, please.”

Ye Fuguang lingered too long before the sedan, and the mansion’s steward, growing impatient, gestured toward the courtyard’s exit with a formal tone.

She looked up, seeing only pitch-black darkness outside, like the cold, desolate road to the underworld in the story.