“Consort? Heh, you think you’re worthy?”
A male voice full of mockery and disdain rang in Ning Nuannuan’s ears.
She suddenly opened her eyes. What met her sight were swaying red wedding candles adorned with dragons and phoenixes. The glaring bright yellow intertwined with an ambiguous dark red, and the air was filled with an incense that made her nose itch.
Before she could even process that she wasn’t supposed to be in the Brazilian rainforest fighting smugglers, a man dressed in bright red wedding robes, with a handsome yet sharp and mean-looking face and a half-shaved head, had already stepped to the bedside.
He looked down at her condescendingly. There was not the slightest hint of joy from a newlywed in his eyes—only naked disgust.
“Dong’e Ningnuan, listen carefully,” the man—Aisin-Gioro Yintang, the Ninth Prince of the Great Qing—lifted her chin with a fan in a frivolous manner. “You are nothing more than a pawn shoved to me by the Emperor. Stay obediently in this courtyard, and I’ll guarantee you a lifetime of wealth and status. But if you dare harbor any improper thoughts…”
He didn’t finish his sentence, but the gloomy threat was already pressing in.
Ning Nuannuan’s mind buzzed as countless fragments of memories that didn’t belong to her exploded within.
Dong’e Ningnuan, the Ninth Prince’s primary consort during the Kangxi era.
And she—Ning Nuannuan, a 21st-century combat champion, a human-shaped tyrannosaurus—had actually transmigrated into this historically famous pushover? The unlucky woman who followed her husband Yintang, working like a beast for the Eighth Prince faction, only to be confined until death?
“I’ll be staying with Lady Wanyan tonight. You can rest on your own.” Seeing her stunned, Yintang assumed she was frightened out of her wits. Satisfied, he withdrew his fan and turned to leave.
To hell with Lady Wanyan!
“Stop right there!”
A sharp, clear shout halted Yintang in his tracks.
He turned back in surprise, only to meet a pair of eyes completely different from what he expected. No fear, no timidity—only a calmness that sent a chill down his spine.
“What did you just call me?” Yintang narrowed his eyes, a dangerous aura spreading. A newly married consort dared to speak to him like this?
Ning Nuannuan ignored him. She sat up on the wedding bed and casually stretched her wrists and neck, her joints cracking in a series of crisp sounds.
Hmm. The body’s condition was a bit weak, but the foundation was decent.
She lifted her eyelids and looked at him. “I said, stop. Are your ears not working?”
Yintang laughed in anger.
In all his life, aside from the Emperor, no one had ever dared to challenge him like this.
“Good. Very good!” Yintang smiled instead of raging as he stepped closer to her. “It seems I’ve been too lenient with you! Is this how the Dong’e family taught you manners? On your wedding night, you dare put on airs before me? Do you believe I could have someone drag you out right now and—”
“Manners?” Ning Nuannuan cut him off, slowly rising to her feet.
She was half a head shorter than Yintang, but the aura she carried—one forged from climbing out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood—forced his remaining words back down his throat.
Tilting her head, Ning Nuannuan revealed a smile that, to Yintang, felt somewhat chilling.
“My lord,” she called sweetly, then in a voice only the two of them could hear, she asked, “Do you want to stand and reason with me, or lie down and listen to my rules?”
Lie down?
What did that mean?
In the next second, he found out.
Ning Nuannuan moved.
There were no flashy moves—just a simple close-in, leg sweep, and twist of the waist.
Yinjiu only felt an irresistible force surge from his waist. His entire body lost balance instantly, his vision spinning wildly.
“Bang!”
A loud crash.
The world fell silent.
Yinjiu was thrown in a perfect shoulder toss, slammed solidly into the rosewood couch covered with mandarin duck brocade bedding.
He was completely stunned, his mind buzzing as if a hundred ducks had trampled over it at once. He only remembered being lifted into the air, and then… embedded into the bed.
Th-this… this is a woman?
He struggled to get up, only to find his whole body felt like it had fallen apart. Even the slightest movement sent piercing pain through him.
“Y-you vicious woman! You dare lay hands on me!” Yinjiu shouted, both shocked and furious, his pointing hand trembling.
Ning Nuannuan didn’t even look at him. She frowned slightly, glancing at her own hand, then at the bed.
That last move… seemed a bit out of control.
She reached out a hand and lightly snapped the thick rosewood bedpost beside her—one as thick as an adult man’s calf.
“Crack!”
A crisp, bone-chilling snapping sound.
The incredibly hard rosewood broke in her hand like a twisted dough stick, snapped clean in two.
Yinjiu’s pupils shrank.
He stared fixedly at the broken bedpost, then at Ning Nuannuan’s slender, pale hand that looked completely harmless. His mouth slowly fell open, a strangled sound escaping his throat as if someone had seized his neck.
Hallucination… this had to be a hallucination!
He must have drunk too much today!
Ning Nuannuan casually tossed aside the broken wood and walked to the bedside, looking down at the completely petrified Yinjiu. She brushed the wood dust off her hands.
“Now, can you listen quietly while I speak?”
Her voice remained calm, but to Yinjiu, it sounded no less terrifying than a summons from the King of Hell.
He nodded frantically, afraid that if he was even a second too slow, some part of his body would be snapped off just like that bedpost.
Ning Nuannuan nodded in satisfaction.
“Very good.”
She pulled the brocade quilt over herself, then kicked Yinjiu off the bed.
“You,” she pointed at the cold floor, “sleep there tonight. No noise, no moving. Otherwise…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, only gesturing toward a tall blue-and-white porcelain vase in the corner.
Following her gaze, Yinjiu immediately imagined the exquisite vase shattering into pieces. He shuddered violently, hugging the table leg beside him and curling into a tight ball, not daring to move at all.
Heavens! Imperial Father!
What on earth have you brought into my household?!
This isn’t a consort—this is a living ancestor! A life-claiming demon!