My Days with the Villainous Crown Prince - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I had transmigrated into a novel—and landed in the body of a cannon-fodder supporting character.

The crown prince in this book had been poisoned as a child, leaving him with a terminal case of rage issues.

Although the poison was eventually cured, it had destroyed his sense of taste. Everything he ate was like chewing wood.

His daily routine consisted of tasting nothing at meals and, when he felt unhappy, killing a couple of people for fun.

The court officials’ daily routine consisted of submitting memorials denouncing him.

When they upset him, he took their daughters into the Eastern Palace as concubines.

Whichever official offended him, he would poke a few holes in that official’s daughter with his sword.

This body’s biological father was one of the officials who routinely offended the crown prince.

When the prince forced him to send a daughter as a concubine, he couldn’t bear to part with his precious legitimate daughter. So he remembered me, the daughter born in a brothel.

He bought my freedom and sent me to the Eastern Palace as the crown prince’s concubine.

In the novel, I wasn’t killed by the prince. When he lost his power and burned himself to death, the imperial guards who stormed the Eastern Palace killed me by mistake.

To make sure I survived his eventual downfall, I decided to find a partner who would help me dig an escape tunnel.

The night I met my partner was an utterly ordinary spring night.

I held the lowest concubine rank in the crown prince’s residence, Fengyi, and got the worst meals. There was meat only on the first and fifteenth of each month; every other day, it was stir-fried greens.

I simply couldn’t stand eating grass day after day without any meat. Every night, I dodged the guards on patrol and slipped into the imperial kitchens to steal food.

That was where my partner and I first met.

I had a steamed bun I’d made in my side hall clamped between my teeth. With a sack in one hand, I used the other to swipe ingredients whose absence would be hard to notice.

I sliced a thin layer off the side of a piece of pork, keeping its shape intact.

I scooped a small bowlful of flour into a cloth bag and tied it tight, making sure it couldn’t spill before putting it in the sack.

I tore off two outer cabbage leaves to take with me.

And I pinched a couple of scallions, dirt and all.

Just then, a somewhat soft, feminine voice spoke behind me. “What are you doing?”

I jumped and turned around. A slender young man stood there.

As a regular at the imperial kitchens’ midnight show, I easily guessed who he was.

“You’re new, aren’t you? I’ve never run into you in the kitchens before.”

“The other palace servants have already stolen all the cooked food you can sneak away with. There’s only ingredients left now. Come earlier after your shift tomorrow if you want something to eat.”

At that moment, guards passed outside the door. Startled, I immediately pulled him into hiding with me.

He was new and had no experience sneaking around. He actually dared to speak while guards were patrolling right outside. “How dare you! You dare touch—”

I took the bun from between my teeth, two bites already gone, and stuffed it into his mouth to shut him up.

At the same time, I leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Don’t talk. If they catch us stealing food, we’ll be beaten.”

At last, the patrol moved on. I turned to find the man standing there in a daze.

Then he came to his senses, grabbed the bun, and devoured it in huge bites.

How hungry did you have to be to eat a bun as though you hadn’t seen food in eight hundred years?

When he finished, he held out a hand as though we were already old friends.

“Any more? I want another.”

I’d heard that the big, burly men in the guard units ostracized and bullied the smaller ones.

I examined the man before me. Handsome face, tall, long legs—but very thin.

One look told me he often went hungry.

Feeling kindly for a moment, I pulled my last bun from the sack and gave it to him.

He took it and wolfed it down in a few bites, once again as though he’d never eaten a bun in his life.

He held out his hand again.

“That’s all.”

I dragged my stolen scraps of ingredients back toward the Eastern Palace.

Usually, I encountered several guard patrols along the way, and had to find somewhere to hide the moment I spotted one in the distance.

Today, I didn’t run into a single patrol on the way back!

Maybe I was lucky today and happened to catch all of them changing shifts.

There was one other difference today: I had a tail.

The man followed me all the way to the dog hole in the Eastern Palace wall.

I crawled through from one side to the other, only to see him jump down from the top of the wall.

“You’re a concubine in the Eastern Palace.”

He sounded utterly certain.

Well, no kidding.

The crown prince disliked palace maids hovering around him, so there wasn’t a single maid in the Eastern Palace.

Even his concubines had no maidservants at their sides. We had all said goodbye to the comfortable life of being dressed and fed by someone else.

So if you were female and in the Eastern Palace, you were one of Crown Prince Wei Lin’s little wives.

“Yes, that’s right, I’m the crown prince’s concubine. So would you please stop following me?”

But he paid no attention and kept trailing after me.

Luckily, I was the only concubine in my hall—the prince had beheaded the others. Otherwise, someone would have spotted him marching brazenly inside long before.

I might even have been accused of adultery and dragged off to be drowned.

He planted himself in my rooms and refused to leave. By the time I was ready to make wontons, he was still there.

I could see it now: he wanted a free meal.

But nobody got to eat and drink for free. He would have to do a little work, at least.

I hauled him over to mince the pork, then made him learn to wrap wontons with me.

He ate a bowl of scallion-and-pork wontons and drank every drop of broth. Then he left a jade thumb ring behind and flew off using his lightness skills.

That should have been our only encounter. We shouldn’t have met again.

Instead, we met the very next day.

He turned up of his own accord with ingredients and asked me to cook for him.

After that, I never had to crawl through the dog hole at night to steal ingredients again.

Whatever I wanted to eat, I simply gave an ingredient list to the guard named Qi Lin.

When his shift ended, he would arrive with bags upon bags of supplies.

And that was how we became meal buddies.