Chapter 1 001 Running Wild | Pre-collection of "Little Woodcutter's Begging in Troubled Times..."
The Deposed Crown Prince's Early Death
Wucai June 1, 2025
Chapter 1
Meng Yuning was dumbfounded.
Didn't she just die? How come when she opened her eyes, she was riding a chestnut horse and galloping wildly in the wilderness?
Could it be that the services in the underworld have been upgraded now, and when people die, they are given a mount to report to the underworld?
But with the weather being sunny and the spring flowers in full bloom, it doesn't look like the road to the underworld.
Before she could figure out what was going on, she felt a sharp pain in her head, her eyes flashed, and she almost fell off her horse. She tried to steady herself in a panic, and found that there was an extra memory in her mind.
This made her even more dumbfounded. She actually traveled through a book?
The horse was still galloping. Meng Yuning didn't have time to think about it and hurriedly grabbed the reins, "Whoa~"
The chestnut horse neighed and slowly stopped.
Meng Yuning secretly felt fortunate that she had learned how to ride a horse when she went to the grassland before.
When the horse stood firm, she turned over and dismounted. Then she found that perhaps because she had ridden for too long, her legs were shaking so badly that she could not even stand steadily. She held on to the horse and slowly sat down on the ground.
The chestnut horse lowered its head and slowly ate the grass on the ground.
Seeing that it showed no signs of running away, Meng Yuning loosened the reins and gently pounded its legs with both hands.
She looked around, taking in her surroundings while recalling the memory and the plots in the books she had read.
Her original name differed from hers by only one character. Her name was Meng Yuning. She was the eldest daughter of the Minister of Personnel and had just held her coming-of-age ceremony at the beginning of this year.
Her husband is the former Crown Prince Qi Jingyan. They had originally planned to get married in the second half of this year. Although the marriage was granted by His Majesty, they had actually only met a few times. However, they were both talented and beautiful, and in the eyes of the world they were an extremely well-matched couple.
But who would have thought that the current emperor Kangwen would suddenly throw Qi Jingyan into the Sky Prison on the charge of treason and interrogate him strictly.
In just a few days, Qi Jingyan was covered in wounds and his legs were broken, but he would rather die than plead guilty.
Empress Mu knew very well that her son was wronged, but she still took the initiative to hand over the Phoenix Seal in the hope of gaining the emperor's forgiveness.
However, there was sufficient evidence to prove that Qi Jingyan had "killed his father and usurped the throne", so Emperor Kangwen insisted on deposing Qi Jingyan from the position of crown prince, demoting him to a commoner, and exiling him to Lingnan.
In order to give her son a chance of survival, Empress Mu returned to Fengyi Palace and hanged herself.
When the empress dowager heard the news, she hurried to Fengyi Palace, only to find that Empress Mu had already passed away.
The three-year-old Seventeenth Prince Qi Jingyi threw himself on the Queen, crying breathlessly.
Next to Empress Mu, there was a letter written in blood, in which she begged Emperor Kangwen to spare Qi Jingyan's life for the sake of their marriage and because Qi Jingyan was their first child.
The empress dowager burst into tears, picked up her little grandson, and ordered those around her to present the blood letter to Emperor Kangwen as soon as possible.
After reading the blood letter, Emperor Kangwen learned that the queen was dead. He was furious and rushed to Fengyi Palace like a madman, but what was waiting for him was only the queen's cold corpse.
The empress dowager held her crying grandson in her arms and tearfully complained to Emperor Kangwen, asking him to show mercy and pardon Qi Jingyan's exile. She also said that if he did not agree, she would just die with her grandson in her arms.
Although the relationship between the Empress Dowager and Emperor Kangwen was not very close, they were mother and son after all, and the Empress Dowager still had some weight in Emperor Kangwen's heart.
In addition, the death of the queen had a great impact on him. Emperor Kangwen sat beside the queen for a long time and finally agreed.
He changed Qi Jingyan's title to King Shen, and moved his fiefdom to Canghai County in Lingnan. He was to take up his fiefdom on the same day and was not allowed to return to the capital without an imperial decree.
Although the Queen Mother was unwilling, this was the best result she could get, so she silently agreed, but insisted that Qi Jingyan get married before setting off. When she said "get married", she actually meant taking his fiancée Meng Yuning with him.
The Queen Mother did this because she felt sorry for her grandson being exiled to such a wild and desolate place like Lingnan, where he was left alone and helpless with no one to take care of him.
Secondly, the prince's future father-in-law, the Minister of Personnel Meng Huaifu, made a lot of efforts in the matter of the prince being deposed, and the empress dowager wanted to vent her anger on their family.
The person who was most wronged here must be the original owner, Meng Yuning.
When His Majesty granted the marriage, she had only seen the prince a few times from afar at the palace banquet and had never spoken a word.
Later, the prince plotted rebellion, but she was completely unaware of it.
When the Crown Prince fell from power, her father, for the sake of his own life, was running around helping the Third Prince search for evidence of the Crown Prince's "rebellion", and she had never been involved in it.
But in the end, she became a victim of the struggle between several parties.
Of course, she was unwilling to go to Lingnan, which was thousands of miles away. What's more, although it was nominally a vassal state, it was actually exile.
She cried and begged her father to think of a solution, but her selfish father said it was for the future of the family and asked her to be more considerate.
The stepmother also knelt on the ground with her two younger brothers, crying and begging her to sacrifice herself for the sake of her younger brothers' future, and said that they would remember her kindness all their lives.
So, Meng Yuning was forced onto Qi Jingyan's carriage with only a plain dress and a bundle.
As for why Meng Yuning ran away, it was because overnight, she went from being a pampered young lady to the wife of a deposed prince with broken legs and exiled. The future was bleak and she could not accept it for a while.
In addition, because of the bad things her father, a fence-sitter, did, she became an enemy in the eyes of Qi Jingyan and his group, whom they wanted to kill to vent their hatred.
For so many days, she not only had to endure all kinds of hardships on the road, but also suffered psychological torture.
Despite Qi Jingyan's order, no one dared to speak rudely to her, and no one dared to deliberately treat her harshly.
But the cold, wary, and even disgusted looks people gave her were enough to make her, a little girl who had never experienced any hardship, collapse internally.
Seeing that they were getting further and further away from the capital, she could no longer bear it.
This morning, while everyone was fast asleep, she took her only bag, stole a horse and ran away.
She ran all the way, trying to follow her memory and return to the capital, hiding in her own farm outside the city first, and then secretly returning home after the storm had passed.
But she didn't know that for someone like Qi Jingyan who had lost power due to the imperial power struggle, especially as the former crown prince, even if Emperor Kangwen had no intention of taking his life, those people with ulterior motives in the court and the country would never allow him to arrive in Lingnan alive?
Therefore, after leaving the territory of the capital, accidents occurred frequently along the way, such as bandits robbing the road, vagrants attacking, thieves plotting against them, huge rocks falling from the mountains... all kinds of accidents emerged one after another.
In the original plot, Qi Jingyan and his group went through life and death situations before they finally reached Lingnan.
Meng Yuning had been riding her horse for less than half a day when she encountered a group of bandits of unknown origin. She fled in panic, accidentally slipped, fell off a cliff, and died.
Just as Meng Yuning was thinking about this, she saw a flock of birds suddenly startled from the woods not far ahead. When she listened carefully, she seemed to hear the faint sound of horse hooves.
Her face suddenly changed, and she stood up immediately, led the chestnut horse over, stepped on the stirrup, jumped on the horse, and ran back the way she came, galloping away.
Suddenly, a bird was startled in the forest. If it wasn't a ferocious beast, it must be a group of bandits. No matter which one it was, she would not survive, and might even end up with a worse ending than falling off a cliff.
So, she had no choice but to go back.
No matter how difficult the journey to Lingnan is, no matter how ugly the faces of Qi Jingyan and others are, at least she can survive by following them.
The author has something to say:
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Babies, it’s time to start writing, let’s spread the flowers~
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Pre-collection of "The Little Woodcutter's Daily Survival in Troubled Times":
Ye Yunyao traveled through time.
She became a woodcutter who made a living by chopping wood.
At the end of the dynasty, there was chaos and war.
The family was penniless.
Population situation, father died in war, mother died early, extremely bad relatives, skinny child.
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Fortunately, there is a mountain with rich species behind her house.
Seeing his brother and sister-in-law dying of hunger, Ye Yunyao went up the mountain with a hatchet...
Thanks to her efforts, her life became more and more prosperous.
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However, the government issued a notice saying that according to the new wartime policy, if a woman did not marry by the age of 18, the government would force her to marry.
Her uncles and aunts came to her house and told her to get married with peace of mind, and that they would take good care of her brothers and sisters-in-law and property.
Ye Yunyao swung his knife and chopped: Get out!
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After driving away the relatives with ill intentions, Ye Yunyao asked the man who had just handed her the knife, "How about living together?"
The handsome scholar lowered his eyes and said, "You saved my life. I am willing to follow you forever."
After getting married, life became temporarily stable.
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Until that day, when she came back from the mountain with her younger brother and sister-in-law, they saw from afar two groups of people fighting fiercely in their home.
Her son-in-law, who was weak and timid, was now calm and watched the fight in front of the door with his hands behind his back.
It wasn't until a burly man in black smashed her newly bought water tank with a knife that he dodged like a ghost, grabbed the man's neck, and slammed him heavily onto the broken pieces of the water tank...
* Farming/Warmth/Making a Fortune/Raising Children/Politics
*1V1/Double First Love/HE/Sweet/Refreshing
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