"The prince is small and sickly. His life is safe for now, but he will require enormous good fortune if he is to remain healthy until he reaches adulthood," announced the royal pace's head doctor as he slowly shook his head. "There is nothing further I can do. His life is in the hands of the heavens."

  The old man bowed to the middle-aged man wearing an ornate dragon robe who was standing next to him, then quickly picked up his tools and hurried out of the room, not wanting to linger near the unhappy king for a second longer.

  The king was a giant of a man. His bronze skin was far darker than most would expect from a member of the Fu Kingdom's royal family, and he had a thick, bck beard speckled with strands of gray. His rge, dense muscles conveyed a powerful sense of strength, as if he could crush stone into dust with a simple squeeze of his fingers. In fact, being a Great Grandmaster martial artist, crushing stones to dust was something the king could actually do.

  The king nodded after listening to the old doctor's words, then waited for the doctor to leave before making a statement to the few officials remaining in the room.

  "From today until the Little Prince's Awakening Ceremony, he and Fu Qingyu shall be confined to the Jade Court." After speaking, he turned around and walked out of the room without sparing another gnce for the woman and child lying on the bed. The officials quickly followed.

  The new mother's face fell as soon as she heard her husband's decree, and tears quickly began falling from her eyes. The fact that she'd been called by her name instead of her title of Royal Consort was enough to let her know that her position as the king's consort had already been stripped away. While she was secretly ecstatic about her new freedom, the other meaning implied by the king's words was far more cruel.

  By birthright, her son should have been the Fu Kingdom's third prince. In the Fu Kingdom, the first nine sons born to the reigning king were known as the first to ninth princes. These princes would go on to compete against one another for the right to one day ascend the throne. While their rivalries were often brutal and bloody affairs, whichever prince successfully reached the end of that treacherous path as the victor would become the king, an opportunity that was avaible to no one else.

  Sons born after the first nine would bear the title of "Little Prince" and would have even less power within the pace than even a eunuch.

  A Little Prince could only expect to be used in ways that benefited the kingdom, which would typically be along the lines of serving as a member of the army or becoming the manager of a distant city or territory. Those who weren't able to be used by the kingdom would even be abandoned, stripped of the Fu name and banished from the family.

  The king's decree had both removed the mother from the royal harem and removed the son from the line of succession. While the Awakening Ceremony could potentially change the Little Prince's fate, possibly even transforming him into the crown prince directly, the chances of that happening were so small that they could essentially be ignored.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Two hours ter, the mother and son had already settled into their new home in the Jade Court, which was a much more pleasant sounding name than a cold pace deserved. While still extravagant from the perspective of a commoner, it was a far cry from the luxuries of the main pace.

  The wooden building was two stories tall with green ceramic shingles covering its deeply sloped roof. The first floor had three small storage rooms, a kitchen, a washroom, and a rge social room, while the second floor had two small servants' quarters, an enormous master bedroom, and a rge storage room that was filled with shelves containing books and miscelneous items that had presumably been left behind by the house's former occupant.

  The tired-looking young mother leaned back against the headboard of her new ornately carved bed while gently cradling her newborn son. The two were alone in the room, though the sounds of servants busily readying the house for its new occupants could be heard in the background.

  Fu Qingyu was still a young woman at eighteen years of age, though her youthful beauty could no longer be seen in her current state. Her long, bck hair was dull and lifeless, her skin sallow, and her bones protruded as if she'd been starving for years. The child she was lovingly cradling in her arms had been born in a simir state. In addition to the baby's malnourished appearance, he was barely half the size of a typical newborn.

  Ten months earlier, she'd been such a famously stunning beauty that the king of the Fu Kingdom had summoned her to the pace to become his concubine. However, shortly after she became pregnant on her wedding night, her body's physical condition had started to deteriorate. Many of the kingdom's most skilled doctors had been summoned to figure out the problem, but none were able to do so. Now, even her son had been born in the same poor state, resulting in the situation the two of them currently found themselves in.

  So far, unlike other children, the Little Prince hadn't cried a single time. At this moment, he was looking around the room with bright and curious eyes. Fu Qingyu gazed lovingly down at her son and smiled, though there was a heavy sadness hidden deep within her eyes.

  "Sweet baby, since the king chose not to grace you with a name, your mother will give you one. Mother can tell by your curious little eyes that you're going to grow up to be a very clever boy," she smiled as she poked her son on the nose, causing his face to scrunch up.

  "From this day forth, you will be called Anwen. Since you will never have the chance to become king, mother only hopes that you can live a peaceful and happy life away from the dangers of pace rivalries and intrigue."

  The little baby yawned, blinked his eyes, and soon fell asleep in his mothers arms.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Eight months quickly passed.

  "...and when the Third Prince returned to the camp at the end of the Royal Hunt's first day, everyone assumed that he'd given up—that is, until he began pcing his trophies on the judging table," Fu Qingyu, looking much healthier now than she'd been eight months earlier, was animatedly telling a bedtime story to her little son. Fu Anwen's eyes were focused intently on her from his crib.

  The young dy's weight had increased, her skin possessed a healthy glow, and her hair was bright and lustrous. While she hadn't quite recovered to her previous state of being a woman whose beauty could topple kingdoms, she wasn't far off.

  In order to help her son go to sleep, each night, she would repeat for Little Prince Fu Anwen the stories that she'd heard during her time in the royal harem—stories containing the Fu Kingdom's dark history.

  "First, he pced down the head of a wolf, shortly followed by the head of the First Prince. Next came a bear's head along with the head of the Second Prince, followed by a tiger's head alongside the head of the Fourth Prince. The pattern continued like that, with the Third Prince alternating one beast's head with one brother's, until the heads of the other eight princes had all been id out on the judging table as if they were the heads of beasts."

  "Finally, a Fu Cn elder walked up and bowed to the Third Prince while presenting a rge wooden box, which the prince accepted before pcing it on the table in front of the heads. He turned around and scanned his eyes over the assorted nobles and Fu Cn members in the audience, then spped his hand against the wooden box, POW!" she excitedly shouted, spping her hand down on an imaginary box while tiny Fu Anwen looked on with a shocked and stunned expression.

  "The wooden box shattered into bits, leaving behind the head... of the Fu Kingdom's king, the Third Prince's own father!"

  Fu Qingyu began pacing back and forth with an arrogant look on her face while scanning her eyes over her imaginary audience.

  "'Any who deny my rightful position as king, stand forth now!'" she called out loudly. She then walked over, crouched down in front of little Anwen, and poked him on his nose.

  "Of course, nobody dared to say anything with that scary old king-killing elder standing right behind him. As for what happened after that," she stood up, shaking her head with a sigh, "With all obstacles now out of the way, Fu Tianzhong became the Fu Kingdom's next king. He ruled with an iron fist for almost five hundred years, and the common people of the Fu Kingdom suffered greatly for many generations under his rule."

  "And that's it for tonight's bedtime story, sweetie! I'll tell you about another of your Fu Cn ancestors tomorrow. Don't worry, baby, there are still plenty of crazy stories left. Way too many, in fact," she sighed, shaking her head.

  "Mistress, are you sure its okay to tell him all these scary stories?" asked the young beauty reclining on her side in the center of the ex-consort's bed, naked except for the sheer bnket covering her from the waist down. While the young dy's appearance may have been a notch or two below Fu Qingyu's, her fwless features and piercing green eyes would still make the hearts of any who saw her flutter.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Jing'er," Fu Qingyu rolled her eyes and waved a hand through the air. "He doesn't even know what I'm saying. All he wants is to hear his mama's voice. Isn't that right, cutie?" she asked, tousling her son's hair as she pulled a fluffy bnket up snugly around him.

  "Good night, mama's precious little baby boy. I'll see you again in the morning," she whispered with a smile. After pcing a quick kiss on her son's forehead, she closed the cover above a small Luminous Pearl set into the wall over the crib, causing the light on that half of the room to dim.

  She then walked slowly toward her bed, her elegant hips swaying far more than seemed necessary. She zily cast her clothes off onto the floor as she neared the bed. The naked servant girl licked her lips as she watched her Mistress draw closer, lust clouding her eyes.

  "You're so beautiful, Mistress," Jing whispered.

  Fu Qingyu smiled seductively, "The st few months have been kind to me. If that stinky old man ever finds out how much my health improved, he'll no doubt throw me back into that gross harem."

  Jing rapidly shook her head, "Me and Mei will never tell a soul, Mistress. You never should have been forced to come here in the first pce."

  "I know I can trust you to keep my secret," the ex-consort purred, cupping Jing's face before slowly sliding her hand lower. "You're a good girl."

  Jing let out a quiet moan as her Mistress' hand slid down to her chest.

  "But I'm gd I was brought here," Fu Qingyu continued, gncing over at the nearby crib. "If not, I never would have given birth to such a perfect little baby boy. If spending one night with that stinky man was the price I had to pay to have little Anwen, I'd gdly pay it again."

  She thought back to one and a half years earlier, shuddering as she recalled the memory of her night with the king. It wasn't like the stinky old man had done anything particurly bad to her. As kings went, he could probably be counted as one of the good ones. He just cked the body parts that made the young dy lying naked in front of her so perfectly beautiful, wielding one of those disgusting little wigglers instead.

  "Well, maybe I wouldn't exactly be gd to do it again, but I still would."

  "But enough about that stinky man. Tonight, all I want to think about... is you," the consort whispered as she crawled under the bnket from the bottom of the bed, slowly moving her way up.

  Jing let out another moan as her Mistress crawled up her body, followed by a sudden squeak, before quickly reaching over and flicking the cover closed on the Luminous Pearl above the bed, casting the entire room into darkness.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Fu Anwen did his best to ignore the sounds of spring filling the air from across the room.

  The eight-month-old baby had a big secret. Technically, it couldn't even be counted as a secret, because the only reason he hadn't revealed it to anyone was that his body hadn't developed enough that he could talk yet. The only sounds his mouth could produce were cute babbling noises.

  Little Prince Fu Anwen, just as his mother had predicted the day she gave him his name, had grown up to be a very clever little boy. He'd just done it quite a bit faster than his mother had expected him to.

  In fact, he was so clever that even grouping him together with those who were often referred to as demonic geniuses was practically an insult. At an age when his brain should have barely started to develop, he'd already managed to acquire a solid understanding of his kingdom's nguage just by listening to his mother and her two maidservants talk. Admittedly, the three women spent most of their waking hours each day talking, which meant he had quite a lot of context to work with when puzzling out the meanings of words. Still, this was a very impressive achievement for a child who couldn't yet make sounds more complex than "buh" and "bah."

  As usual after hearing his bedtime story, Fu Anwen wondered just what kind of terrifying family he'd been born into. Ever since he'd first learned the nguage well enough to understand parts of his bedtime stories a few weeks earlier, every single story his mother told had been full of killing.

  But it wasn't really the killing that bothered him. It was the fact that the people in these stories were killing their own family members, and the family in question was always the Fu family, which was his family! On top of that, the ones getting killed were almost always princes, which would be fine for most people, but he was a prince!

  These 'bedtime stories' his mother told him were simply too much, and he could never get to sleep after hearing them. He'd almost peed himself in fright while listening to tonight's story, and the only reason he didn't was because he'd already peed himself an hour earlier.

  Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything he could do about the scary situation he found himself in. In addition to being a weak and tiny baby with no ability to defend himself, he simply didn't know enough about his family or the world around him to even understand what dangers he faced.

  He knew that martial arts and immortal cultivation existed, but he had no idea how they actually worked. He just knew that they made people stronger and allowed them to escape their fates, which was something that he desperately wanted to do if the fates of the princes in his mother's stories were anything to go by.

  Unfortunately, he also knew that he'd been born with a weak body that was apparently unfit for practicing martial arts. That only left immortal cultivation as an option. He'd have to find out more about that in the future, but doing so would probably have to wait until he was old enough to walk around, at least.

  Yet again, he cursed his tiny and useless body. He closed his eyes and tried to forget the scary story from earlier, while also doing his best to ignore the increasingly loud and frantic cries Jing was gasping out across the room.

  Eventually, once the young dies wrapped up their nightly exercises and Jing quieted down, Fu Anwen finally managed to fall asleep.