Secretly Pregnant with the Tyrant's Baby - Chapter 1
The vast river of stars spanned the night sky, its brilliance staining the lake’s surface with shimmering specks that danced and vanished like fleeting meteors.
Fu Xinghe opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, instantly jolting awake.
The light was dim, but Fu Xinghe’s night vision was excellent. She immediately recognized a thatched roof, not the suspended ceiling of her home. Her fingers, which were drooping by her side, curled, touching the slightly damp mud floor, and Fu Xinghe instantly froze.
She was the manager of a five-star hotel in the capital, so busy that she collapsed into sleep every day and rarely dreamed.
Her fingertips touched the material of her sleeve and the scattered, messy black hair. Fu Xinghe instinctively tugged, and a cluster of tearing pain shot through her scalp.
Hair reaching her waist, and it wasn’t a wig…
She didn’t have hair this long; this wasn’t her body.
Fu Xinghe suddenly recalled something from before she slept. A newly hired front desk clerk at the hotel had sent her a link. She thought it was work-related and clicked on it, only to find it was an ancient-setting romance novel, quite melodramatic, with a cannon fodder supporting female character dying in the very first chapter.
The front desk girl had been complaining to her best friend that a cannon fodder character shared the same name as her manager. She had clicked on the wrong profile when sharing and accidentally sent it to the manager herself.
The front desk clerk apologized to Fu Xinghe, terrified and on the verge of tears, swearing she had only stumbled upon the book and hadn’t written it.
Fu Xinghe had just scolded the careless front desk staff that day, so she understood the urge to vent and laughed it off, even comforting the girl a bit.
She casually flipped through a few pages. The character who shared her name had a prominent family background; her father was the Grand Tutor of the current dynasty, and the former emperor had personally appointed him the Chief Grand Secretary. The whole family was upright and respectable, and only the supporting female character was the outlier. Her father was at odds with the new emperor and did not plan to send her into the palace, but the supporting female character was infatuated with the emperor. Ignoring her family’s interests, she drugged the emperor while he was in distress outside the city, intending to have a one-night stand and subsequently ascend to the Empress’s position.
The emperor was an unpredictable tyrant who hated being manipulated most of all. The supporting female character was choked to death on the charge of “regicide,” and her father was implicated, dismissed from office, and his home was confiscated, causing the downfall of the immense Fu family.
The supporting female character was merely a tool to establish the tyrant’s image. Fu Xinghe closed the webpage, disinterested, when she saw the author dispose of her namesake in a few short sentences.
Following the cliché, this ruthless tyrant would fall deeply in love with the female lead in the future, and the supporting female character’s existence was only to highlight the tyrant’s special treatment of the female lead.
Fu Xinghe turned off the light and went to sleep, not even seeing who the female lead was. She had to be at work in five hours and had no time to worry about a novel.
But now—Fu Xinghe felt a dull ache on the back of her neck, and the increasingly heavy breathing of another person reached her ears. Everything perfectly matched the scene in the novel, like a dream.
The heavy breathing remained three meters away. The man was autonomously using internal energy to suppress his lust, with no intention of letting things happen naturally.
Judging from the situation, the original character must have successfully administered the drug. When she was about to seduce him, the tyrant knocked her out with a chop to the neck.
The problem was that she was now awake.
Fu Xinghe was conflicted.
If she moved, she was afraid the tyrant would discover she wasn’t dead and come to finish the job—choking her… just thinking about it made her breathless.
If she didn’t move, once the tyrant woke up, he would settle the score with both her and her father. Fu Xinghe regretted not flipping a few more pages to see how the tyrant dealt with the aftermath. The Fu family in the book was portrayed positively, and Fu Xinghe didn’t want to implicate them.
“Bang—”
Following a loud noise, dust flew up. Fu Xinghe watched the tyrant, like a trapped beast, furiously smash the table with a palm strike.
The next moment, the man’s footsteps shifted, seemingly turning towards Fu Xinghe. The thunderous power felt palpable even three meters away, as if he would come over and kill her in the next second.
The drug must have been quite potent.
The back of Fu Xinghe’s neck was still hurting. Using the sound of the shattering wood as cover, she silently rolled towards the door.
One meter left, half a meter… Fu Xinghe successfully pressed herself against the threshold, preparing to find an opportunity to climb over in one go.
She pretended to be a corpse, looking back to monitor the tyrant’s movements. Her pupils trembled as she saw a patterned snake slither in from the thatched window. It had a slender body, a triangular head, and was highly venomous.
A dying patient suddenly sits up. Fu Xinghe almost “resurrected” from the shock.
The venomous snake’s tail hooked onto the windowsill, getting close to the tyrant’s wrist. The man was in a state of wild agitation and seemed to have no defense.
Fu Xinghe felt that something was wrong.
She was lying on the ground, with a low line of sight. Now, following the tyrant’s robe hem upwards, she saw that the tyrant had an eye ailment and was wearing white gauze over his eyes.
“There’s a venomous snake near your left wrist!”
Fu Xinghe urgently warned him, her voice strained and changed.
Meng Dongting quickly retracted his wrist, took a step back, and pushed the table he had just shattered.
She was more hopeful for gold to fall from the sky so she could quickly pack up and run away.
The mountain wasn’t high. After climbing over it, Fu Xinghe followed the river. When she was dizzy and exhausted, she finally saw a trace of human habitation.
She touched the ornaments on her head. Most of them had fallen off during her frantic struggle last night.
Only one earring and one bracelet remained.
Fu Xinghe knocked on a door and respectfully asked the woman who answered, “Excuse me, in which direction is the capital city?”
The woman yawned: “Follow this small path straight ahead; it connects to an official road. Head north to enter the capital. It’ll take about an hour.”
Fu Xinghe said apologetically, “Could I exchange this earring and bracelet with you for some food, ma’am?”
The woman took one look at Fu Xinghe and knew she was a relative of some official in the capital, wondering how she had ended up wandering outside. The jade bracelet was clear and vivid green, of excellent quality, and she gladly agreed.
Fu Xinghe raised her hand and touched the earring, pausing, only taking off the bracelet: “I’m sorry, the earring is very important to me. Is the bracelet enough for you?”
The woman regretfully glanced at Fu Xinghe’s ruby earring, “It’s fine.”
Fu Xinghe ate her fill and continued on her journey. When she passed a river, she took off the single earring and threw it away without a second thought.
The other earring was probably at the tyrant’s location. Should she keep this one to be used as a token of recognition later?
Fu Xinghe thought about the force the tyrant used to choke people. Tsk. Not giving the earring to the woman earlier was also to avoid implicating her.
With this piece of evidence thrown away, Heaven and Earth might know, but the tyrant wouldn’t.
Fu Xinghe looked at the earring sinking to the bottom, washed away by the current, and sincerely prayed that the tyrant would lose his memory.