Clash of Hearts: She Who Builds Her Throne

Ming Yuntang practices as a Dao physician, and she is made to marry Rong Jingyu, the heir of his house, who has a reputation for madness and for violence. Rong Jingyu takes her in for a practical reason. A wife keeps his stepmother occupied, and with the stepmother occupied he can put his attention on the crown prince. Ming Yuntang means to keep her head down. People with something to gain keep turning up in front of her, near enough every day, so she deals with them, and she changes the method each time so the job does not go stale. She settles the inner household on her own, then goes further and cripples the crown prince, which was not what Rong Jingyu had asked for. The trouble grows past what he had planned around. He spends his days climbing, he arrives at a position of real power as a corrupt official with the court in his hands, and his true identity turns out to hold a secret of another sort.