Chapter 0001: The Empire’s Third Princess

A heart-piercing pain struck, and Charles Carter woke up.

Pa...

A flash of a whip appeared before his eyes, and another deep, bone-revealing lash mark appeared on Charles Carter’s body. Naturally, another terrifying, deep bloody groove was added. Charles Carter glanced at himself and found that he was actually completely naked at this moment.

Moreover, his whole body was covered in crisscrossing wounds, so miserable it was unbearable to look at. His body was dotted with blood beads the size of grains, as if tiny red lanterns were hanging all over him.

He clearly remembered that he had been in a siheyuan in Yanjing City, Huaxia, admiring that strange red line streaking across the sky.

According to astronomers, it was a comet with a trailing tail crashing into Earth. But suddenly, everything went black, and that fiery line in the sky bizarrely arced in a dazzling curve straight toward him.

The speed was simply beyond words. He blacked out, and when he woke up, he was being whipped.

Sweeping his gaze forward, Charles Carter was startled. In front of him was a huge, intricately carved bed, at least three meters wide. It looked just like the dragon-phoenix beds used by imperial concubines in the Qing dynasty.

And at this moment, sitting on the bed was a stunningly beautiful young girl, dressed all in white, her hair styled in a princess’s bun, her willow-leaf brows as clear and bright as the crescent moon in the sky. Her attire was exactly like that of an arrogant, imperious princess from the palace.

However, the owner of these clothes was now cold as ice. Her eyes were filled with extreme anger, and she seemed to be gritting her teeth.

“Whip him, whip him, whip him...” the girl shouted.

Pa! Pa! Pa!

A strong man beside her swung a whip soaked in salt water and chili water, lashing it down fiercely on Charles Carter’s body again.

As waves of excruciating pain struck once more, Charles Carter’s mind quickly spun, and he finally began to piece things together. It turned out he had hit the jackpot and been reborn into the body of another noble named Charles Carter.

His father, William Carter, was actually the Marquis of the Southern Capital, who had long campaigned on the frontier. And this country seemed to be called the Great Yu Dynasty, with the vast Wolf Province as his father William Carter’s fief. Don’t be fooled by it being just a province—within the Great Yu Dynasty, a single province was equivalent to a large prefecture-level city.

Of course, the Great Yu Dynasty was also unimaginably vast, its territory about twenty times the size of the United States.

And the girl sitting on the bed with a frosty face was indeed a genuine princess—the third princess of the Great Yu Dynasty, named Ethan Brooks.

His father William Carter was also a prominent figure in the Great Yu Dynasty. When Charles Carter was three, King Yu, Luo Teng Haitian, betrothed his daughter Ethan Brooks to Charles Carter as his wife—a childhood engagement.

Of course, Charles Carter understood this was just a way for the royal family to win over his father. Such things were common in the Great Yu Dynasty, especially since there were many princesses.

Charles Carter had always been physically weak. In a country where martial arts were highly valued, not being able to fight was truly a tragedy. Now, at sixteen, Charles Carter had only reached the early stage of the second level.

What did that mean? It meant he could only kick through two stacked large blue bricks. Among the martial artists of the Great Yu Dynasty, this was the bottom of the barrel.

For William Carter, a dignified third-rank marquis of the Great Yu Dynasty, to have a son who only reached the early stage of the second level was utterly disgraceful.

Even a random stable hand in the Tang family had second-level skills. So, the title “tiger father, dog son” was honorably bestowed upon the Tang father and son. Even the minimum standard for army recruitment in the imperial court was the early stage of the second level.

Thus, this “terrible” news reached the ears of his fiancée in the capital, Ethan Brooks. Hearing that her future husband, with whom she would share a bed, was like this, Ethan Brooks was naturally upset.

Lacking high-level martial skills meant that after marrying him, she would become the laughingstock of the Great Yu Dynasty, ridiculed by her siblings, and lose the respect and status she deserved.

Because the Great Yu Dynasty valued martial prowess above all. If the imperial son-in-law didn’t have great skills, it meant he couldn’t serve the country in battle. If you weren’t good at martial arts but were outstanding in literature, that might be acceptable.

After all, the Great Yu Dynasty also had civil officials. However, Charles Carter was not only bad at martial arts, but also mediocre in literature. To this day, he hadn’t even passed the child scholar exam.

The lowest threshold for the civil exam was the child scholar, one in a hundred. Only after passing that could you take the next step, the tribute scholar exam, one in a thousand. Tribute scholars had a certain status, while child scholars only got a ticket to become a civil official.

As for tribute scholars, it was basically like stepping onto the threshold of the government office. Above that was the recommended man, one in ten thousand. Finally, there was the official scholar. Passing that meant you could become an official in court. Of course, there were many tricks involved, but that’s a story for another time.