Sorahana
Ah, so Ji Sheng returning to the north has been moved up in schedule because the emperor doesn’t care about sacrificing his daughter for a political marriage? Not that surprising I guess, the emperor doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself. With Wei Hong’s insistence on digging his own grave WLY’s own plans have also shifted ahead a lot, so this works out pretty well for her. It speaks well of Ji Sheng that he is clearly unhappy with his sister being sold into a political marriage, even if he can’t actually do anything about it. Actually, come to think of it the princess’s reputation not being ruined by that kidnapping attempt really is a game changer for the plot of the novel. If she had been kidnapped or her reputation ruined she wouldn’t be usable as a piece to help secure a peace treaty, and the war with the Xiong tribes would quickly resume since they’d probably feel slighted by being offered someone they consider “damaged goods”. So now there’s a chance for the peace treaty to go through and for the war to be avoided, meaning there won’t be as much chaos in the country for Ji Shu to exploit to get power. You go WLY. You’ve already shifted the fate of your country into a much brighter direction than it would have been, and will continue to influence it in the future