[Slow-paced + no-brains angst + rekindled love + groveling pursuit + male lead turns dark + monogamous, mutually devoted couple]
Everyone in Huai'an City said Song Qingqing and Xu Jin were made for each other.
She waited four years while he bled on the frontier, and he promised her a lavish wedding as his betrothal gift.
Then, at the victory banquet, a noble young lady fell into the lake. The moment the wet princess clung to his neck, the city's childhood-sweetheart love story became a joke.
It had taken them ten years to meet and fall in love, but he demoted her from wife to concubine in the time it took to burn a stick of incense.
Xu Jin said, “The princess is of noble birth. You must be patient with her.”
So the once-willful Song Qingqing became cautious and meek, yielding at every turn. Yet they still grew apart. He became increasingly cold, watching impassively as she was bullied, while tenderly cherishing his legal wife as if she were a priceless treasure, until he drove Song Qingqing to the brink.
As the poisoned wine touched her lips, she thought she saw the eighteen-year-old young general kneeling in the snow, earnestly asking for her hand: “Qingqing, what do you say I trade my military honors for your phoenix coronet and bridal robes?”
Later
A hundred days of blizzards buried Huai'an City. Xu Jin went mad overnight, led his troops in rebellion, razed the imperial city, and built a mound of severed royal heads.
Holding her cold body, he murmured tenderly, “Qingqing, look. Everyone who hurt you back then is dead. Ah, and me too. I should die as well.”
The history books record that in the fifteenth year of Chengde, General Tian Ce led his army in rebellion and slaughtered the entire Ji royal clan. His methods were brutal, yet after succeeding, he held his dead wife's body, set himself on fire, and turned to ash.
The first volume is all sweet childhood romance; volumes two and three put the heroine through hell, and volumes four and five put the hero through hell. This is an angst fest: he's a scumbag, and she's a love-struck fool!
It's quite good to watch. It's a bit sadistic in the beginning, but in the later stages, it's really fun when the male protagonist turns black. He kills everyone! Almost all the people with names and surnames are killed by the male protagonist. Since there are not many good people in the book, the male protagonist does not feel guilty when killing. Now he is looking forward to chasing his wife to the crematorium and hoping to torture the male protagonist severely!!
So is the male protagonist controlled by a bug or is he just acting?
There are three hundred twists and turns, twists and turns, and the plot has ups and downs. There are so many reversals, worth watching