The child bride was adored, only to be “abandoned” by her husband! Sold as a child bride by her gambling-addicted father at the age of nine, with her mother dead and her father missing, Xiaolan thought the whole world had forsaken her. But Li Xiaonian treated her like a princess. “When you grow up, I'll protect you for the rest of your life!” They shared two sweet years of love in Manchukuo, until war broke out. Li Xiaonian was forcibly conscripted into the Nationalist army and vanished without a trace for seven years.
Xiaolan raised three children on her own, growing from a delicate young girl into a mother of iron. And the biggest shock of all: her missing father was a soldier in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, and he was still alive.
They met again on Hainan Island. He had become an officer in the Fourth Field Army. With red-rimmed eyes, she slapped him. “If you were alive, why didn't you come find me?” After seven years apart, they had only seven days together before the call to resist America and aid Korea separated them once more.
They reunited again in the Great Northern Wilderness, only to hear Li Xiaonian pronounced incurably ill! “If you dare to die, I'll go with you!” With the hot springs of Tangyuan and a lifetime of devotion, she tried to defy fate. But ten years later, she still went first.
On their ninety-ninth wedding anniversary, Li Xiaonian took sleeping pills and sat motionless by the window, snowflakes gathering on his shoulders as he murmured the name engraved on his heart: “Xiaolan, longing for you hurts too much. Without you, I don't want to stay in this world for even one more second!”
