Willow Behind the Wall: Love’s First Knife Strikes the Heart!

Beneath the apricot trees of the Royal Academy, a strand of her hair fell as she corrected his essay on statecraft, catching on the bowstring he had drawn taut while teaching her archery. Those were the brightest days of Xie Qingliu and Xiao Jingchen’s youth. But overnight, the entire Taifu household was framed, the Duke of Anguo’s family rose to power over a sea of blood, and the childhood sweetheart she had once known became her sworn enemy.

To save her father, Xie Qingliu put on a mask of indifference and married into her enemy’s household as a spy. The words “I never loved you” on their wedding night became a knife lodged in both their hearts. Xiao Jingchen concealed his surging love beneath hatred. Though he spoke to her coldly, he would stay by her bedside all night whenever she coughed up blood. Xie Qingliu locked her military books away in a hidden cabinet and tucked her unsent letters beneath her pillow. Every time she wrote “Jingchen,” the name was soaked in blood and tears.

When she proved her innocence with her death, she left behind the military book filled with sketches of him. When he found a hundred love letters beneath her pillow and realized the “evidence” he had burned with his own hands had been her blood-written confession, the truth came too late, a blade that tore at his heart. In the end, the deepest wound love could inflict became the last bond keeping them tied to each other, even in hatred.