Yun Zhan is exhausted.
His endings in the first three lives were spectacularly bad:
In the first life, he was trampled to death by a rebel army.
In the second, a stray arrow from the city wall killed him.
In the third, he drowned...
The mastermind? He suspects it was the figure he saw just before dying: Xiao Jin, the tyrant of the Sheng Kingdom.
When he opens his eyes in the fourth life, Yun Zhan finally gets it: Running away? Fighting back? Hiding? None of it works!
Fine, he can't escape this death trap? Then he'll jump straight into the wolf's den himself!
In the guise of a frail beauty from the Ning Kingdom, he volunteers: “I'll marry for peace!”
Yun Zhan's script: play along, feign weakness in plain sight, and plot a counterattack in secret!
Xiao Jin's script: pretend to use him, keep him caged in truth, and dote on him like mad!
But then
Yun Zhan is horrified to discover the script has gone off course:
Where's the promised torture and brutal murder? Why is Xiao Jin treating him better and better?
Showing concern, indulging him, protecting him, and even... looking at him with increasingly smoldering eyes?
This must be a new form of torture! A honey trap! A way to destroy him from the inside!
When Yun Zhan tearfully demands, “Your Majesty, how do you plan to kill me this time?”
Xiao Jin can hold back no longer. He kisses away the tears at the corners of Yun Zhan's eyes. “I only want... to love you.”
It turns out that only love can break the deadlock.
A reader's guide:
1. A loyal dog of an attacker who's a consummate actor and says one thing but means another x a beautiful receiver who's innocent on the surface but calculating underneath
2. The story starts in the fourth life, with a marriage for peace: love after marriage, intense push and pull, secret identities exposed, and both falling for each other.
