⌈Dual chastity + marriage first, love later + age gap + traditional Chinese intangible heritage + an ensemble of prominent families + semi-fictional setting⌋
⌈Mature, paternal, powerful older man X gentle, soft-spoken younger beauty from Jiangnan⌋
Zhou Chengyu is the head of the Zhou family, one of the four great families in the capital.
Meticulous and proper, steady and restrained, he is a distinguished man of power whom no one can approach lightly.
Yet a single phone call leads him to bring the young lady of the scholarly Wen family from the distant southern city to the capital and marry her.
When the news breaks, the outside world is in an uproar.
No one understands this sudden marriage
“A small family like hers thinks it can climb into the Zhou family?”
Until the much-anticipated wedding.
The man invites the influential head of the Chamber of Commerce to officiate in person.
He takes her hand, shattering every doubt.
It turns out she isn’t the one reaching above her station. He is the one bowing to her.
A marriage that begins as protection becomes a love that quietly takes root.
Human nature is greedy by nature.
At first, Zhou Chengyu only wanted to rescue the little girl who hid beneath the parasol tree and wrote stories.
He never expected that she would be a bewitching little enchantress, unaware of her own allure, making him willing to bow to her with every smile and frown.
Wen Yuan’an struggles to survive under her grandfather’s control and surveillance for sixteen years, until she finds a note in her grandmother’s old home.
She thinks she has merely grasped a rope that can help her escape.
But as she climbs it, she falls into another fate
The dowry he gives her and the way he stands up for her,
His love that asks for nothing in return,
And his blazing, devoted heart that beats only for her.
“I promised I’d stand up for you, so of course I’ll keep my word.”
“Mr. Zhou, thank you.”
The author is very professional and the male and female protagonists have good personalities 🥰