The Sparrow Imprisoned in the Cold Pool

[Both leads are sexually inexperienced / Possessive, domineering romance / Yandere emperor / Medical heroine / The emperor’s long road to winning back his wife / Canary trope / Extreme push and pull / Perverse] The male lead is seriously twisted, seriously twisted

He was once a sinister, obsessive minister of state. Now he is an emperor who rules the realm. Any woman in the land may enter his palace, yet his harem remains empty, because beside his imperial couch there is room for only one thing: the faint, cool scent of medicine.

Shen Qingci, heir to Medicine King Valley, can save the dying with her miraculous golden needles, and hide a sharp edge beneath a quiet exterior. To escape his suffocating “love,” she goes so far as to disfigure herself and take a new name, fleeing a thousand miles to heal the sick in a remote frontier town buried in blowing sand, all for a brief moment of peace.

Yet all under heaven is the emperor’s land. He burns the discarded drafts in which he tried to write about “love” and tears away every pretense of tenderness. If he cannot learn how to love, then he will use the methods he knows best: seizure and confinement.

After tracking her for a thousand miles, he corners his runaway wife beneath the moon on a deserted street and personally breaks every wing she has. A specially made powder leaves her unable to struggle while keeping her fully conscious. The carriage home becomes a mobile prison. He “personally attends to” every aspect of her daily life, feeding her, bathing her, even helping her use the toilet... He is meticulous and never leaves her side, immersing himself in control of every inch of her skin and every sensation, sickly savoring her humiliating tremors.

Deep within the palace, he builds her the most beautiful cage, “Chengxin Studio.” With glass for windows and a frame of hardened steel, it looks like a resplendent pavilion, but is in truth a prison with no escape. Every night he holds her as she sleeps, like a precious treasure he has recovered and will never let go.