[The seemingly gentle, refined (fake sweetheart, sinister ghost) crown prince × the virtuous, well-mannered (rebellious) young lady]
Both pure | Male lead reborn | Coercive pursuit | Scheming couple | You chase, I run
Only after Pei Heyan was reborn did he learn that he was the villainous second male lead in a story. He still plotted to approach Shi Yun, but Shi Yun was no longer the woman who had killed herself for love in her previous life. In this life, after becoming the crown princess, she fanned Pei Heyan in summer and made clothes for him in winter. She gently urged him to protect worthy officials and even gave up all her assets to put an end to the realm’s chaos. The emperor and empress were deeply devoted to each other and worked in perfect harmony in matters of state, becoming a celebrated couple across the land. Yet two years after the emperor’s coronation, the virtuous empress, embodiment of every feminine virtue, died in childbirth. Without her counsel, the emperor neglected state affairs, built a grand mausoleum, and even turned to sorcery to resurrect her. But his beloved wife never came to him in his dreams again. Three years passed in a haze. Then a storybook spread from a remote border town all the way to the capital. The emperor stared at its familiar writing and fell into deep thought.
*
Shi Yun is the author of the most popular banned book of the day and an illustrator of erotic prints. Timid and helpless on the surface, she is actually rebellious, favoring freedom over power. When someone mistreats her, she doesn’t get angry or lose her temper in public. Instead, she plots to make them fall into a lake and come down with a fever. When she is named crown princess, she acts as though she’s accepted it happily and looks forward to the wedding, but she has already stocked up on supplies to escape and is always ready to run. After marrying the crown prince, she pretends to be deeply in love with him while planning her getaway. With the help and planning of her friends and family, Shi Yun finally fakes her death and escapes the capital. In the third year after she leaves, Pei Heyan finds her.
In a sick, obsessive whisper, he murmurs her name. “Yun’er, shall we go home?”
