Red Beans on the Blade

She had once been a blade.

At eleven, a flood destroyed everything she had. To buy a plain coffin for her gravely ill grandmother, she sold herself to the Murong household and was given the name Qiyue.

For ten years, she lived by the blade, staking her life on one person. It was only when she saw the way Murong Jue looked at his younger sister that she understood the weight of his words: “Yue Niang, you are the finest blade in the Murong family.”

Blades do not need to be loved.

At the end of the following year, the monarch, Murong Ke, issued an edict ordering her younger sister to enter the palace. Murong Jue personally sent her off in the bridal sedan, making her take her sister’s place and marry a stranger.

She thought she was merely trading one blade for another.

But that man would frown and ask softly as she tried to endure her pain, “Who taught you not to cry, even when you’re hurting like this?” He would look into her eyes and say, word by word, “You are different from them.”

“Jade hairpins fall to the ground, unclaimed, and become the finest branch in the southeast.” He placed the jade hairpin in her hair and said, “With it in your hair, I will always be here.”

He kept that promise with his whole life.

Later, Murong Jue rebelled. She put herself in harm’s way, only to be imprisoned by Murong Ke in a detached palace. He said every cruel thing he could to force her to leave. She did not know that by then, he had already suffered from the poison for more than three months.

His final words before he died were: “The jade hairpin… let her wear it.”

At twenty-eight, she calmly left her last words: “When I die, please bury me with my husband.”

This is a story about love:

A man teaches a woman with his life that she was never a blade, but someone worthy of being cherished.