Spring Comes to the Withered Tree

Ten years ago, a massacre wiped out an entire household. Shen Zhaoyuan went from a noble young master to a prisoner, exiled for ten years to the bitter cold of the northwest. Everyone believed he had long since become a dead, withered tree, including the person who had personally sent him to hell all those years ago.

Su Muqing was the most unremarkable illegitimate daughter of an official's family in the capital. Her family used her as a pawn, marrying her off to the crippled Shen Zhaoyuan to bring him good fortune. On their wedding night, she discovered that her husband was not as wretched as the rumors claimed. When his thin, gaunt hand took hers, a hoarse voice whispered in the darkness, “Are you afraid of me?”

She wasn't afraid. She was only afraid he would never learn the truth: on that rainy night ten years ago, she had picked up the jade pendant he dropped among the corpses.