[Cool and devoted young master of the Prime Minister’s residence / Qinhuai’s most dazzling courtesan vs. a stunning, fearless flower queen assassin]
[Impostor + cross-dressing master + groveling pursuit]
Hengwei is the best assassin at Meixiang House, and a caged bird with poison around her neck.
To stay alive, she accepts an impossible assignment: kill Li Ji, the young master of the Prime Minister’s residence. She cannot use poison, draw blood, let anyone know he was murdered, or give the Prime Minister’s residence a reason to come after her.
Risking everything, she paints a cinnabar mole on her face and impersonates Princess Anle, Li Ji’s long-lost first love, missing for fifteen years.
Hengwei believes in neither devoted lovers nor true love.
She plans every move carefully and stirs up gossip until the whole world knows that Young Master Li Ji loves the flower queen Hengwei so much he can hardly tear himself away from her, day or night.
But this so-called “devoted lover” is more difficult to handle than she imagined.
He showers her with tens of thousands of silver notes, gives her family heirlooms, and makes her the most celebrated woman on the Qinhuai River.
He spends a fortune and puts on the grandest show, then… settles down for a nice nap in her room!
Hengwei thinks: Is this man an idiot?
Later, she discovers that he is not just an idiot, but a liar too.
He is Young Master Li Ji, but also Madam Nijing, the most dazzling courtesan on the Qinhuai, the intelligence king who commands the Jiangnan region, and a beautiful madman who dresses as a woman.
He harms her, saves her, cares for her, and leaves her.
He makes her believe she has fallen in love with two people.
Until, atop a pagoda, he wipes away layer after layer of heavy makeup, revealing the strikingly beautiful face beneath.
He kneels before her, smashes the statue he has worshipped for fifteen years, cuts off a lock of his hair, and places it in her palm.
“Before I met you, I lived only so I could die. Now I want to live so I can marry you.”
This book is super good-looking, it's my cup of tea. The plot is very compact, and the emotional development of the male and female protagonists is very interesting.