I Tortured My Husband for Five Years, and Only After Killing Him Did I Learn He Was My One True Love

[Historical romance + fox-demon male lead + groveling chase + identity reversal + marriage first, angst later + restrained devotion + painful misunderstandings + male lead suffers + one-on-one romance]

Note: Unlike the usual angst novels that torment only the heroine, this story mainly puts the male lead through the wringer. The heroine gets her share of suffering at the end.

At fifteen, Li Hancao was forced to marry Qian Chong, the sickly son of the governor, to bring him good fortune.

In the first year, he shielded her from a massive boulder rolling down a hill, fracturing his forearm and leaving bruises all over his body. She watched coldly and mocked him for imagining things.

In the second year, he trekked a hundred miles through the snow to find medicine for her, freezing his eyes and feet until they were badly damaged and contracting a deadly cold poison. Her heart belonged to a fox demon, and she kept the doors shut against him.

In the third year, he took the clan’s brutal whipping in her place, leaving his skin torn and his internal organs badly injured. She swore in front of everyone that she would never love him, not even a little.

In the fourth year, his left eye deteriorated until he was nearly blind. Old injuries plagued him with constant pain, while she believed slanderous rumors and said words that cut straight to the heart, extinguishing the last of his feelings for her.

Then, in the fifth year, just as he was finally ready to let go, she plunged a knife into his heart, and blood poured out like a waterfall.

Only when his fox tail was revealed did she finally understand:

The sickly man she had despised, the husband whose devotion she had hated, the one she had killed with her own hands, was the very person who had saved her life, the man she had longed for day and night and fixated on for eight years.

Li Hancao knelt on the ground, clutching his body as it grew cold, weeping and repenting until she coughed up blood. She begged the gods for mercy, begged him to open his eyes just once more.

But it was all too late.

Li Hancao spent ten years of her youth bringing Qian Chong back to life. The price was that he would forget her forever.

He forgot every wound,

all except her. She carried her guilt and love in her heart for the rest of her life.