Forbidden Lands of Western Hunan: The Young Marshal’s Obsession with the Cold Cave Keeper

Two male leads + Republican-era China + mutual healing + beautiful but tragic characters + mystery and adventure + sweet romance

[Gentle, scheming, secretly unhinged young marshal seme × aloof, broken, secretly poisonous Miao beauty uke]

In the chaos of Republican-era China, the Wuli Stockade deep in the mountains of western Hunan follows a terrifying custom: any man and woman chosen by the “Cave God” must become cave dwellers, starving themselves to death in a dark cavern on the mountain's back slope to keep the stockade safe.

Qi Ling is the stockade's most “terminally ill” cave keeper. His skin is as pale as paper, and he has spent years among poisonous insects and miasma. Burdened by guilt over his sister's brutal death, he waits for fate with nothing but death in his heart.

Then, one day, Lu Huaizhou, a Western-educated doctor of modern medicine, enters the accursed stockade.

Everyone assumes this slender, refined teacher, with his talk of psychology, will die from the poisonous gu. Instead, Lu Huaizhou kicks over the shrine's idol, tears away his gentlemanly disguise, and reveals the ruthless young marshal, the most powerful warlord in Beijing.

“What kind of damned Cave God thinks he can lay a hand on my man?”

Faced with Qi Ling's pathological resistance and self-exile, Lu Huaizhou forcefully shatters the chains he has bound himself with, his eyes burning with possessive madness. “Qi Ling, I saved your life. For the rest of it, you aren't allowed to go anywhere but stay by my side.”

Rifles and cannons blow apart a century-old ancestral temple. This is a battle between science and superstition, and the ultimate salvation of two souls. Amid the ruins, Lu Huaizhou lifts his broken, aloof beauty into his arms and brings him back to the world of the living.