My Family Forced Me into a Substitute Marriage, but the Frail Heir Is a Catch

[Marriage before love + inner-household battles and political intrigue + concubine-born daughter’s rise + face-slapping and taking down scumbags]

In a carefully plotted bride swap, Shen Hengwu, a concubine-born daughter, is treated as the family’s castoff and sent to the Marquis of Ningyuan’s manor to bring good fortune to the “short-lived” heir.

On their wedding night, her husband moves to a separate room. Her mother-in-law gives her the cold shoulder, and a hypocritical “white moonlight” shows up to declare her claim. A hellish start? Shen Hengwu doesn’t panic. With one hand, she pores over the accounts and catches the family’s mole; with the other, she examines medicinal dregs to trace the poison. She’s determined to turn the tables against the odds!

She tears down the fake sweethearts, settles accounts with her parasitic birth family, and follows the household ledgers all the way to the secret schemes at court. She thinks this is just a struggle to survive while sharing a roof, but discovers that her sickly husband secretly protects her at every turn, and that his dying-act is completely fake!

When a shocking fifteen-year-old poisoning plot is finally exposed, blades and danger close in on the marquis’s manor.

With the whole situation on the brink of collapse, he puts the manor’s secret seal in her hand. “My lady, if I don’t return, run far away.”

But Shen Hengwu locks the gates and smiles faintly. “My lord, you’ve boarded my pirate ship. You’re not leaving me halfway through, not in this lifetime!”