A Tough Army Officer Raises a Delicate Darling in the Great Northwest

The Shen family fell from grace. Shen Miaoqi, once their pampered eldest daughter, had nowhere to turn and could only flee to the Northwest with the army to escape danger.

The person who received her was the adopted son she had personally driven out of the house ten years earlier.

Lu Zhenghan was now a famously hard-faced soldier on the Gobi, a “steel monk” who kept his distance from women.

Sitting behind his desk, the man pushed a sheet of paper toward her and said in a strictly businesslike tone, “Ten rules. In name, we're husband and wife. In practice, we live our own lives and stay out of each other's business.”

Shen Miaoqi nodded, her eyes red.

The whole camp was waiting for the spoiled young lady to run away once she couldn't take the hardship.

But they didn't know that, late at night, the man who had laid down those rules would secretly warm his army blanket and tuck it around her. When he saw the skin on the back of her hand crack, he took a crew out in the middle of the night to pave the camp latrines with cement.

Shen Miaoqi saw right through his tough exterior and soft heart, and her boldness grew.

She began deliberately testing those ten rules.

She sashayed in front of him wearing a thin shirt washed nearly transparent, approached him after bathing with her hair still wet, and at night would step barefoot onto his army boots and softly complain that her feet hurt.

Then one night, the power went out.

At last, the man lost control. He pinned her in a narrow corner, his rough palm gripping her slender waist, his breath hot and heavy. “Shen Miaoqi, you were the one who broke the rules first.”

The young woman was kissed until her legs went weak, the corners of her eyes turning red. “Didn't you say... we'd live our own lives?”

The man bent down and bit her lip, his movements rough and his eyes frighteningly dark. “It's been ten years. You used to ride on my shoulders as a kid. Where do you want to ride tonight?”