After Being Claimed by His Family, the Black-Bellied Heir Closes In Step by Step

[No Transmigration or Rebirth] [Resilient, Weed-Like Heroine x Sweet-on-the-Outside, Ruthless-Within Hero] [Push and Pull] [He Pursues, She Retreats]

When Fu Xingyi appeared at Ye Qingluo's stall, she never thought she had anything to do with him.

She was just a street vendor. He was a man from legend.

People on two different paths shouldn't cross.

But she was taken back to the capital and became a young lady of the Duke's estate, while he became her cousin.

At first, they were the picture of cordial cousins. He was gentle, and she was respectful.

Until one day, the gentle man showed up in her courtyard in the middle of the night, insisting they set off a Kongming lantern together.

When the lantern lit up, she saw a line of writing on it.

[Ye Qingluo, I've come to court you.]

Her mind went blank.

He said it again. “Ye Qingluo, I've come to...”

Ye Qingluo screamed in horror.

“Shut up, aaaaaah!”

Her hand slipped. The Kongming lantern floated higher and higher, while the man beneath it smiled more and more brightly.

A modern-style explanation from Fu Xingyi's perspective:

Fu Xingyi followed the novel Ye Qingluo for seven whole years. From the moment his second uncle sent people to find Ye Qingluo, he had been listening to her story: at six, she ran away from home; at nine, she was sold as a kitchen maid; at ten, she sold herself into servitude; at seventeen, she bought her freedom; at nineteen, she opened a tiny wonton stall.

Finally, the day came when he stood before her stall.

The figure he'd imagined now had a face, and was even more vivid than the person in the story.

P.S. The male and female leads are not related by blood at all.