After Our Divorce, I Was Offered to My Ex-Husband

[My lady, you smell so good...]

After five years away at war, Song Qingyan only remembered that he had a wife he'd met just once when he returned to the capital in triumph.

Back then, the fighting had been fierce, and his family had hurriedly chosen a woman to marry him so he would have an heir. Song Qingyan could no longer recall what she looked like. He only vaguely remembered that she was young and thin, timid and quiet, and had cried terribly on their wedding night.

Not long afterward, a letter arrived from the capital saying that the Shen woman had asked to be released from the marriage.

Song Qingyan knew his family had other plans. Since she had waited for him for five years, he decided to give her some compensation when he returned, so they could part on good terms.

On the way, they passed through the prefectural city of Chuzhou. A sudden downpour forced the army to stop there, and the prefect presented him with a voluptuous, graceful beauty.

*

After taking the five hundred taels the Song family gave her, Shen Jia left the capital and headed south to seek refuge with her aunt. On the road, bandits captured her, and after changing hands several times, she was presented to the newly ennobled Marquis of Yongding.

Forced to take a love-seeking poison, Shen Jia's face flushed scarlet and her body glistened with sweat. Looking at the handsome, dignified man before her, she hesitated for a long time before reaching out to ask her former husband for help.

Shen Jia knew Song Qingyan hadn't recognized her. Afterward, she claimed to be a widow who had been kidnapped, and tearfully begged him to let her go home.

At first, Song Qingyan agreed.

*

The most absurd thing Song Qingyan had ever experienced was becoming entangled with a widow because of a love-afflicting poison.

The fragrance released by the poison bewitched him and muddled his thoughts at every moment.

At first, he treated it as a transaction. After helping her dispel the poison ten times, he would give her enough money, and they would owe each other nothing.

Later, those hands, which had originally kept politely to themselves, began to cross the line, exploring every fragrant inch of her skin.

And later still, the man who had always kept his word went back on it...

*

Unwilling to return to the den of wolves that was the capital, Shen Jia fled one night as it drew nearer and nearer.

But before she had gone even a mile, Song Qingyan and his men blocked her way.

"You're carrying my child. Where do you think you're going, my lady?"

Shen Jia's body trembled as her identity was exposed.

"My lord, we've already divorced."

The man's gaze darkened.

"I never agreed to it..."

Upcoming novel: "Parting from You"

A regretful hero's quest to win her back | A proud, aloof man brought low by love | A good-for-nothing man turned rabid dog

*

Everyone in Qingshan Village envied Li Jingniang for finding such a handsome husband. He worked hard and treated her and their child with endless care and tenderness.

But in the third year of their marriage, her husband regained his memories and turned out to be the pampered heir of the Marquis of Anyang's residence in the capital. Li Jingniang became the young marquis's wife overnight.

Everyone in the capital said Li Jingniang was lucky: an illiterate country girl who had risen from humble beginnings to become a nobleman's wife.

Only Li Jingniang knew how agonizing every day in the marquis's residence was.

Her mother-in-law called her uncouth and feared she would teach the children bad habits, so she took Li Jingniang's daughter away. Li Jingniang went to her husband and begged him to reason with his mother. But the man who had once been so tender with her had changed after returning to the capital. Frowning, he told her to stop making a fuss.

Rumors were everywhere in the residence that she was about to be divorced.

Heartbroken, Li Jingniang decided one night to leave the marquis's residence and return to her village. Startled, she fell from the wall.

*

Cheng Zhaoheng had been troubled lately. After falling from the wall in the middle of the night, his wife had remained unconscious for a day and a night, then lost four years of memories and no longer recognized him.

What's more, after waking, she had reverted to how she'd been at fifteen: outspoken and unconstrained.

She defied her mother-in-law, who punished her, and scolded her sisters-in-law.

She even took the children of the household up trees to catch birds and into the water to catch fish,

completely disregarding the rules and manners of the family.

She was also guarded and hostile toward him, her husband, repeatedly sending him to the front courtyard and refusing to share his bed.

Cheng Zhaoheng had no choice but to comfort himself that once Li Jingniang regained her memories, everything would go back to normal.

Even if she never recovered them, she would surely gradually come to admire him, just as she had three years ago, and devote herself to him, tempering her nature for his sake.

He was certain of this, until one day he saw his wife, who usually avoided him as if he were a snake or a scorpion, looking at a young, muscular charcoal seller with admiration in her eyes.

"I don't see anything good about that young marquis. He's always scowling, like a block of ice. If I divorced him, I'd marry someone gentle and hardworking like Brother Xie."

*

After catching his wife when she ran away for the second time, having regained her memories, Cheng Zhaoheng locked her in their bedroom. Every night, as she moaned in a daze, he stared at her with bloodshot eyes and hoarsely reminded her over and over:

"Jingniang, I'm your husband. I'm the husband you love most..."

#StartAgainYouAreNoLongerMyIdealHusband

Upcoming novel: "Forced to Humiliate the Deposed Crown Prince"

[A resilient, kind-hearted cleaning maid x a gloomy, corrupted deposed crown prince]

When Lan Yan was sent to the imperial prison, she knew she was a tool the Third Prince planned to use to humiliate the deposed crown prince.

After a failed rebellion, the deposed crown prince was blinded with poison and imprisoned. Out of regard for their father-son bond, the emperor sent him his former fiancée, the daughter of the previous Grand Tutor, to care for him.

Lan Yan was naturally not the Grand Tutor's daughter.

She was merely a cleaning maid in the Grand Tutor's household.

On her first day in the prison, she saw the deposed crown prince, who had once been handsome and majestic, now bound in chains and looking utterly disheveled. Remembering the Third Prince's threat to kill her family, she knelt before him and said softly, "Your Highness, it's Jiao'er."

He had been poisoned with a love-afflicting drug, and at first he resisted her and loathed her. But she repeatedly seduced and appeased him, and before long he was completely consumed by his desire for her.

Later, when they were entwined together, he would hold her tightly in his arms and whisper "Jiao'er" over and over in a husky, tender voice.

Lan Yan found it all deeply ironic, because the Jiao'er he spoke of was carrying on with the Third Prince, passionately in love with him.

The two of them were plotting to cure the deposed crown prince's poison before long, so the once proud and haughty prince, who had looked down on everyone, could see with his own eyes that the woman he'd been sleeping with was no more than a lowly maid with a hideous face covered in red blotches.

Lan Yan waited for the day he would look at her with disgust. Instead, another palace coup took place. The deposed crown prince's forces surrounded the capital, and the man was respectfully escorted out of the prison to ascend the throne.

Amid the chaos, Lan Yan fled the capital with her younger siblings. Half a month later, she heard that the Third Prince had been executed and that the former Grand Tutor's daughter, Jiang Jiao, had been summoned to the new emperor's harem.

Lan Yan thought that was fine by her.

To find a way to survive, she asked the village matchmaker to find her a one-legged widower.

On their wedding night, the rough red veil was suddenly lifted. Hundreds of imperial guards stood in formation outside the courtyard. In the man's eyes, once vacant and empty, she saw her own terrified, trembling reflection. He lifted her chin, his smile frighteningly mad.

"Jiao'er, didn't you swear you'd stay with me forever? So whose bride are you planning to become...?"

Reader's guide:

1. One-on-one romance, both leads sexually inexperienced, happy ending.

2. The hero loves the heroine's soul, not her appearance. He's intensely possessive, and the heroine's face will heal. Once it does, she'll be the most beautiful woman in the world.

Theme: Keep your heart turned toward the light, and fear no darkness