Dead Husband, Behave Yourself

Cheng Chaoying knows that her husband may seem refined, but there is more to him than meets the eye.

The sickly scholar she was promised turned murderous on their wedding night. Gripping her chin, he warned her in a low voice:

"Stay in your place, and we will never consummate this marriage. If you reveal even the slightest hint of the truth, your whole family will die."

She lowered her eyes and agreed. From then on, she played the loving wife alongside him, never asking where he came from or when he would leave.

Their marriage was only an act, and they lived in peace, until a sudden fire burned down the "home" they shared in name alone.

He carried her out of the flames, his arm badly burned. She instinctively reached to examine it, but he pushed her away. "Chaoying, I’m going to take my revenge. When I return, we’ll be a real husband and wife."

Then he disappeared for three years.

Later, Prince Heng, whose power dominated the court, arrived with a grand procession to fetch her, a commoner.

She knelt before him in public and said coolly, "Your Highness has mistaken me for someone else. My only husband is Ye Heng. He died in that fire three years ago."

On the way back to the capital, after he had forcibly taken her, they were ambushed by his enemies.

Amid the clash of blades, she heard him say indifferently to his trusted aide, "I knew they would come. This is the perfect chance to wipe them all out."

She watched him fight, drenched in blood, then took advantage of the chaos to leave without hesitation.

"Why?"

He asked her again and again, "Would you rather cling to that false identity than come with me?"

She smiled serenely. "Because... I worked so hard to leave that life of bloodshed behind. Why would I ever go back?"

==

At first, Murong Hengjia thought the apothecary's daughter was plain, but she made up for it by being gentle and sensible. She never asked about his past and always stayed quietly in her proper place.

He took for granted the tea she brewed and the attentive care she gave him, treating her as the perfect cover.

Somewhere along the way, he began to crave the warmth of her fingertips and grew accustomed to the faint medicinal scent about her.

For three years, he thought he had everything under control, until she left him without a second thought.

Only then did he realize:

Her gentleness had simply come from her nature: she disliked conflict.

The warmth she gave had never belonged to him alone.

And the peaceful life he had once regarded as worthless was a dream he could never reclaim, no matter what he sacrificed.

A gentle, clear-eyed female physician x a cold-blooded, obsessive prince

One-on-one romance, happy ending, marriage first, love later, with the hero chasing his wife

Theme: Meeting is hard, forgetting is easy.