The Sickly Beauty Is Full of Schemes

The first draft is finished. I'll post as I revise, with updates every other day!

Question: What's the upside of having a very, very, very rich husband who's sickly and tubercular?

Answer: One, he means well, but he's powerless to control her.

Two, he won't hit her, because he can't beat her anyway.

Three, he won't talk back... Wait, actually, his mouth is pretty sharp.

With enemy troops at the gates and no food, men, or horses, Miss Yue said, "Sorry for going on and on, but to my parents, cousin, brothers, elders at home, saplings in the courtyard, moon in the sky, and freedom slipping away: I really need his banknotes!"

And so Ji Yuyue, a street-fighting champion, married Lu Fuqing, the famous sickly beauty.

On their wedding night, enemy troops launched a surprise attack, and Miss Yue hacked them down like melons and vegetables, spattering blood across her wedding dress.

On the second day of their marriage, she was busy searching the army for spies.

On the fifth day, Lu Fuqing came down with a high fever that wouldn't break.

More than a year into their marriage, Ji Yuyue climbed over the wall to return home after another night out. To her shock, she found her supposedly "frail and unable to care for himself" husband standing in a pool of blood, with assassins sprawled at his feet.

Seeing his cover blown, Lu Fuqing calmly curved his eyes into a smile, as if he'd done this a hundred times before.

"My lady, the moon is lovely tonight, perfect for silencing witnesses... or should we go back to our room and talk?"

So much for being weak and sickly.

"Likewise," he chuckled. "Didn't you say you'd only gone out to buy wine?"

Shrewd, calculating, secretly ruthless merchant male lead x quirky, spirited, combat powerhouse female lead

After exposing a spy in the military camp and rescuing the sacred maiden from the stronghold, they face a murderous flower thief, a sanctimonious local notable hiding corpses, a tutor who embezzles grain...

With the world in chaos, this powerful husband-and-wife team of the Great Yan join forces to turn the tide!

They each have a secret identity. The main goal is for me to have fun writing it.

* "What Should I Do If My Adopted Sister Is a Block of Wood?" and "The Blossoming Branch" in my author collection are series with the same setting as this novel. Please check them out if you're interested! Ji Yuyue and Ruan Dingxiang, the heroine of "What Should I Do If My Adopted Sister Is a Block of Wood?", are cousins~

Blurb for "What Should I Do If My Adopted Sister Is a Block of Wood?":

Ruan Dingxiang had just received an acceptance letter from her dream university when she passed out after staying up all night gaming.

When she opened her eyes again, she had somehow arrived in the waning years of the Yan Dynasty.

...That might not be so bad. This era was pretty exciting. You could even witness legendary moments that history buffs had been longing to see:

The fiercest female general personally executes an enemy commander;

The shortest-reigning emperor in history takes the throne;

The retired emperor takes the stage to perform an opera himself;

"Dear in-law, that's a nice throne you've got. It's mine now."

Retiring to a secluded mountain forest and watching dynasties rise and fall from afar would surely be an unforgettable experience, right?

Oh, right. The identity she'd arrived in was... the cousin of Meng Yiguang, the emperor of a fallen dynasty?!

Ruan Dingxiang: ...

Is this right?

Slow-witted, lazy, and full of inner monologue, a girl pretending to be emotionless x witty, open-minded, far-sighted emperor of a fallen dynasty

Meng Yiguang: What should I do about my block-of-wood adopted sister?

* The female lead was born into this world. The dynasty and historical figures are entirely fictional.

* The male and female leads are adopted siblings in name only, with no blood relation.

* Happy ending! Happy ending! Happy ending! (Repeating for emphasis.)

Theme: Embrace freedom and responsibility, and find a new way forward