Synopsis
Dark, brooding, cold-hearted goddess who moves the pieces on the board vs. pure, flirtatious, clingy, tragic mortal man who is a chess piece
As the Fifth Prince of Jiaya, Li Huachou was forced to live among commoners after his mother, Consort Yi, was framed and killed by Empress Zitan. He was fortunate to be rescued by You Yang, a friend of Consort Yi. You Yang named him Li Huachou, but the little boy gritted his teeth and told her, "I want to be called Li Yichou."
You Yang patted his head and smiled tenderly, yet cruelly. "It's all the same. People think that if enough time passes, all hatred will fade away. Why should it? Only revenge can transform hatred."
As time went by, he gradually fell in love with his benefactor, whose beauty never faded, and who was gloomy, mysterious, aloof, yet sometimes gentle. When he confessed his feelings as an adult, all she did was reprimand him. "When we first met, you were only six or seven. I watched you grow up, and you dare tell me you love me? Who taught you to be so disrespectful? Could it have been me?"
After they got together, she worried that romance would distract him from his revenge, and often reminded him of his plan. He was angered. "Did you get together with me just so I could take revenge?"
When he lost his temper with her, she turned on her heel and left again. Seeing that she was about to abandon him once more, he roughly pulled her toward him and kissed her, only for her to bind him with a long vine until he could barely breathe. Then she loosened the vine and repaid him in kind, several times over.
He fell back to the ground, coughing nonstop and utterly humiliated. She looked down at him. "You overestimate yourself. What are you, to dare offend me?"
After he had outmaneuvered his rivals and launched a coup, imprisoning Zitan, now the ruling Empress Dowager, You Yang whispered into his ear, coaxing him. "I am yours. Kill her and restore the Li family's rule." At this point, their love was at its peak. By chance, he unexpectedly sensed the soul of his past life and recovered the memories of both lives.
It turned out everything had been part of You Yang's scheme. He was not the Fifth Prince, but the son of the Empress Dowager Zitan, the very woman he hated. She was not a friend of Consort Yi, either, but Zitan's sworn enemy. In his previous life, he had died saving You Yang. In this life, his obsession with her had sent him, by a twist of fate, into the womb of her enemy.
The greatest joy and the deepest sorrow. How fortunate that the person he loved in this life was the obsession he had carried from his past life, and that the woman who saved him from peril was also the one who brought him hardship.
After learning the truth, he went mad with rage. Usually so gentle, he showed her no mercy, pinning her down as he sneered, "You got together with her son to avenge your friend. Her spirit must be deeply moved, don't you think?"
She did not know that he had recovered his memories. Thinking he was under too much pressure, she indulged him and did not use her divine power to push him away. "Do you regret it? Do you no longer want revenge for your mother?"
He was like a completely different person. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her closer. "That depends on how you perform tonight." He pressed his lips to her slender neck and said coldly, "Can you satisfy me?"
She, too, seemed like a completely different person, letting him do as he pleased and vent his anger. But his tears fell from above and landed in her eyes, blurring her vision in an instant.
"I will never blame you, because you laid the foundation of goodness in me."
"But hurting the person you love is itself a way of hurting her."
Reading guide:
Revenge | Past and present lives | Angst with sweetness mixed in the romance | The goddess's rise to the top in her career
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Theme: Goodness has no fixed path. I will forge my own way to the heavens.