Two Lives as My Enemy’s Deceased Wife

[Simple, greedy, clever cat demon x scheming green-tea "Daoist" (Past Life: wildflower who read the emperor's mind to survive x solitary, proud, arrogant Heavenly Emperor)]

Two lifetimes of the younger one taking the upper hand. In her past life, she started from scratch and coaxed an embryo; in this life, she started from scratch and was coaxed into becoming an embryo. This story believes that love given must be repaid in kind: there is no love or hatred without a reason. In her past life, she relied on the heroine's inner strength; in this life, she depends on the hero's devotion.

*The blurb gives the general direction of the story. The novel is a long one, and the plot will not all unfold in the short term. It progresses step by step, and the pleasure lies in watching them fall deeper and deeper. The main text holds even more surprises. Reader discretion: the leads were not each other's first loves, but their meeting is a destined bond with a beginning and an end.*

* To her, he was an enemy, and half a lovesick fool.

As it happened, Du Ruo was a marriage match he had stolen from his "elder brother."

He came up with the name "Xue Wang" in the space of two blinks.

It was simply because the graceful little cat demon before him, with her pretty looks, was called "Madam Xue" by someone nearby.

It was not a case of falling for her at first sight or loving her deeply. He had simply recognized at a glance that this "Madam Xue" was the reincarnation of his late wife. And his supposed identity as a Daoist, a direct disciple of the immortal sect at Xuanqing Temple, was pure fabrication.

Spiritual energy surged year-round within the Woxi Shrine. He had willingly been imprisoned there, but after many years the shrine grew damaged and began to collapse, and he broke free of his seal.

When he saw daylight again, the world had changed. He had forgotten his past and lost all his magic, becoming as ordinary as any mortal. But at his side was a journal his late wife had left behind before her death.

He figured he must be the villain in his late wife's final writings, the one responsible for her death. He also learned that, in the end, she had hated him.

* While "Daoist Xue" studied his late wife's journal by lamplight, the person he used to be had filled its pages with annotations.

It dawned on him that he and his late wife had been a pair of ill-fated lovers, bound together by love and hatred.

Du Ruo: You only understood half of it. The young emperor and I had plenty of hatred between us, and I was the one who suffered.

Xue Tuan'er: That stinking Daoist is clingy and so fake.

*

The man made his living as a storyteller. Those who knew her name called her Du Ruo; those who did not called her Master Changping.

When Du Ruo was sixteen, she met someone who nearly became the man of her dreams, but fate cruelly tore them apart. Two hundred years later, she crossed paths with someone else, who became the harbinger of her death.

Before she died, she wrote down the extraordinary events of her life in a journal. Having spent her life telling stories, she named it Records of Changping.

*Tips before reading: (The novel is about six volumes long. Each volume follows parallel past-life and present-life storylines to contrast the male and female leads. This is a long novel.)

1. Both leads are virgins. It's mostly a sweet romance, though some parts are very angsty. There is no leveling up or monster fighting. The cultivation and immortal-fantasy elements mainly appear in the hero's memories; the main story leans toward Eastern fantasy.

2. This is a long novel, with plot as the main focus and romance as a secondary element. It has an ensemble cast, and some chapters focus entirely on the plot without either lead appearing. The first twenty chapters cover how they came together. The heroine's first love is someone else. There is no way for everyone to have it all; someone has to let go and make a sacrifice. The leads are bound by karma. (An asterisk in the main text marks a necessary break between sections, often with a major shift in perspective, to help readers follow along.)

3. The first nine chapters have a leisurely, cozy pace. If you dislike slice-of-life farming plots, skip straight from the prologue to Chapter Ten to continue reading.

4. Several people may have entanglements in this story, but there are no love-triangle showdowns. This is an utterly devoted, one-on-one romance.

5. Thank you for adding this to your collection. After it goes premium, updates will follow the weekly ranking schedule, but the time is not fixed because chapters are written and posted as I go. (Thanks to everyone willing to trust me.) Updates may come at any time, and a chapter may be revised several times soon after it goes up.

6. I'm writing this at my own pace. I've been planning it for a long time, and it's a passion project. I hope to bring the whole novel up to the quality I envision. I'd rather perfect it than rush it; haste makes waste. More than anything, I hope readers will genuinely enjoy it.

My perspective may not always match the readers', so please feel free to share your thoughts. That will help me understand and make adjustments.

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There's also a wuxia romance in my collection. If you like that genre, feel free to add it to your reading list in advance, though I'm still working on the outline.

Theme: Love is not only about two people choosing each other; it also takes the right time, place, and circumstances.