As Beauty Fades, Love Grows

When Shen Li, once the capital's celebrated top scholar, returned to the city, he rejected every powerful suitor and insisted on marrying a palace maid named Jiang Xunmei. The whole capital was abuzz with the story.

But only Jiang Xunmei knew that though she appeared to have married her beloved Shen Li, the man who drank the nuptial wine with her and shared her wedding night was Shen Yu, Shen Li's son.

"You made me your substitute for all those years. What's one more night?" he said, pressing closer. Jiang Xunmei's eyes instantly reddened. "You're the one who abandoned me first!"

She had waited eighteen years for Shen Li to marry her. Yet when Shen Yu flirted with her again and again in front of her husband, his father, even shedding tears and begging for her love, Jiang Xunmei still wavered.

After all, no one knew the depths of the seven years she and Shen Yu had shared.

Besides, Shen Li had never cared for her. But when he learned of their affair, he took her in front of Shen Yu.

That day, Shen Yu knelt beside the bed, hands clenched tight, not daring to raise his head. He couldn't even tell whether the woman was calling Shen Li's name or Shen Yu's.

What a father. What a stepmother.

*

While she struggled to deal with the father and son, someone even more troublesome appeared.

The seventh prince, Mu Tian'an, had spent years disguised as a woman. He had driven Shen Yu away from her and drawn her step by step into his own trap, acting spoiled and domineering. Yet during the days when everyone else abandoned her, he had taken her in, making it impossible for Jiang Xunmei not to be moved.

He cherished her above all, laughing, teasing, and sharing every kind of reckless pleasure with her, yet never willing to treat her carelessly. But in the end, the emperor arranged a marriage for him, and separated from her by layer upon layer of palace walls, he paid her no attention.

Until Jiang Xunmei slipped away from him and became another man's wife in the blink of an eye. Mu Tian'an soon came to her door to demand an explanation.

"Sister, are you really unable to go even a single day without a man?"

With a smile, he turned the court upside down, threw the government into chaos, drove Shen Li to his death, and seized the throne...and her as well.

How audacious, defying the whole world, and mad from beginning to end.

*

Many years ago, a young, lively heiress was reduced to a palace maid after her childhood sweetheart broke off their engagement. Many years later, though age had dimmed her beauty, she had become a bewitching consort over whom the emperor and powerful ministers fought without end.

One man said, "...If I hadn't left you back then, would you have been mine alone?"

Another said, "Sister, I was wrong. It's not that you can't live without men. It's that we... I can't live without you..."

But the woman was like ashes burned to the end. Even if they caught her in their hands, she kept slipping through their fingers. So they tried to wrap her in love until not a single gap remained.

*An aloof-looking but actually arrogant wolf cub x a kind, resilient heroine like wild grass x an apparently obedient but actually unhinged green-tea schemer. The heroine has multiple partners; the male leads are devoted to her. HE, not too angsty. Welcome aboard!^^

Theme: We spend our whole lives searching for the meaning of being alive