Joy Beneath the Clouds

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Duanmu Yunxi is the second daughter of the Duke of Dingguo. She's no good at poetry or books. She loves riding horses, drawing a bow, and working with clay.

The people of the capital consider her crude and unruly. She establishes her own pottery workshop and summons women with nowhere else to go. "This place isn't just a way to make a living," she tells them. "It's a chance to build a world of our own."

A few years later, the emperor orders a selection of tribute porcelain, and famous kilns from across the realm compete. People in the streets still laugh that women who go into business are "unfit to stay at home."

Yunxi tells everyone, "This time, we'll show the whole realm that women can make fine wares too, and bring them into the halls of the powerful and far across the seas."

Yunxi works hard at making porcelain and eventually wins the right to produce tribute ware. The idle gossip of the past is silenced.

When she first meets Jiang Lin, he is the heir to the Duke of Jiang. Dressed in luxurious silk, he makes a show of himself in the streets, riding in a sedan chair with beauties on either side and scattering money like dirt.

Yunxi frowns. "Where did this wastrel come from?"

He doesn't take offense. Instead, he buys a porcelain vase from her for two thousand taels of silver.

She thinks it's just an ordinary sale, unaware that their families had already arranged a marriage between them.

Later, they investigate cases together and travel north to negotiate with the Northern Di. He always stands silently by her side, never taking a single step back.

On the night of the Lantern Festival, fireworks bloom over the city, turning night into day.

Beneath their brilliance, Jiang Lin gently takes Yunxi's hand.

He looks into her eyes and speaks with heartfelt sincerity:

"Yunxi, I don't seek fame across the realm or a place in the history books. All I wish is to stand by your side like this for the rest of our lives."

Reader notes: 1. The older sister's romance takes up one-fifth of the story.

2. The male and female leads have no other romantic partners.

Coming soon: "Through the Cocoon, Into a Sea of Flowers"

1

Zhu Youzi had always hoped someone would love her without reservation. So when Gu Jing shielded her from a speeding soccer ball on the sports field, Zhu Youzi found her lighthouse.

He was good at math, so she studied math with him. Throughout middle school, her world held only Gu Jing and her studies. In high school, Zhu Youzi got her wish and ended up in the same class as Gu Jing, quietly keeping an eye on him.

For three years.

Then, during a game of Truth or Dare after graduation, she planned to confess her feelings. But one "I already have someone I like" made her let go of her youthful attachment and go abroad to study with a friend. She poured her resentment into her career and became a star reporter at the national broadcaster. She let go of her fixation and began a new love and a new life.

2

Gu Jing had always been a good student. The boldest thing he did in middle school was rescue a girl from a soccer ball.

After that, he kept running into her: at the water dispenser, in line, at meals... Then they became classmates again in high school.

In their first year of high school, students from another class teased Zhu Youzi about a rumor that she was dating someone. Gu Jing cleared things up for her every time. When she struggled with her studies, he tutored her in math.

He paid more and more attention to Zhu Youzi and found himself drawn to her, denying his feelings again and again. By the time he admitted them, he had only heard that Zhu Youzi was going abroad to study with her boyfriend. When they met again, Gu Jing learned that the person who had gone abroad with her back then was a female classmate from high school. But now someone else was looking after her, and he had no right to say more. All he could manage was:

"Have you been well?"

But they each had their own lives now, and they never met again.

The stirrings of youth began in the height of summer, and ended in the height of summer too.

Theme: Those who love themselves will be loved by the whole world