His Little Liar

Blunt money-grubber x dark, smiling schemer

Liu Ying opened a little teahouse along the main road. From time to time, she helped poor scholars traveling to the capital to sit the imperial exams. Not because she was kindhearted, but because she really loved money.

If any of those scholars passed the exams, she would go to the capital and pretend to be an abandoned wife, demanding compensation. For the sake of their careers, most of them would settle the matter with money.

Perhaps she was simply lucky. Every two or three years, she would find another suitable target. She used the same trick again and again, and it never failed.

Until one day, a man dressed as a scholar burst into her teahouse. His clothes were ragged, and he was badly wounded.

She thought nothing of it and treated him like any other scholar who came by, though she took particularly good care of him because of his injuries.

Once he recovered, the man left the teahouse. His name did not appear on the imperial examination results, and she soon forgot all about him.

The following spring, Liu Ying went to the capital to find her next "faithless lover," never expecting to run into someone so formidable. The man had become the son-in-law of the sitting prime minister. Not only did she fail to get any money, she was thrown into prison.

Liu Ying thought her life was over, but one day she ran into a familiar face in the jail.

Dressed in fine clothes and holding a folding fan, he looked down at her, a vague laugh escaping his throat.

He leaned toward Liu Ying and raised an eyebrow. "Want to get out? Beg me."

Only then did Liu Ying learn that the man she had casually saved was Yan Pingshan, the Marquis of Xuanping.

*

After returning to the capital, Yan Pingshan often found himself thinking of her peach-blossom face and slender hands as she had tended to him while he was sick. But their stations were worlds apart, so he had no other thoughts about her.

Even after he later got Liu Ying out of prison, he considered it no more than a convenient way to deal with the prime minister.

But when Liu Ying came to say goodbye after getting her money, he ordered the compound sealed.

Want to leave? Not a chance.

In a panic, Liu Ying confessed that she had only ever done it for the money, and that this was the first time she had failed.

He smiled instead of getting angry. "So you've been the 'abandoned wife' of so many men?"

Liu Ying did not understand what he meant.

Yan Pingshan caressed her cheek. "Let's put an end to that now."

Only then did she realize she had already fallen into the tiger's den, and that she would never escape it for the rest of her life.

The setting is inspired by the Tang dynasty, so the imperial examinations take place once a year.

Theme: Love exists