The Scent of Rouge

Complete / Started saving on 2026.5.25 / Starts on 2026.6.6 / Ends on 2026.9.26

30% anti-piracy threshold, 24-hour delay

Next book, Longevity Curse, blurb at the bottom

A scheming man who plays the pig to eat the tiger & A beautiful, calculating gold-digger

[Adopted heir apparent x Merchant's only daughter | Older sister-younger brother dynamic | Both leads are virgins | 1v1]

Xiang Liang always believed that if you had enough money and enough power, you could live well in this world.

She was a merchant's daughter, and loving money was already second nature to her.

Until her parents were murdered in a plot against them, forcing her to marry into the prince's household, where she met Jin Wujiang,

a prince's heir who had grown up surrounded by gold, yet didn't care for money or seek power.

He was a little foolish, but that suited her just fine.

Xiang Liang quickly adjusted her plans and set her sights on her stepson.

She left the prince's household and moved to the western part of the city, deliberately getting close to him. She treated the obedient heir as a money tree and intended to use his power to investigate the truth behind her family's murder.

Once the truth came out and she'd saved up enough money, she would leave for good and find herself a live-in husband so she could settle down.

But her rosy plans didn't last long. They soon fell apart on a rainy night.

That night, Xiang Liang was harassed by bandits in an alley. After escaping, she returned to her shop through the thunderstorm.

The man who had always dutifully done odd jobs in the shop had just come back from outside, too. His clothes were soaked with blood, yet he was still smiling.

Xiang Liang looked at the stains on him. "...Did something happen while you were out?"

Jin Wujiang smiled. "Have you ever heard of the Second Watch Three Luo Society, Lady Xiang?"

"..."

"It's nothing if you haven't. Just a gang of thugs, nothing to worry about. I've reformed them today and set them on the straight and narrow."

The rain poured outside, and lightning flashed again and again. Xiang Liang suddenly found his smile a little horrifying.

Was this man really as easy to fool as she thought?

-

The first time Jin Wujiang saw Xiang Liang, he thought she ought to be his heir's consort.

The night she was carried into the prince's residence in a red sedan chair through the side gate, the residence was quiet, without any wedding festivities.

The night wind lifted the curtain at just the wrong moment, and he happened to see a tear fall from her eye.

That very night, his father, powerful and influential as he was, died suddenly from an overdose of medicine.

His beloved concubine then feigned illness for a long time. When she finally left the secondary residence again, the princess consort drove her out to a little shop in the western part of the city.

The shop was one of Xiang Liang's dowry properties. The Xiang family was a renowned cosmetics-making clan.

At first, Jin Wujiang thought Xiang Liang was a weak woman with little temper.

Only later did he realize that, like him, she had been hiding her claws to protect herself.

Born a concubine's son with nothing to his name, he had climbed all the way to his current position. How could he really be a harmless, easily fooled little rabbit?

She was a merchant who had been ambushed, yet she could lie low among the common people and scheme in secret. How could she be a delicate flower in need of a man's protection?

The bowl of medicine that killed Prince Duan was the work of both Jin Wujiang and Xiang Liang.

-

Long ago, we killed someone together.

Perhaps our lives were bound together from that moment. We have faced death side by side, and we are cut from the same cloth.

From now on, I wish to be the blade in your hand alone.

-

Blurb dated 2026.5.24

1. A 1v1 romance focused on the two leads, with a little angst for flavor.

2. Currency values are loosely based on the Song and Yuan dynasties. The cosmetics-making methods draw on various techniques, so don't take them as fact.

Wishing everyone happiness and an enjoyable read.

---------The following is the blurb for the upcoming book, Longevity Curse---------

Qi Yusheng was born on the day Jingzhe began,

that year, goose-feather snow fell without end across the Dongzhen Realm, crushing an immortal mountain.

Beneath the mountain, an ancient demon that had been sealed there took advantage of the chaos to escape and hide among mortals. From then on, peace was lost to the human realm.

That same year, the Mother Goddess of Dongzhen named a divine pill, nurtured from the essence of heaven and earth, "Jueshuang,"

hoping that frost and snow would end and peace would return to the world.

But the Demon King discovered it and stole the divine pill. The Heavenly God Jueshuang vanished without a trace.

-

Qi Yusheng was brought to the Moon Matchmaker Hall by her master, Jin Yuan, who had found her.

Jin Yuan had no children, so Qi Yusheng learned to tie matchmaking threads under her tutelage.

After she was invested as a High God, she caused a great disaster.

She got into a dispute with the sinister, loathsome Lord Yama of the Hall of Life and Death. She had meant to get revenge by tying a hundred or so matchmaking threads for him,

but the Mandate of the Mandarin Ducks lacked spiritual power, and somehow tied her to the other end of one of the threads instead.

Lord Yama laughed. "Are you blind?"

The Matchmaker flew into a rage. "Do you dare fight me?!"

"I do. Name the day."

"Oh, never mind. Why should I fight just because you say so?"

From then on, Qu Guichen remembered the idler from the Moon Matchmaker Hall, and Qi Yusheng began to resent the ruthless man.

Until her master told her that if she didn't hurry up and undergo her tribulation to become a Chief God, the matchmaking thread would be almost impossible to cut.

Qi Yusheng readily agreed, then froze.

That tribulation...

That matchmaking thread...

Her master smiled warmly. "You and Qu Guichen will have to undergo a lifetime of love and heartbreak."

-

She was the Changyin God who governed the romantic fates of mortals, yet she had never believed that love existed in the world.

To her, tying a matchmaking thread took no more than a hand seal.

Until one mortal lifetime, when Qu Guichen used forbidden magic to extend her lifespan,

trading three hundred years of a god's life for thirty days of hers.

After returning to the Dongzhen Realm and remembering that lifetime, her heart still swelled with an ache she could not describe.

It was the first time she had ever felt such overwhelming emotion.

So this was the kind of feeling mortals could have.

Love really did exist.

She had once thought love was merely an embellishment bestowed upon life by magic, and hate was just another seasoning.

Only later did she learn that love lasted longer than hate, transcending death and crossing through time and space.

It was not a gentle, unending drizzle, but a dampness that could never be escaped, through all eternity, through life after life and death after death.

Qu Guichen was born as the Holy Slaughter God, who governed life and death.

His lifespan approached eternity, which was ordinary for a god.

But Qi Yusheng was destined to perish in the Dongzhen Realm from the moment she was born.

Love and hate waxed and waned, entangled without end.

She vanished with her final traces of hatred, leaving him alone, with no idea where to go.

If a flourishing love were to perish beneath that immortal mountain,

perhaps immortality itself would become a curse.

Theme: What happens is up to us.