A Beauty of the Nation

Jiang Mi is the wife of the Southern Qi garrison commander at Shouchun. To escape the war, she lives in the countryside. One day, while out, she rescues a handsome man.

He claims to be a Han Chinese merchant from the Northern Dynasty, forcibly conscripted into service here. Jiang Mi saves him. On the day they part, the young man gazes at her for a long time, his eyes inscrutable. "May I ask your name, Madam? I will repay you one day."

The north and south are bitter enemies, so Jiang Mi politely declines. She assumes they will never meet again. But soon the flames of war reach the walls of Shouchun. Her husband dies in battle, and she is about to fall into the hands of the northern barbarians. Just as she is about to hang herself in despair, someone saves her: the merchant she rescued that day.

He says, "It's hard to survive in these troubled times, Madam. Why seek death? Besides, you're pregnant. Even if you won't think of yourself, you should think of your late husband."

Grief-stricken, Jiang Mi thinks it over and eventually follows him north, hoping to give birth to her late husband's posthumous child.

He treats her well, taking care of everything himself and tending to her every need. Grateful for his care of her and her child, Jiang Mi finds her resolve to remain faithful to her husband gradually wavering...

Then an accident takes the child. Jiang Mi is consumed by grief, but he comforts her: "Children are fated by heaven. It seems your late husband and this child were not meant to be. If you wish, I can care for you for the rest of your life. It would be my way of repaying the great kindness you showed me that day."

Unable to resist his patient, persistent advances, Jiang Mi finally agrees. But six months later, her husband, who had died in battle, miraculously appears at her door and says, "A Mi, he deceived you!"

"You weren't pregnant that day. The whole story was a lie to lure you north! And he isn't a Han Chinese merchant at all. He's the prince of the northern barbarians and the commander who led the invasion of Qi!"

Jiang Mi is struck as if by lightning. But what is done cannot be undone, and now she is pregnant again...

Late autumn that year, on the north bank of the Yangtze.

Vast fields of reeds, clouds gathering all around.

With a thousand mounted soldiers sweeping before her and the waves roaring behind, Jiang Mi's tears fall like rain as she looks in despair at the new husband pursuing her across the water. "Your Highness, please let me go..."

"I'll repay your kindness in my next life..."

The man's features are breathtaking. He sits on a lone horse, wrapped in a black fur cloak, a faint smile on his thin lips, but no trace remains of the tenderness in his eyes. "A Mi, come here."

"Don't make me say it twice."

#My body already belongs to the king. Why remember Xiao Lang? #

Also titled Looking South at the River. A man-collecting story set in the Northern and Southern Dynasties: a gentle, delicate Southern bride x a scheming, patriarchal Northern powerbroker. A forced-possession romance. The heroine has previous sexual experience; the hero does not. In an alternate-history setting, Northern Wei vs. Southern Qi.

Theme: Forced possession