After I Toyed With and Abandoned the Brothel's Top Courtesan (Female-Dominated World)

[Updates daily when ranked, every other day otherwise, daily updates after joining the paid platform]

Everyone says Pei Lingchun is a heartless flirt raised in a brothel. As the owner of Zuiyue House, she has beauties in abundance under her command and is notorious for her fickleness. She is absolutely not someone you should entrust your heart to.

But Ruan Qingyan refuses to believe it.

He is Pei Lingchun's favorite adopted son, a peerless male courtesan on the banks of the Qinhuai River, adored by countless people and worth a thousand gold for one smile.

He refuses to believe that after sharing a home for so many years, Pei Lingchun feels nothing for him.

But Pei Lingchun truly feels nothing for him. She sees him only as a child.

So on their first night together, Ruan Qingyan has no choice but to drink an aphrodisiac and climb into the bed of Pei Lingchun, who is already married, without regard for the consequences.

He uses every trick at his disposal to make love to her, making her addicted to his body, all for the sake of a little genuine affection.

But no matter how beautiful his face or how intoxicating his body, neither can change a woman's nature. Once her favor runs out, Pei Lingchun takes a new lover and sees him only as a plaything she has grown tired of, passing him on to someone else.

Ruan Qingyan is utterly despairing. Before Pei Lingchun's eyes, he leaps from a tall building, his once slender body smashing into a bloody heap.

Amid her grief, Pei Lingchun feels a sense of relief.

Yet from then on, whenever she wakes from a midnight dream, she can feel a pair of icy hands slowly reaching out of the darkness to caress her waist.

The man's skin is deathly pale, and his black hair spreads over her like a net. With his eyes clouded, he weeps softly and reproaches her.

He will never let her go.

[Elegant, charming heroine, warm on the outside and cold within × initially sweet and innocent, later a resentful, bewitching ghost hero]

[Reader guide]

* The heroine has prior sexual experience, while the hero does not. The heroine can bear children, and she has every flaw typical of a woman in a matriarchal society.

* The hero will turn dark and kill some male supporting characters.

* The heroine is adored by everyone.

* At heart, this is a melodramatic angst story. Hero fans, beware.

If you don't like following an ongoing story, you can check out my completed work:

“After I Wronged My Ex-Husband (Matriarchal Society)”

[Completed. Comments are welcome, even criticism.]

Ji Ciyun, the second son of the Ji family, is as beautiful as a jade tree and the dream lover of every scholar in Nanyuan.

Yet he falls in love with Gu Sheng, the proud, solitary daughter of a once-prominent family that has since fallen on hard times.

So a daughter of noble birth marries down into a poor family.

But the very year after their wedding, Ji Ciyun dies unexpectedly.

Less than half a year later, Gu Sheng remarries according to the customs for a second marriage, and welcomes Ji Wantang, the eldest son of the Ji family, into her home in a grand ceremony. Husband and wife are devoted to each other, living together in perfect harmony.

Five years later, at a nighttime banquet in the capital,

Gu Sheng encounters the Lord of Lingxiang, famed for his peerless strategic mind. The man is dressed in white with black hair, his eyes shadowed...

Across the wavering candlelight, he looks toward the face so like her late husband's. Gu Sheng's fingertips suddenly turn cold, and for a moment she feels as if death is at her door.

The ex-husband she killed has crawled out of hell to claim her life.

[Cold, gloomy, calculating heroine × innocent, kindhearted hero who is a hopeless romantic]

[Reader guide]

* The heroine has prior sexual experience, while the hero does not. The heroine can bear children, and she has every flaw typical of a woman in a matriarchal society.

* The heroine is mildly adored by everyone. The hero starts out as a sweet, gentle husband and becomes a brooding, obsessive one.

* The heroine only pretends to marry into her husband's family. The children take her surname, and she has her cake and eats it too.

* There are no misunderstandings. The heroine always puts her interests first.

* There is abuse of the male lead. Hero fans, beware.

* The hero's idealized beloved turns dark and becomes a madman, while the second male lead is obsessive and manipulative.

Theme: There is true affection in this world.