Ensnaring Beauty

A principled hero slowly falls × an earnest heroine who charms people without realizing it.

When Yun Yang came to Tingzhou to find her fiancé, it was the rainy season.

She was a country girl with no one to rely on. By chance, she saved a scholar, who fell in love with her at first sight and vowed to marry her. After staying by her side for a few months, he had to return home on family business, leaving her a jade pendant and telling her to come find him.

Following the jade pendant’s trail, Yun Yang arrived at the grand red-lacquered gates. Only then did she learn that her fiancé wasn’t just some scholar: he was the newly appointed deputy prefect of Tingzhou, from a powerful family.

The servants and maids judged people by their status, sneering at her. Her fiancé’s mother looked down on her humble background, believing the two families were mismatched. Even her fiancé, seeing her arrive in Tingzhou after traveling through the night in a shabby dress, was embarrassed by her and complained that she had come to see him dressed like that.

She returned the jade pendant and left the residence. A heavy downpour began just as she stepped outside.

She stood at the gate, trying to hide how disheveled she was, when a lavish carriage drew up. The man who stepped down was Pei Zhiyi, Tingzhou’s prefect, her fiancé’s superior and close friend.

In the soft spring rain, his long, cool fingers held out a purple bamboo umbrella to her.

“Don’t catch a chill,” Yun Yang heard Pei Zhiyi say.

#

Later, on her way home, Yun Yang came across Pei Zhiyi again. He had fallen by the roadside, gravely ill from a parasitic poison. Out of kindness, she took him home, never guessing that he had been afflicted by a love parasite and that she had accidentally become the antidote. For six months, she would need to be intimate with him.

She stayed at the Pei residence. Pei Zhiyi was a perfect gentleman, embracing or kissing her for only a moment each day when necessary to treat the poison. At all other times, he kept to propriety and never overstepped. He made sure everyone in the residence treated her with respect. If a maid looked down on her humble origins, Pei Zhiyi would say, “Miss Yun saved my life. Showing her disrespect is the same as showing me disrespect.”

He had every fashionable outfit in Tingzhou made for her, and she received a share of the household’s monthly allowance as well.

Although things were somewhat awkward between her and Pei Zhiyi because of her former fiancé, life remained peaceful and steady.

But as time went on, the awkwardness seemed to take on a subtle new quality.

She noticed that Pei Zhiyi’s attacks were lasting longer and longer, from a moment to an hour, and happening more often, from once a day to three times a day.

Why was his condition getting worse the more they treated it?

#

Pei Zhiyi had once regarded Yun Yang as his friend’s former fiancée.

Their contact was only for treatment. He had no other intentions.

Later, he lay close to Yun Yang, his lips brushing the tiny mole behind her ear as he kissed her.

Since she was his friend’s former fiancée, what was there to stop him?

A sweet, everyday romance. The hero is an attentive lover. Happy ending, sweet romance.

Theme: Choose the right person