[A cold, suspicious, intensely possessive male powerbroker x a heroine who seems like a pretty wooden doll but is actually playing the pig to eat the tiger]
1.
Yaoniang was known far and wide as a beautiful woman with a wooden expression. She married Zheng Hequan, a powerful minister notorious for bringing death to his wives.
Reborn on her wedding night, she saw his indifferent face through the beaded curtain and trembled from head to toe.
In her previous life, he had her fake a pregnancy and give birth, then raise another woman's child, before finally having her silenced.
This time, Yaoniang only wanted to get a divorce and flee to Jinling to save her life.
The honest woman was a master at pretending to be innocent.
She played the meek, dull wife while causing trouble right under Zheng Hequan's nose.
But the man who had always been cold in her previous life had become strange this time around.
When she caused trouble, he cleaned up after her.
When others bullied and looked down on her, he stood up for her.
When she hid money for her escape under a flowerpot, he replaced the silver pieces with gold bars.
Later, when her escape plan was exposed, he became uncharacteristically gentle and even forbade her from taking birth control.
Yaoniang stared nervously into Zheng Hequan's deep, dark eyes and heard him say:
"Where are you going, Madam? It's time to consummate our marriage."
2.
Zheng Hequan was ruthless and suspicious, and had become prime minister at a young age.
Rumors in the capital claimed that Zheng was fated to bring death to his wives, cursed with ill fortune.
His first wife had fallen from a horse and become disabled. His second wife's family had been arrested and stripped of their possessions.
No one knew that he had arranged all of it.
His third wife was from a humble family, honest and obedient. She was perfect.
He had intended to use her, but gradually he began to resent her for being so wooden.
3.
In her previous life.
After Yaoniang died, Zheng Yu's power reached its peak.
He was honey-tongued but treacherous, favoring his own faction and persecuting his opponents.
He spared no one who had bullied Yaoniang in life, including himself.
When he woke up again, he learned that the world was merely a storybook.
Seeing his dead wife dozing by the window, his usually cold heart quietly melted, though he hid it without a trace.
This time, he would be the perfect husband, stopping at nothing to keep her.
*The heroine is reborn, while the male lead, a character from a book, becomes self-aware, but they reach these turning points at different times.
*The child is not the male lead's. The male lead had no love interest before meeting the heroine. Both leads are devoted only to each other.
Theme: Women should be self-reliant
