Enthralling

[Completed!] Ning Shiting followed King Qing, Gu Feiyin, for ten years. He broke off his engagement for him, gave up a promising path to immortality, and put down his saber to enter the prince’s household. Young and without status, he was ultimately given a cup of poisoned wine and put to death. Reborn at seventeen, he let go of his obsession and asked only for a letter of divorce. Life in the manor was lonely. He and the disabled young heir shared a roof, keeping to themselves. He knew Gu Tingshuang would later stage a coup, kill his father, and become a tyrant. He also knew the boy had lost his mother young and had endured a difficult childhood. So he taught him with care and kept him gentle company, hoping the boy might find a little more peace and a little less cruelty. He never expected that one summer, as he rested with his eyes closed in the courtyard, he would hear a servant urging the heir to choose a wife. Around the corner from the study, the gloomy, cold young man in his wheelchair sneered, “Why would I need a crown princess? I only want the one in the courtyard.” “I’ll write his letter of divorce.” “And I’ll issue the marriage certificate for his next wedding.” In his second life, he unexpectedly became the tyrant’s unattainable first love, a red cinnabar mole on the cold man’s heart. * When Gu Tingshuang was ten, his birth mother died and his spiritual root was destroyed. From then on, he could only live in a wheelchair. When he was fourteen, his father brought his “benefactor” into the prince’s manor, setting up the new couple in the rooms of someone from the past. That night, he stormed in with a saber. His voice was dark with fury: “Get out.” The young man lifted his veil and looked at him. His gaze was clear, his expression calm and lovely. For the next ten years, he became the one and only obsession in Gu Tingshuang’s heart. He cultivated for him, entered the world for him, and risked his life with a saber to sever their karmic ties. Because he was the last light shining into his life. When I met you, ten years of frost fell upon me. After I met you, spring rain softened all things. A healing romance, with the same familiar flavor: mostly sweet, with the occasional shard of glass. Eight parts sugar, two parts angst. A survival-minded clarification: [The love interest has no official status, and has no romantic or marital relationship with the protagonist’s father] [The letter of divorce concerns only the “marriage contract” that the scumbag father failed to honor in the previous life] [The leads are only three years apart in age, and there is no guardian-child relationship] Theme: Ten years drinking ice, yet the blood still burns