A Highborn Husband

Preorder: "After Killing Me to Prove His Dao, He Married Someone Else." Coming next. Blurb at the very bottom.

Ji Xingyan is a frail young man whose parents are dead and whose greedy relatives have their eyes on him. From his cousin, he learns that his uncles, aunts, and other relatives are discussing how to marry him off so they can seize the property his father left behind.

Ji Xingyan turns his attention to the tall, broad-shouldered hunter next door, with his striking brows and bright eyes, despite his injured leg.

The hunter appeared in the village out of nowhere a month ago. He keeps to himself, and with his fierce, fearsome appearance, no one dares bother him.

Not wanting to be forced into marriage, Ji Xingyan gathers his courage and goes to see him, asking with a trembling voice, "Could you... marry me?"

Zhao Xinggui looks down at the young man, whose eyes have turned red after just one sentence and who nearly cries from fright. "..."

He's so delicate, he might break if I so much as touch him.

Thinking the other man is refusing, Ji Xingyan drops his head in dejection, only to hear the cold man say, "All right."

Before long, the two are making wedding plans, much to the fury of Ji Xingyan's awful relatives. They curse Zhao Xinggui behind his back and to his face, saying he only wants Ji Xingyan's few acres of poor farmland, and that the marriage won't last.

But Zhao Xinggui's hunting skills soon have the sickly Ji Xingyan looking healthy and radiant. He even takes him to the city to enjoy a better life.

Once in the city, Ji Xingyan sets up a stall, relying on his excellent cooking to win over the locals. His little stall grows into a bustling restaurant, which keeps expanding until he opens one right in the capital, beneath the emperor's nose.

.

On the surface, Zhao Xinggui is a hunter with a bad leg. In reality, he is the emperor.

But the emperor took the throne illegitimately, and his position is shaky. Everyone denounces him as a tyrant.

During a secret trip among the people, he is ambushed. He decides to turn the assassination attempt to his advantage, faking his death and hiding in a remote village while secretly eliminating his rivals.

Everything had been proceeding according to plan until one day, the timid, beautiful young man next door knocked on his door and asked him to marry him.

Zhao Xinggui agrees as if under a spell. He tells himself he is using Ji Xingyan as a decoy to keep spies from investigating him. But once he gets a taste of him, his feelings gradually change.

A timid, gentle, beautiful homemaker uke X a ruthless, calculating seme

P.S. A sweet little treat with 90% sugar, a small-town slice-of-life story about running a business and family life. The political scheming is minimal and mostly glossed over (runs off with a pot lid over his head).

Next preorder

-- "After Killing Me to Prove His Dao, He Married Someone Else" --

Lin Qingwei is delicate and beautiful, and is famous throughout the Taiyi Sword Sect as a parasitic vine.

Though he has only an ordinary three-element spiritual root, he was raised from childhood under the care of Xuanhui Sword Venerable, all because of his pretty face. Xuanhui personally taught and raised him, then married him in a proper ceremony as soon as he came of age.

Everyone wonders why, and whether Lin Qingwei bewitched Xuanhui Sword Venerable and made him fall in love.

Lin Qingwei himself wants to know why.

From the moment he was chosen, he was told that he would be Xuanhui's only Dao companion. Xuanhui cared for him in every way, cherished him like a treasure, and never let him suffer the slightest grievance.

Xuanhui was Lin Qingwei's entire world, and Lin Qingwei loved only him, with all his heart.

But Lin Qingwei knows that while Xuanhui Sword Venerable truly loves him, that love is mixed with calculation.

He is the tribulation of love in Xuanhui Sword Venerable's path of ruthlessness, destined to be cut down.

Later, a sword bearing the tassel he had woven himself pierces his heart. The eyes that once overflowed with love are now cold.

Lin Qingwei cannot bring himself to feel even a trace of hatred.

.

A hundred years later, Xuanhui Sword Venerable has become the greatest figure in the immortal world, while Lin Qingwei is an unknown corpse who has just come back to life and crawled out of a mass grave.

He takes a new name and starts over, only to discover that without Xuanhui, he knows how to do nothing.

No one has ever taught him how to survive in the perilous world of cultivation. Fortunately, a ghostly wraith has always been by his side.

The wraith is fearsome, yet it respects and protects him, keeping him company as he stumbles through the world of cultivation, sheltering him from hardship and asking for nothing in return.

Everything about the wraith makes it clear that it loves him. Knowing he has nothing to give in return, Lin Qingwei asks, "Would you be willing to become my Dao companion?"

He thinks the wraith will be overjoyed, but instead it stares at him with an inscrutable, shadowy expression.

The wraith asks, "Qingwei, if you marry me, will you regret it?"

Lin Qingwei doesn't understand, but he has no regrets. He marries again.

Only when Xuanhui absorbs the wraith back into himself does Lin Qingwei realize there was never any wraith. It was Xuanhui Sword Venerable all along, wearing a false face and manipulating him like a puppet.

That wholehearted love was no more than a flower in a mirror, a moon reflected in water. Lin Qingwei had never escaped Xuanhui's control.

Lin Qingwei turns and walks away without hesitation.

In this life, he will live for himself alone.

.

Later, the sword venerable, who had stood above all like a god, descends from his throne. Jealousy and regret nearly drown him.

Again and again, he asks Lin Qingwei, "He and I are one. Why could he have you, but I couldn't?"

Lin Qingwei simply smiles in acceptance. "No. You'll never measure up to him."

Though they are one, in the end, they are not the same.

A beautiful, delicate flower vase who awakens in the later story and lives for himself uke X a bizarre-minded, mentally ill, perverted seme who makes himself jealous of himself

Theme: Change your life through unremitting effort and become a better version of yourself