An Old-School, Over-the-Top Angsty Romance

[The print edition has been published under the title "To My Peach Branch, Spring Arrives with a Start". Available from Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo.]

Warning: This has the flavor of an old-school, melodramatic angst novel! Expect a scummy man and a shameless woman! The heroine throws herself at the hero, who loves someone else, before he suddenly realizes his mistake and throws himself at her. It’s the kind of over-the-top drama you know.

Writing this to ease the pain of not having enough stories to read.

Sweet romances, wish-fulfillment stories, and melodramatic tales of scummy men and shameless women aren’t better or worse than one another. It’s like shopping at a supermarket: everyone picks what they like. Please don’t snatch the cilantro from someone else’s hand and then loudly demand to know why they like cilantro, whether liking it makes them shameless, or whether growing it does. (Sorry, I’m not picking on cilantro. I’ve already apologized to it.)

I gave you a warning. If you still click in and insult me, I’ll insult you back. (Very fierce.)

Blurb:

No System, no golden finger. With a big backpack on her back and glasses on her nose, Ning Tao has just graduated from ninth grade when she transmigrates into the cultivation world. The first question she has to answer is how to survive in a place where flying swords are everywhere.

And to make matters worse, her glasses are broken. Beyond fifty meters, she can’t tell people from livestock.

To stay alive, Ning Tao teams up with Chang Qingjing, a cool and aloof young Daoist she happens to meet along the way.

A young person’s feelings are sincere and intense. Because she likes him, she can travel with him without fear, carefully imagining that one day Chang Qingjing might turn around and see her.

But liking someone is liking someone, and not liking them is not liking them. Nothing in the world is harder to force than love.

Chang Qingjing falls for a little fox spirit.

Chang Qingjing becomes a demon for the little fox spirit.

Chang Qingjing loses his mind for the little fox spirit and massacres one hundred and twenty members of the righteous sects in Fuchuan Valley.

Determined to steer this misguided, chuuni boy back onto the right path, Ning Tao thinks that after all their years of friendship, she can surely get through to Chang Qingjing. Maybe he’ll even regain his senses for a little while.

Then she dies in Fuchuan Valley along with the other one hundred and twenty people.

What a sad story.

The boy’s love and hate are too intense. Ning Tao, a young girl who has just started high school, stumbles along and pays a terrible price, crying and begging to go home to her parents. She misses the fans whirring around in her classroom, the blackboard at the back, all the tests she could never finish, and the neon lights that gradually came on after school.

As for Chang Qingjing...

From an inexperienced young Daoist of the Shushan Sword Sect to a Sword Immortal whose name resounds across the eight corners of the world,

he misses the little girl Taotao who used to follow right behind him.

Amid the slaughter of clashing blades, she was the only tender dream left in his past.

*

After being reborn, Ning Tao becomes cultivation partners with Chang Qingjing, the Dao Lord of Xianhua Guilin.

On their wedding day, that very Dao Lord of Xianhua Guilin watches helplessly as Taotao cries and screams, then runs without hesitation toward a tall building.

She’s wearing her wedding dress. She runs faster and faster, the hem of her skirt catching the sunset, then leaps from the top of the building.

She thinks that this way, she’ll be able to go home.

October 4, 2019

My next novel, "To Win My CP, I’ve Decided to Win Over the Immortal Venerable", is now underway.

In the male-lead-centric novel "Seeking the Dao", Xia Lianqiao has three least-favorite characters.

The first is the disposable third female lead who shares her name: Xia Lianqiao.

The second is the vicious supporting female character, Sima Yuanheng.

The third is the heroine’s adoptive father, who single-handedly broke up the CP she ships: Ling Chongxiao!

Ling Chongxiao is arrogant, without desire or emotion, love or hate, and oversees the laws and punishments of the immortal sects.

Beautiful as moonlit blossoms, yet cold as frost, he bears the divine sword Tiangang. Three thousand immortals have fallen to his blade.

The male lead Bai Jian and the heroine Li Langhuan were made for each other, but their happy ending was ruined by Ling Chongxiao’s interference, all because of that nonsense about immortals and mortals being different!

Breaking up my CP is unforgivable! Filled with bitter resentment toward Ling Chongxiao, Xia Lianqiao transmigrates into the novel as the disposable third female lead who shares her name.

As the third female lead with a crush on the hero, Xia Lianqiao now spends her days living the dream:

“Ahhh, my CP is feeding me!”

“Waaah, can’t I ship them?! I’ll ship them, I’ll ship them!”

She resolves to change the plot, defend her CP at all costs, take down anyone who tries to split them up, and shove her CP straight into the wedding hall.

As for Ling Chongxiao, Sima Yuanheng, and the rest, she’ll take care of them herself!

As everyone knows, Ling Chongxiao, the True Lord Yuching Weixian Miaosheng, is cold, heartless, and utterly alone.

Three thousand immortals have fallen to his sword. He is a young titan of the immortal sects, a figure held in awe by all, someone no one dares openly challenge.

One day, the protagonists Bai Jian and Li Langhuan finally break with Ling Chongxiao to save their friend Xia Lianqiao and storm into his cave residence, the Duxiao Hall, swords in hand.

Deep inside the many chambers, usually as cold and clear as an ice-carved jade hall, they find a familiar-looking young woman imprisoned in a golden cage, with pearls for lamps and fine embroidered cloth covering the floor.

The outer robe draped around her looks like Ling Chongxiao’s. The immortal-binding rope around her wrists looks like Ling Chongxiao’s. The sword tassel tied around her ankles looks like Ling Chongxiao’s.

Even more horrifying, there are little red marks on her neck and wrists.

Bai Jian’s eye twitches. “...What did Ling Chongxiao do to you?”

Xia Lianqiao, weakly: “Would you believe me if I said it wasn’t on purpose?”

Xia Lianqiao: My CP came true!!

Li Langhuan, dazed: “...I think the idol I stan just got exposed for something awful...”

Theme: Hold fast to your principles in the face of hardship.