Qingyang

My next upcoming novel, Shenyi, is in my author profile. Take a look~ (The blurb for this novel has been revised.)

This novel has a happy ending! A happy ending! A happy ending!

-

Chen Qingyang is an unloved princess, living cautiously, as if walking on thin ice.

Only after the empress dowager's death is she ordered to accompany her to the imperial tomb. The one reckless thing she does is save a badly wounded young man. She goes to great lengths to hide his name, invent a new identity for him, and protect him, all because she hopes to have someone by her side in the future.

Then one day, the young man recovers from his injuries. An elite force enters the mountain temple by night to escort their young lord home.

All that remains is a brief farewell. After that, Chen Qingyang loses all contact with him.

Over the next five years, she hears that the young man has earned great distinction and been made a prince and a general. She also finds herself harboring feelings she shouldn't have.

To escape the imperial family, she wants to use the favor she did him to pressure him into marrying her.

-

After their wedding, each of them plots against the other.

She knows she is in the wrong, so she gives way at every turn. She also knows Liang Yanhe has always resented her status. But living under the same roof, even if they maintain a peaceful front, will inevitably lead to friction over time. She thinks that as long as she can endure it and get what she wants, then she will be free to soar wherever the sky takes her and swim wherever the sea allows. She will let him go.

-

When they meet again, Liang Yanhe assumes that his memories of their old relationship must have grown hazy. He never expected that he had remembered it vividly all along.

He gives in to circumstances and marries her, knowing that their positions mean they are destined to take different paths. When the time is right, he will lead his troops to break through the city, leave, support a new ruler, and march on the capital.

She has never been part of his plans.

Amid upheaval, war rages across four cities.

The city gates swing open, and everything goes unexpectedly smoothly. Just before they part, a sudden feeling makes him turn around.

The scene before him shakes him to his core, leaving a tremor he cannot suppress. His wife stands atop a mountain of corpses, sword in hand. Through the smoke of war, she walks away from him, one step at a time.

When she looks back at him, her eyes are colder and more resolute than he has ever seen.

Only then does he realize that he was the only one trapped in this game all along.

Reader's guide:

1. The heroine's revenge plotline versus the hero's career plotline.

2. They both have a ruthless, no-nonsense way of doing things.

3. The hero will have to win back his wife.

-

Upcoming novel blurb:

Wang Shenyi takes an interest in Xie Yunzhang only because she has nowhere else to turn.

At the time, she has offended a princess and been sent to the family estate. Her family refuses to make arrangements on her behalf and has already decided to hastily marry her off to an unsuitable match. A noblewoman of a great clan should have a splendid, respectable marriage, but now she can only hope for a match good enough to silence the gossip. How can she accept being treated so cheaply?

Xie Yunzhang, the heir to the powerful Duke's estate, is as refined as jade and strict in his self-discipline. He protects the daughter of an old friend so thoroughly that it seems almost unreasonable.

Someone like him might make a good husband.

Perhaps because she has kept him in mind day after day, she really does get her chance.

She helps him once, and when her own marriage negotiations are about to begin, she knocks on the Xie family's door.

She asks for little: to borrow his protection and get through this difficult time. Afterward, the world will be wide open.

<

Xie Yunzhang has never been the refined gentleman people think he is. The world praises him as bright and upright, but in truth, his mind is full of schemes.

When he entrusted the daughter of his foster sister to the Wang family, he chose them for their strict family traditions, peaceful nature, and upright conduct. Everyone in the household followed the rules, except for Third Miss Wang. She smiled with a false, affected sweetness, and her thoughts were unfathomable.

He didn't mind seeing what she would do.

Only when she came to him, holding him to his promise, did he finally understand: she wanted him for herself.

Xie Yunzhang lowered his eyes and studied her, recalling how she had kept appearing in his path these past few days, feigning coincidence, making subtle efforts to please him. He thought that marrying her might not be such a bad idea.

After they married, she was gentle and considerate, never clinging to him. She managed the household and kept to her place. He thought he had handled the marriage perfectly, taming this unruly young woman into a docile, well-behaved wife and keeping everything under his control.

Until he discovered that she was secretly arranging a concubine for him;

that a bundle of letters, overflowing with affection and filled with another man's name, was hidden deep in her trunk;

and that before their wedding, she had already written a divorce agreement for him, explaining that she had only borrowed his protection for a while.

So all her tenderness, thoughtfulness, and lack of clinginess were because she had never once cared for him. She had assumed that he had already seen those things, and that they both understood each other without needing to say anything, each getting what they wanted.

Xie Yunzhang clutched the divorce agreement and sat alone all night.

In the stillness of the room, all he could hear was the bitterness in his throat, impossible to swallow.

For the first time, he felt the heart-piercing anguish of wanting something he could never have.

>

Wang Shenyi:

When I fell from the clouds into the mud, I learned to read people's expressions and gauge their thoughts. First I learned what pleased or displeased them, then I chose what to say and do.

I thought it was nothing more than a trick to survive. I never expected that Xie Yunzhang alone would notice this skill of mine, and take it to heart.

1. The heroine has little sense of morality. If she wants something, she'll get it.

2. The hero is all an act, playing hard to get. For certain reasons, he never saw the explanation letter she wrote to him or the divorce agreement she prepared in advance.

3. The hero spent part of his youth away from home and was once taken in by the mother of the heroine's cousin.

Theme: A hundred years of fate bring two people together on one boat; a thousand years of fate bring them to share a bed.