Half the City in Smoke and Sand

New novel, Scum Villain's Survival Guide: A Hilarious Life of Playing It Safe [Book Transmigration], is now underway. Rolling around and begging for follows, mwah~~#

Upcoming novels: I’m Greening the Three Kingdoms and The Crow. Check my author page~

Blurb 1---

The dazzling Prince Duan x the quirky little money-making whiz

Jiang Shangyue grew up poor, and her life’s ambition was to “rob the rich to help the poor.” And who was poor? She was!

In the tenth year after the north and south were unified, she followed her swindler father to the capital to sell miracle medicine (a fake aphrodisiac), where fate brought her together with Duan Xun, the capital’s number-one playboy and a man rolling in money.

A sucker and a poor girl: naturally, he was taken in because she was pretty and he lusted after her, blinded by desire!

But who could have guessed...

In the end, she faked a pregnancy and married into the Prince’s residence as a concubine, taking the top spot on the capital’s list of fake sweethearts.

The sucker in question gave his fan a leisurely wave, a smile playing at his lips. “What do you mean, blinded by desire? When love arrives, you just want to bring her home.”

Jiang Shangyue, however, said solemnly, “Huh? He’s rich, and he’s really arrogant. I want to hang around him... and mooch off him!!!”

Jiang Shangyue had been poor for long enough. After marrying into the Prince’s residence, she was busy with just three things every day: getting Duan Xun’s money! Getting Duan Xun’s money! Getting Duan Xun’s money!

Duan Xun: “Hah, women! The Prince of Pingnan’s household is rich and powerful, but it all belongs to me!”

When one road closes, another opens. So Jiang Shangyue stayed up by lamplight drawing erotic pictures, whose male leads looked remarkably like Duan Xun and the other pretty boys in the household... Later, greed blackened her heart, and she simply drugged the pretty boys and sold them to a rich woman in the capital...

Everyone said, “A man should marry a virtuous wife. The Prince probably won’t have an easy time from now on.”

It’s easy to enter the Prince’s residence, but hard to leave.

Her husband went out carousing during the day, then had the nerve to invite her to drink with him at night. In a fit of anger, she ran out of the residence and, in full view of everyone, miscarried her fake pregnancy...

Everyone: Silently mourning the Prince for three seconds.

Duan Xun: “Are you going to run away again?”

Jiang Shangyue: “I’ll never go out again, sob sob~”

Excerpt from a sweet bedroom scene

“Does this count as you making the first move?” Duan Xun tilted up her chin and kissed her tenderly. The unusual fragrance on Jiang Shangyue made him lose himself for a moment, and he casually began removing her clothes.

Who told her to tease a man that morning?

Jiang Shangyue’s mind was full of images from erotic drawings. She knew all sorts of positions by heart, but when it came to actually trying them, she got flustered and clumsy.

“Ayue... Ayue...” He called her name over and over.

“Mm, I’m here.”

He buried his face in the crook of her neck and ran his tongue over it. “Ayue, we have to stay together forever.”

#Blurb 2#

“Some hatred forms a circle, revenge on revenge with no end in sight.

Some love sinks into endless pain, the moon at the window waning night after night.

Some vengeance is hidden in the heart, unspoken, its belly full of snow and blades.

All for the sake of fulfilling a long-held wish. In the chaos, how can good and evil be told apart?”

Xu Song

Nine hundred and sixty-eight years had passed since the age of the warlords. Heroes had risen in droves, the realm had repeatedly been divided and reunited, and dynasties had flourished and fallen. In the blink of an eye, a sea had turned to mulberry fields.

The Chronicles of the Emperors of Zhongzhou records: The Southern Dynasty endured 183 years of turmoil before falling in the fourteenth year of Taihe. All members of the royal family died for their country. Emperor Wu of the Northern Dynasty unified the realm, dominated the Central Plains, and renamed the dynasty Tiantong. He was truly the greatest conqueror of the ages.

In the tenth year of Tiantong, Jiang Shangyue followed her swindling Daoist father all the way to the capital, where fate brought her together with Duan Xun, the capital’s number-one playboy.

One is a quirky young woman who survives through fraud and trickery. After an accidental pursuit, she marries into a Prince’s residence and stages a farcical comedy in the capital. By chance, she stumbles upon one long-buried secret after another. As the layers of mist are peeled away, the truth comes to light. Yet the husband who shares her days and nights becomes increasingly impossible for her to understand.

The other is a dashing, carefree young playboy, dressed in fine clothes and riding a spirited horse. For years, he has lived in the capital, and no one has discovered that he hides another, unknown face: one of bloodlust and slaughter.

When the moon-mark appears, the realm falls into chaos. Will this curse-like prophecy really come true again? What bloody storm will the moon-mark’s return unleash?

Suspicion, manipulation, destruction, desire, love, hate...

He calculated everything, except for her.

She wanted to redeem him, but in the end, she was the one who truly needed redemption.

It turned out they were both prisoners trapped in each other’s worlds.

Once, they were sweethearts. Now they were at daggers drawn. She had still underestimated the power of love and hate in the human heart, a power capable of destroying heaven and earth.

In the end, she left him alone and held up the tottering dynasty by herself.

Perhaps fate had already decided everything in secret. If this is how it ends, will she still rush to him without hesitation? Is she still willing to spend her whole life wandering the jianghu, making a living through fraud and trickery? A streetwise rogue who has never known what it means to have a home or a country?

“Ayue, the heavens and the earth are like a cage, trapping all living things. You and I are prisoners of this world too. Some are trapped by their country, some by hatred, and some by the demons in their hearts... Ayue, let’s forget our shameful past and make peace with each other again, all right?”

“They’ve all left. They’re free, and they’ve left us with an even bigger cage...”

When everything finally settled, he stood before her, a changed man. Faced with the sincere repentance of the one she once loved, would she forgive him?

Theme: Grow stronger through adversity and persevere through hardship