Jiang Wanwan is the daughter of a concubine, born to be a foil for her legitimate elder sister.
When her sister's engagement is celebrated by the entire household, Jiang Wanwan is treated like some insignificant object and sent to the bed of a bureaucrat more than sixty years old.
Her mother tells her to endure it for the sake of the Jiang family's future.
Jiang Wanwan refuses to accept this fate.
Wei Yixu, heir to the Anyuan Marquisate, is the lifeline she has managed to grasp.
Even though he is the man her sister just got engaged to... she will take her sister's place and make her pay for the contempt and humiliation of the past.
Who could have known Wei Yixu was not what he seemed? Beneath that gentle exterior, he is a ruthless and cold-hearted man.
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When Wei Yixu learns that everything Jiang Wanwan did was to get revenge on the Jiang family, that all her tenderness and affection were false, and that she had been stringing him along, only to cast him aside once she was done using him, he stares at her with a cold laugh and forces out several terse "Fine"s.
Not long afterward, inside a gauze bed curtain lit by flickering candlelight, Wei Yixu traps her weak body between his arms, lowers his head, and orders her, "You can't abandon me. I promised you we'd be together forever."
He knows it's all false, but he insists on grasping at this illusion.
"I want you to treat me like you used to, speaking softly and being gentle and obedient. Stop thinking about running away from me or betraying me."
Rebellious concubine-born daughter vs. a seemingly gentle but secretly dark-hearted bastard
Happy ending, fake-death trope, melodramatic trope stew
Theme: Put yourself first
