After My Concubine-Born Sister Took My Place as the Bride

Please add my new story to your collection! Click my profile for A Garden Full of Charm. Here's the blurb:

After the Shen family falls into ruin, Shen Yihan takes her young brother to seek refuge with her aunt, who married into the Ningyuan Earl's household. They live there for three years, while rumors spread through the estate.

People say she is alluringly beautiful, born with the look of a temptress. Now that she is nineteen and still unmarried, surely she intends to take advantage of her aunt's illness and seduce her uncle by marriage, hoping to climb into the earl's prestigious household.

Knowing she is dependent on others, she is careful and never casually steps beyond the back courtyard.

One day, as her aunt's illness worsens, she goes to the outer courtyard to ask her uncle to visit her.

But when she gets there, she sees the one person she never wants to see again. Fortunately, after they cross paths several times, he seems not to recognize her at all, treating her with distant indifference.

Outside the study, snow drifts down, turning the courtyard's splendid scenery into a picture of white.

Shen Yihan's lashes tremble as she softly calls, "Uncle..."

The man before her lowers his eyes. After a long silence, he gives a faint, humorless smile. "Three years ago, you didn't call me that."

His words hit her like a blizzard, sending a sudden shock through her and leaving her mind blank as the past comes rushing back.

Three years ago, to save herself, she gave herself to the deputy chief of the Kechaer tribe.

She knocked over the candle in the man's tent with her own hands, then watched as the flames consumed it. No one survived.

But she never imagined that the man she thought had burned to ashes was still alive. Not only that, he had become the eldest son of the Ningyuan Earl's household,

and the great General Rongcheng, renowned for defeating the Kechaer tribe and winning countless military honors.

.

In more than a decade of fighting on horseback, Gu Congyi had avenged his father's death. Few other concerns had ever kept him awake at night.

Only a few times had he closed his eyes and seen a little face, tearful and utterly pitiful.

The day before her wedding, Yu Tao learns that her betrothed threatened to kill himself just to bring her half-sister, Yu Ran, into the household.

Her father claims he is acting for the family and its reputation, but in truth he favors Yu Ran and pressures Yu Tao to give up her marriage.

Yu Tao is furious. She can do without that good-for-nothing fiancé!

So in the middle of the night, she climbs up to Puhua Temple and begs Buddha to strike the shameless couple below with a bolt of lightning.

She closes her eyes and prays: A maid climbing into bed, an ill-tempered mother-in-law, an unfaithful husband, and a household full of fighting. But when she opens her eyes, she sees a man in the temple, surrounded by dozens of guards, his elegant bearing and jade-like stature making him seem like an immortal descended from heaven.

Thinking that if she has to marry, she might as well marry someone powerful, Yu Tao secretly asks the temple's guest monk who the man is.

The monk dips a finger in water and writes a few characters on the stone steps: The Yanhan Marquis's household, Han...

She remembers all too clearly! In the letters she rummaged through in Yu Ran's room before coming up the mountain, wasn't the man in the portrait named that?

The heir of the Yanhan Marquis's household, Han Wei.

The wedding drums thunder through the streets. What a shameless couple!

Since you stole my fiancé, I'll just snatch your beloved instead!

Yu Tao stares at the immortal-like man's back, and a wicked idea strikes her.

She immediately has someone break the carriage shaft, then gets out and stands beside the carriage of the Yanhan Marquis's heir, looking frail as she asks, "May I ask if you are Young Master Han Wei?"

.

Yu Tao's talent for flattery improves by the day. "Brother Han Wei is famous throughout the land. Who doesn't know your name?"

"Oh." The heir of the Han family lifts his eyes and says coolly, "So my full name is Han Wei."

Yu Tao gazes at the man, blinking as she leans closer and sweetly calls, "Brother Wei?"

.

One day,

Yu Tao finally realizes something is wrong. She grabs Yu Ran and points at the portrait. "What do these two characters say?"

Yu Ran grits her teeth. "Han Wei."

Yu Tao slams her palm on the table. "Who is this ugly fellow you drew?"

Yu Ran sneers. "The second young master of the Han family in Pingyang City, Han Wei. Don't you know him, Sister?"

Yu Tao gapes. "Isn't this the heir of the Yanhan Marquis's household?"

Yu Ran looks at her as if she's an idiot and mocks her. "You don't even know the heir of the Yanhan Marquis's name?"

"What is it?"

"Han Yi."

Yu Tao's mind goes completely blank.

Oh no, she got the wrong man...

Note: A lighthearted, over-the-top melodrama set in a fictional world. The heroine is not a proper young lady from a noble family.

Theme: Strive forward and work toward a better goal.