His Guanyin

[Gentle beauty x tragic, powerful madman, Bodhisattva x evil spirit, marriage before love, a story of redemption]

Junzhu Jiang Dianying of Luochun was peerlessly beautiful, with incomparable grace. Raised in the inner chambers from childhood, she devoted herself to studying medicine under her maternal grandmother. Only after coming of age did she enter the world, traveling among the capital's many clinics to treat the people.

She had eyes full of compassion for all living things, and miraculous skills that could bring the dying back to life. Whenever people spoke of this junzhu, they were all overcome with gratitude and quietly called her "Little Guanyin."

In the twelfth year of Yongping, an imperial edict ordered her to marry Prince An.

Jiang Dianying remembered Prince An. She had once glimpsed him from afar at a palace banquet. He had been drinking with his head bowed, his snowy sleeves sweeping down as he coughed a mouthful of bright red blood onto a plain white handkerchief.

Looking at the bright yellow imperial edict, she thought of the rumors in the capital that Prince An would die young and sighed softly.

*

Lin Shufeng fought for three years, carving out a record of achievement from piles of corpses. At last, he had trampled underfoot all those who had once bullied him.

His hands were stained with the blood of his father and brothers. Beneath his black iron mask was a handsome face, cold and heartless.

He was an evil spirit in the mortal world, a living harbinger of calamity.

When he learned the emperor had arranged a marriage for him, Lin Shufeng didn't care. She was just a woman. He could keep her tucked away in his residence.

Later, watching Jiang Dianying's quiet, gentle expression, he thought that she deserved a good husband, not a filthy, despicable, cold-blooded man like him.

Knowing he would not live past twenty, he found someone for her to remarry in advance. Yet when he saw her being helped into a carriage by another man, his eyes suddenly reddened.

For the first time, a man who had never cared whether he lived or died found himself wanting to go on living.

Ten years, twenty years. No, it wasn't enough...

He wanted her to have only him, Lin Shufeng, by her side in this life, the next, and every life to come.

"In the dark of night, I see a fisherman's lamp, a single solitary firefly's glow."

-- Blurb written on October 3, 2024

Theme: Finding a happy love