The Summer Solstice in the Thirteenth Month [Reborn]

[Please support my next books, The Sickly Crown Prince's Survival Guide and The Stunning Beta on a Dating Show. Their blurbs are at the very end. They're a little long, so apologies for the interruption.] Zhou Xuqing is the younger son the Cheng family lost. After he went missing, Madam Cheng suffered a mental breakdown. When the family searched everywhere without success, they adopted another child and brought him home. It wasn't until Zhou Xuqing was admitted to Ningye High School as a special student and came to City A that people noticed he looked remarkably like the elderly Madam Cheng in her youth. But Zhou Xuqing doesn't understand. Isn't he the Cheng family's real child? Wasn't Cheng Jianing just someone brought in to comfort his mother in his place? So why, now that he's back, does everyone still take Cheng Jianing's side? Unable to accept it, Zhou Xuqing repeatedly picks on and provokes Cheng Jianing, until he ends up abandoned by everyone. His father says, "Zhou Xuqing, can't you act a little like a child from a wealthy family? You look like a wild child." His mother says, "Jianing isn't in good health either. Stop picking on him all the time. He hasn't done anything to you." His older brother says, "Can you stop being so unreasonable? Are you happy only when you've made the whole family miserable?" Later, Zhou Xuqing dies at the age of twenty-five, exactly ten years after returning to the Cheng family... He flees the sanatorium, gaunt and haggard, only to be struck by a truck that suddenly rushes out into the road. He is thrown two meters and dies on the spot. When he opens his eyes again, he has been reborn at fifteen. This is the year he has just been brought back to the Cheng family. Back at the beginning, Zhou Xuqing reins in all his dark feelings and pretends to have the calm, indifferent disposition they all like. On the surface, he is peaceful, unassuming, considerate, and well-behaved. In truth, he no longer cares about the concern that came too late. No one sees through him. Even the so-called family members who despised him in his previous life can't help turning to his side and looking at him with affection. Only one person... Chu You, the true scion of a powerful family whom Cheng Jianing secretly admires, takes one look at him and casually sums him up. "You used to be a red rose with thorns. Now you look like a delicate white flower, but you still have thorns." Zhou Xuqing reminds him helplessly, "Young Master Chu, that's not something you say about a man." Chu You simply says, "I like it." Zhou Xuqing assumes it's just another arrogant remark. Years later, he remembers this and only then realizes that this man's confession had actually come much earlier. [Zhou Xuqing is a bold, passionate rose by nature. Once he truly lets down his guard, his real nature comes out.] [Chu You is a cool and aloof flirt whose roguish side starts to show during their courtship.] Chu You: No. Zhou Xuqing: No what? You're not a flirt? Chu You: I'm not cool and aloof. ▼▼▼ ▼▼▼ ▼▼▼ ▼▼▼ ▼▼▼ The Sickly Crown Prince's Survival Guide [Third-person narration] I transmigrated into a political-intrigue novel as the cannon-fodder crown prince who dies in the very first episode! The male leads are Huo Tingchao, a general and prince with a different surname who commands the army, and Han Yanshu, a young chancellor who controls the court and the people's support. They fight for power and love-hate each other for three whole years. In the end, they come to admire each other and decide to rule the land together by supporting a puppet emperor. And me, the legitimate crown prince, start with only one bar of health. I'm frail and chronically ill, unfit to inherit the throne. On the day Huo Tingchao stages a coup, I plan to sneak out through the imperial mausoleum, but Han Yanshu's men catch me, flay me alive, and leave me to die a gruesome death in the mausoleum. Escape means death, and staying means death... After transmigrating into the book, I can't sleep at night. I obsess over how to stay alive day and night, and after much thought, I decide I'm suited to become the puppet emperor three years from now! The only problem is that I have to survive until then. So I begin my extreme survival strategy, caught between two powerful men. Today I flatter one, tomorrow I play the other one's devoted lapdog. At last, the three-year deadline arrives... The good news is, I make it to the ending with only a sliver of health left. The not-so-good news is, I've lost my innocence, and I have no idea whose baby I'm carrying... Oh my god, this was an mpreg novel all along? ▼ The Stunning Beta on a Dating Show Wen Xunsheng, a beta. Betas may be ordinary! But being the top beta is anything but ordinary! A dating show for people of exceptionally superior genders, watched by the whole nation, features an "unremarkable" beta butler. At first, the gifted guests and the audience watching from beyond the cameras all look down on this so-called butler, assuming the production team brought him in as nothing more than a supporting green leaf. Then, on the day the livestream begins, everyone gathers in the ancient castle where the show is being filmed. They watch the butler descend the spiral staircase, composed and elegant in the faint light of dawn... Everyone has the same thought: perhaps they need to redefine the phrase "unremarkable." The beta butler is handsome and cool, with broad shoulders, long legs, and impossibly perfect proportions. He is a breathtaking beauty! The guests have another thought: he's not a supporting green leaf. The organizers must have brought him onto the dating show to give the audience a change of pace and add some extra "flavor" for the guests! And so the AOs, usually so high and mighty, begin approaching the butler in private. They want to find a different kind of thrilling balance within the show and its relationships, which must strictly observe proper etiquette. He's just a beta, right? Sleeping with him won't matter. With these unspeakable thoughts in mind, everyone eagerly makes a move on the butler, never expecting that the seemingly harmless, unassuming man would be so difficult to win over. From then on, the AO dating show takes on an entirely different character, though the guests involved still haven't faced the changes in themselves. Until one day, someone unexpectedly discovers that the butler has superpowers! People with superpowers belong to a super-evolved human species and are precious assets to the entire empire. Even more shocking, the beta's ability is highly unusual. No one can say they would never need it one day. It turns out this was never an ordinary AO dating show. The imperial family, eager to win the beta over, had simply brought the empire's finest people of exceptionally superior genders before him and let him choose! The guests who learn the truth regret everything. If they'd been told sooner, they could have gotten a head start! They wouldn't have let the least noticeable person of all get him for free! After the show ends, the production team conducts random street interviews. Dating Show: What kind of person do you think Wen Xunsheng is? Passerby (sneaking a glance at a certain prince): Is it okay to say? Dating Show: Don't look at him. He's completely henpecked. He won't contradict anything you say. Passerby (blushing and lowering their head): The man of my dreams. The prince sneers: You certainly dream big. You're banned from dreaming for life. Passerby: ??? Theme: People should dare to acknowledge their own imperfections.