The Exquisite Lock

At first, everyone in the capital said that Miss Zhong was cursed with bad luck.

A peony of breathtaking beauty blooming in a prosperous age, she was dragged down by her power-hungry father and, in the prime of her youth, married off to an emperor who could barely speak, becoming the foremost of the capital's three great scandals.

Later, the world feared her for monopolizing power and murdering her brother and father. She was the most venomous woman under heaven.

So many people wanted her dead that the prison cells were piled high with corpses. Everyone knew she was decisive and merciless.

Yet only the palace attendants closest to her had seen the truth: the Empress had kept an assassin by her side.

She suspected him and kept him at a distance, yet entrusted her life to him, staking the only thing she had on him.

The stalemate in the inner palace finally broke. She had traveled too many roads, and grime clung to the soles of her shoes. The assassin, shackled and staggering, knelt at her feet and used his sleeve to brush it away, little by little.

Memory stirred. Zhong Ci narrowed her long, slender eyes and finally recognized that familiar figure.

Back then, he was still young. He was a guard who did not even deserve a name from her, wearing an ugly mask. Yet she stripped away his defenses and stole his heart, making him succumb so easily to a forbidden desire.

"My name is Zhong Ci. You will be called Zhong Yu." She placed his rough hand against her heart. "Zhong Ci is devoted to Zhong Yu."

He had been an eagle, yet willingly broke one wing for her and let himself be confined within the palace walls.

Their tangled feelings could not be undone. In the end, he became her prisoner.

[Content warning: The male lead is fiercely loyal. The female lead is not kind-hearted.]

[An alternate world, very much an alternate world. All official titles and place names are fictional. The author reserves the right to make things up.]

Coming soon: Threads of Love, add it to your collection from my author page!

Blurb:

Everyone says Liang Siyuan, the national painting world's dream man, is gentle and always willing to help.

Only Liang Siyuan knows that, after one fleeting glimpse in his youth,

he hid all his obsession for a woman and resolved to treat the whole world kindly.

After moving into Xiping Hutong and holding that humiliating wedding,

Meng Qing once thought the only good fortune in her life was meeting an honest man. She would put up with all the mess, endure and make do, and spend the rest of her days that way.

But one day, dressed in a white gown and sitting in the courtyard, she reached out to a boy passing by and asked, "Kid, would you like some candy?"

The boy quietly came closer and tore through her wretched life. With his warmth, he slowly wove the countless threads of love that bound her heart.

In a dim, cramped corner, Meng Qing looked at the person before her and smiled, defeated yet radiant.

She comforted him, rubbed away the tear tracks on his face, and said, "Then I'll give you my courage, too. May your road ahead be smooth, and may we get what we wished for."

That would settle everything between them. They would have nothing more to do with each other.

Years after they parted, twenty-seven-year-old Liang Siyuan stood before her in a sharp suit, surrounded by accolades, and finally corrected her: "Marrying me is what it means for us to get what we wished for."

Meng Qing smiled as she had back then. "I'm old now."

Liang Siyuan lowered his head and kissed her forehead. "I still love you."

Coming soon: a companion story, Deceiving the Master, about a medical immortal and the King of Medicine.

Blurb:

Born in Divine Healer Valley, Fan Qi grew up with a heart devoted to saving lives. Her whole life was as pure as snow on a mountaintop, as bright as the moon over a clear river.

After a fire razed a village, she salvaged her own life, but brought home the wolf who had set it ablaze. A scorching stain of filth marked her palm, and over the long years that followed, it congealed into a bloodstain that could never be washed clean.

Born in a stable after his father died, Chao Ning lost his mother and an arm as a child. After enduring more than a decade, he finally gathered all his hatred into a sea of flames. Trapped in the inferno of revenge and on the brink of death, as his consciousness faded, he reached out and grasped a deity.

The senior disciple of Divine Healer Valley had a little tail following her around, grinning and calling her Master all day long.

Everyone knew the little thing was two-faced, baring his fangs the moment he was away from her. But she cared for him and paid no attention to the rumors.

The others could only sigh and steer clear, watching as he learned his senior sister's medical skills, moved in next door, drugged himself and pretended to be foolish so she would care for him, then fussed over her in every way, cooking for her and tasting herbs for her...

They thought the heir of Divine Healer Valley had been bewitched. But when everything was finally exposed, Chao Ning looked at her calm face and realized that what he had thought was a flawless deception had been, in her eyes, a game full of obvious holes.

"You know I've done nothing but evil and deserve to die. Why did you save me?" Chao Ning clung to a desperate hope. If she still felt even the slightest affection for him, he would gladly pay any price to cleanse his sins.

But the woman who was always so gentle looked at him indifferently. "Because the medical precepts of Divine Healer Valley teach compassion."

It turned out that, to his deity, he was only one among countless people in the world.

Lost in his obsession, he went mad and turned his medical arts into dark sorcery and poisonous arts. At last, beneath her disappointed gaze, he exhausted himself and turned white-haired overnight.

The moment Fan Qi became a medical immortal, her elderly master held her hand and made her remember her oath, uphold the medical precepts, and devote her life to her calling without ever straying again.

Before meeting Chao Ning, Fan Qi thought the master before her was the person she would become. But after meeting Chao Ning, the ironclad law in her heart began to bend.

To save the world and save A Ning: neither could be left out. That was the calling of her life.

Theme: Our fate is in our own hands