Spring in Jinling

[Complete]

My next novel is The Woman He Divorced Married His Mortal Enemy, featuring the second male lead winning her heart and an ex-husband who chases after her but never gets her back. If you're interested, please add it to your favorites. XOXO.

Coming soon: I Won't Be Your Toxic Best Friend Anymore! and The Person I Longed For Has Been Plotting to Win Me Over for a Long Time (Both Reborn). Check my author page to read more.

Blurb:

As the prince most favored by the emperor and a meritorious founding official, Zhao Xiuyan once held power over the entire court. Though he was a refined and elegant man, he was also a notorious womanizer, spending every day drunk in brothels and never going home.

But after he brought back a beauty from Jiangnan, he stopped visiting brothels and turning down drinking invitations. He wished he could spend every moment at his manor, by Ruan Se's side.

In the height of summer, he would travel far just to buy her osmanthus sweet soup. When winter began, he would take her out to watch the snow falling all around them.

Even in his sleep, he refused to let her go, holding Ruan Se close and calling her by her childhood name again and again.

At first, Ruan Se had been drawn to him by his looks. From his concubine to his secondary consort, she thought Zhao Xiuyan had finally decided to mend his ways and devote himself to her alone.

Until, during a palace banquet, she overheard him speaking with someone else behind a tree full of begonias.

"She's just the most convincing of all the substitutes you've found, the one who looks most like me, isn't she?"

The man lowered his head and said nothing, as if admitting it was true.

Ruan Se finally understood. The Se-Se he called out in his sleep had never been her.

After thinking it over, she threw away the jade pendant Zhao Xiuyan had given her, packed her belongings, and left the capital without looking back, leaving him behind.

She was done playing along with this charade.

*

In the fifth year of Mingren, Zhao Xiuyan had searched in vain for Ruan Se for a long time. Just as he was heading to a welcoming banquet for envoys from a neighboring state, dispirited and worn down, he unexpectedly encountered the woman he had loved, who had been missing for years.

Ruan Se was dressed in palace robes. Her voice was still soft, but she wouldn't even look at him. "For this marriage alliance, all my imperial brother hopes is that I find someone who understands me and shares my heart. I ask for nothing more."

Watching Ruan Se smile brightly at the attentive young noblemen, Zhao Xiuyan wanted nothing more than to crush the wine cup in his hand and take her away.

"My wedding dress and betrothal gifts have been waiting for you for years. Se-Se, could you turn back and look at me again? Don't marry someone else."

That night at the postal station, Zhao Xiuyan trapped Ruan Se in a tiny space. After his drunken outburst, all that remained was pleading. "Se-Se, I was wrong before. Will you come home with me?"

Zhao Xiuyan once thought Ruan Se was a comforting candle in his long, bitter winter. He never imagined he would mistake her for someone else, and now it was too late for regrets.

#The North Wind Brings Nothing But Sorrow, The Strings of the Se Are Like a Gift of Spring#

Tips:

1. A real substitute, and the male lead is a jerk.

2. One-on-one romance, no switching male leads. The heroine suffers a little in the first half, then the hero suffers in the second half.

Both leads are sexually inexperienced.

Blurb screenshotted on 2022.01.05

Theme: Time reveals a person's true nature