The Widow Is Expecting

To get her elder brother a wife, Qin Shuniang was sold to the Liu family for a few taels of silver to become their daughter-in-law. But the Liu family's only son, Liu Huai, had gone missing at the age of eight, and no one knew whether he was alive or dead. Everyone outside the family considered him as good as dead.

Over the next three years, her parents-in-law died one after the other. Because Shuniang was exceptionally beautiful, more than a few men set their sights on her, but she turned them all down, believing she should remain faithful to her husband.

Then one day, a man dressed in fine silk suddenly appeared outside the Liu family courtyard. Not long afterward, Shuniang, who had always been known for her chastity, began to show.

*

General Shen Zhongyue of Dingguo had gone missing as a child. One day, drunk, he suddenly remembered his childhood.

When he returned to that remote mountain village, his birth parents had both passed away. And not only that: before they died, they had even found him a wife.

He had meant to find this wife who had appeared out of nowhere a good man to marry. He never expected to gradually fall for her, then lose control before he knew it.

Watching the woman on the bed sob and apologize over and over to her dead husband, Shen Zhongyue could barely stop himself from telling her, Wife, actually... I'm the dead husband you're talking about.

*

Who didn't know that General Shen Zhongyue of Dingguo was upright and self-disciplined, kept his distance from women, and, at twenty-four, still had neither a wife nor a concubine? Yet one day, he suddenly brought home a pregnant country girl.

Word had it that the girl was a widow, with a bewitching beauty and a slender waist that swayed seductively, enough to steal any man's soul.

Rumors ran rampant. Everyone said the young widow was scheming, that she had used underhanded means to seduce the general and was now threatening him with the child in her belly. The noblewomen who were in love with Shen Zhongyue all waited for the widow to give birth and then be thrown out.

But as they waited, Shen Zhongyue gave the young widow a lavish bridal procession stretching ten li, secured an honored title for her, and never took a concubine or a secondary wife. He spoiled her for the rest of her life.

1. One-on-one romance, both leads have had no prior partners, everyday-life story.

2. The heroine is not reborn or someone who transmigrates. She does not have thoughts that are ahead of her time. At first, she insists on remaining chaste and refuses to remarry. She is not perfect, either, so please don't read if that's not for you.

3. The hero has a reason he cannot reveal his identity.

Forthcoming novel: The Caged Cat

[Charming, timid little consort vs. obsessive, violent emperor]

Yan Yuanyuan, an illegitimate daughter of the Yan family, was tricked by her stepmother into entering the palace in her elder sister's place, carried there in a small sedan chair. Who didn't know that the current emperor was a tyrant who killed without batting an eye?

On the night she entered the palace, she drank poisoned tea, vomited blood, and lost consciousness. When she awoke, she had become the little cat brought as tribute from the Western Regions.

Yan Yuanyuan lived in terror, spending her days as a cat and her nights as a human. She never expected to stumble upon the tyrant after he had been drugged and was in mortal danger.

The next day, as the tyrant flew into a rage and ordered the palace searched from end to end for the woman in the bamboo grove from the night before, Yan Yuanyuan was licking her fur as she lounged on the desk in the imperial study. She looked at the cold, sinister man before her and shuddered at the memory of the previous night.

*

The tyrant had two recent worries.

One was the cat in his imperial study that seemed to have become a spirit. The other was the woman in the bamboo grove who had made him crave more.

Later, just as he finally discovered an absurd, unbelievable truth, he caught that damned woman trying to flee with the cat in her arms.

*

Everyone in the empire knew that the tyrant had grown increasingly incompetent lately. He kept his distance from women, summoned no consorts, and spent every day carrying around a little snow-white cat. He brought it to court, had servants who annoyed it flogged to death and their bodies thrown away, and even took rare treasures from the imperial treasury, as well as the empress's investiture seal, for it to play with.

No one knew that, in the quiet of the night, the Luxurious Dew Palace was filled with passion. The tyrant's eyes were dark and deep as he pressed a large hand against her slender neck and chuckled. "Still dare to run away?"

Yan Yuanyuan shook her head through her tears. "I won't dare again..."

Reader's guide:

1. At first, the heroine's soul inhabits a cat's body. She is a cat by day and a human at night. Later, her soul will return to her body for good.

2. One-on-one romance, both leads have had no prior partners. The tyrant is possessive and genuinely unhinged. The imperial harem is merely for show.

3. A sweet, indulgent romance.

Theme: No matter what adversity you face, keep your heart turned toward the light and press bravely forward. That is how you find happiness and joy.