The First Ray of Moonlight

Coming soon: Falling into Spring with the Rain, a healing romance with a significant age gap and mutual affection. Please add it to your favorites!

[Complete. Read with confidence.]

Blurb:

On her wedding day, the church hall descended into chaos when the wedding was suddenly called off.

The bride, Wen Zong, lay on her back on a stone platform.

The wind lifted one corner of the curtain. She saw the guests' feet moving outside and scattered red petals, and her whole body went rigid.

Ye Yun slapped her. "Relax."

She pointed her toes, tense. "You're... desecrating the sacred."

"According to the doctrine, I should have died a thousand times over."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"I don't believe in it."

Since she'd been snatched away from her wedding, everyone assumed this little canary would only last a while with Ye Yun.

No one expected to hear that they'd fallen out by the following spring. Rumors flew that the bird had crossed his line.

Some even felt sorry for her.

After all, everyone said that Third Young Master Ye disrespected gods and Buddhas. He hid a blade in his long umbrella, had wine running through his bones, and was carefree but never indecisive. He would never turn back.

He'd been that way when he stole her from her wedding, and surely he'd be the same when he set his caged bird free.

It was only much later that people learned he'd once accompanied her to pray to Buddha

The temple's chanting was low and melodious. Though he didn't believe in gods or Buddhas, he stood atop the drum tower early that morning, gazing at a splash of crabapple red in the courtyard.

In the crowded mortal world, he had eyes for only one person.

She knelt to pray, and he followed, pressing his palms together.

She chanted the sutras, and his lips moved along with hers.

Later, someone asked what he'd prayed for that day.

He smiled and looked toward the round-arched spire of a church in the distance.

○ Twelve-year age gap. No romantic or intimate scenes before the heroine comes of age.

○ Foster care, not adoption. They are not on the same household register. No romantic or intimate scenes while their pseudo-familial relationship remains in place.

○ Sweet and angsty, with a happy ending.

Coming soon: Falling into Spring with the Rain. Please add it to your favorites!!!

Rumor had it in Nancheng that the Lou family was wealthy and powerful, with a grand estate. But the one who lived alone halfway up the mountain seemed completely out of place among the family.

People said he was sickly, relying on medicine to stay alive despite his young age, and so aloof that he was truly like a flower atop a lofty peak.

And yet, one fearless young woman went up the mountain to care for him as soon as she finished her college entrance exams. Her name was Shang Zhi Que, a girl with no special status.

It was cold halfway up the mountain, and the sickly Fourth Master Lou was a man with no warmth to him. Plenty of people thought the girl would give up and come back down before long.

They waited and waited. Finally, one day, Shang Zhi Que didn't come back down at her usual time, and everyone thought the two had fallen out.

But then they saw Fourth Master Lou, who hadn't come down the mountain in over ten years, walking steadily around the corner. Smiling, he brushed the fluff from the top of the young woman's head.

"Come on. Let's go home."

~

Shang Zhi Que reunited with Lou Xiu when she had nowhere else to turn. He was handsome and gentle, and though he loved the cold, he turned the heat up all the way for her. He sometimes lost control, but never hurt her. She thought he was the best man in the world.

~

In the spring of his thirty-second year, Lou Xiu happened to glance out the window and see the young woman playing outside.

Her lips curved into a smile, her eyes shimmering brightly.

When he heard her call, "Fourth Uncle, there's a rabbit outside," he put away his wine and medicine and smiled at her through the window.

He told her it was cold outside, and to hurry home.

Theme: Keep striving even in adversity.