Marrying the Traitor

[Coming Next: My Disciple Keeps Thinking He's a Substitute, Please Add It to Your Reading List]

Blurb:

Rong Si had a very long dream.

She dreamed that Yu Liangchen had rebelled.

Yu Liangchen, hailed as "the greatest virtuous minister, a pillar of the nation," led thirty thousand armored troops through the palace gates. He poisoned the emperor, strangled the empress, forced the crown prince to take his own life on the steps, and drove the crown princess to smash her head against a pillar.

Rong Si, too, died beneath the blades of the rebel army. Just before she died, she seemed to hear him sigh, "The princess is fierce by nature. She deserves a grand burial."

After she awoke, the details of her dream came true one by one.

At the time, Yu Liangchen was merely the crown prince's study companion, with neither rank nor office.

Rong Si decided to strike first. She swore to ruin his career and take his miserable life!

Lately, Yu Liangchen had been appearing in his dreams again and again.

In the dreams, Princess Zhaoming was deeply in love with him. She invited him to hunt on the imperial grounds and to take a boat out on the lake, but he never returned her feelings. They married, only to end their three-year union in divorce.

Yet after he awoke, the woman who had once loved him to the depths of her soul began making overtures to the Yan family's young master, treating Yu Liangchen like a deadly threat she could not wait to eliminate.

Yu Liangchen remained composed, still the cool, self-possessed moon over Song Mountain.

Until one night, the princess got drunk at Nanfeng House, called for a pretty young man who looked just like Yan Li, and drunkenly announced that she wanted a divorce from her consort.

When Yu Liangchen heard the news, his face turned icy. He rode through the streets and brought her back. Inside the princess's bedchamber, he leaned close to her ear and pleaded his case:

"Please forgive me, Your Highness. I will never divorce you, not in this lifetime."

A little scene:

At the princess's coming-of-age banquet, a screen accidentally toppled. Everyone saw the drunken Princess Zhaoming being supported by Yu Liangchen, the newly appointed top candidate in the palace examination. Their intimate closeness left no doubt that their relationship was more than ordinary.

The emperor doted on Princess Zhaoming, and with a flourish of his imperial brush, issued an edict granting them in marriage.

As everyone offered congratulations, they could not help feeling sorry for the young top candidate. His future had once seemed boundless, but marrying a princess would bring his official career to an end.

Only Yu Liangchen knew that moments earlier, he had stood with his hands behind his back and shoved the screen over with one hand.

All his painstaking schemes and despicable desires were for one person alone. He wanted only her.

#Why aren't they the same as in the dream?!# - Rong Si / Yu Liangchen

A few things to know:

1. The dreams are scattered fragments. They're unreliable and can be deceptive.

2. The leads' love begins with them trying to kill each other.

Blurb written on July 8, 2021

Coming next: My Disciple Keeps Thinking He's a Substitute:

At the height of her power, Chao Jiuning once took a disciple.

She saved him from the jaws of a demon beast, taught him to read and write and to train with the sword, and cherished him deeply, placing great hopes in him.

Everyone knew Jiang Lanyue was Chao Jiuning's beloved disciple, the sword saint's successor of Mount Ziwei. No one dared look down on him.

Then, one day, the Demon-Sealing Seal broke. Chao Jiuning held her ground before it to protect all living beings, but her disciple transformed into the leader of the demon cultivators. With the famed sword Fuguang, which she had personally inscribed with a mighty sword intent and given to him as a gift to celebrate his breakthrough, he pierced her chest.

Betrayed by the disciple she trusted most, Chao Jiuning lost her life as the Canglan Sword shattered and her natal star fell. Mount Ziwei was branded as a sect that colluded with demon cultivators. Its members were reviled, and the sect dwindled to almost nothing.

When Chao Jiuning opened her eyes again, a century had passed.

With a woodcutter's knife in hand, she dug Si Lian, battered and covered in wounds, out of a mountain ravine.

He was cold and solitary, his cultivation realm had also fallen, and he had endured betrayal. Only his features bore a faint resemblance to Jiang Lanyue's.

Chao Jiuning decided to rise again where she had fallen.

"Would you be willing to become my disciple?"

When Si Lian met Chao Jiuning, he was at his most wretched and pitiful. One of his eyes was blind, his star meridians were completely ruined, and he was being hunted.

Chao Jiuning saved him, treated his injuries, took him as her disciple, and led him back onto the path of cultivation.

He thought that for the rest of his life, he would willingly stand behind his master, living in someone else's shadow, even gladly becoming that person's substitute.

But later, he met Jiang Lanyue and saw the resentment, obsession, love, and madness in his eyes.

Only then did Si Lian realize he could not hold himself back.

Theme: What you must overcome is not fate, but yourself.