Graceful Spring Branch

A soft, weepy little princess × a formidable general, with a gloomy scholar as the second male lead

Six-year age gap, size difference, and a fatherly male lead.

Yinyin married Xiao Jue in tears.

She first met Xiao Jue at the Prince of Qin's residence.

Back then, her father was still a prince of the imperial clan. One day, she lost a purse and was searching all over the courtyard when she came across her father's retainers waiting beneath the corridor outside his study to be summoned.

Across the courtyard, Yinyin immediately spotted a man in black. He stood a head taller than everyone else, his hands behind his back and his posture exceptionally straight. It was hard not to notice him.

The retainers bowed and greeted her as Commandery Princess. Yinyin gave them a slight nod, then hurried away without even looking for her purse anymore.

Only after reaching a place where no one could see her did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The man in black had been staring at her the whole time. His sharply angled brows swept toward his temples, and his eyes were as cold as ice. The way he looked at her was as if he wanted to devour her.

At the time, Yinyin didn't know his name.

A few years later, her father became emperor, and Yinyin, now a princess, was to be married to the northern general who had helped him seize the throne.

She didn't want to marry him, and she cried nonstop on her wedding day.

She wanted to marry Shi Qi, the refined son of the Shi family, not Xiao Jue, that boorish warrior!

Only later did she learn that the man in black who had stared at her that day was Xiao Jue.

The realm was in turmoil, and the court was unstable. Yinyin wanted her father to rest easy, her brother to become crown prince, and the ambitious princes to abandon their rebellious intentions. Only Xiao Jue could make all of that happen.

-

But Yinyin didn't know that she had originally been promised to Shi Qi, the son of the current prime minister. Xiao Jue had forced the emperor to change his mind and give Yinyin to him by threatening to conquer six cities in ten days.

Xiao Jue had coveted Yinyin for a long time.

Yinyin thought Xiao Jue was a clumsy warrior, and that she would never know another moment of pleasure after marrying him.

But a few months later, in the bedroom of the general's residence, silk curtains billowed and red candles flickered.

Xiao Jue brought her pleasure she had never expected.

Reader advisory:

1. The setting is fictional, drawing on a mix of dynasties. Clothing and customs are modeled on the Song dynasty, and a few plot points are inspired by the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Please don't nitpick the historical details.

2. Every plot point serves the romance.

Next book: Yu Nian

[Age gap, size difference, power imbalance, doting romance, dependent flower]

That winter, Yu Nian traveled from Jiangnan to the capital. After getting off the boat, she was carried in a sedan chair to the Xie residence, where she married into the family to bring good fortune.

Her husband was the grandson of Xie Ruming, a former chancellor, and the nephew of Xie Zhao, Minister of Personnel.

But Yu Nian's husband died on their wedding night.

Overnight, she went from being a bride brought in to bring good fortune to a bearer of bad luck. Her mother-in-law resented her and punished her by making her stand in the snow in thin clothes, waiting to die.

Yu Nian was slow-witted, with the understanding of a seven- or eight-year-old child. She didn't understand the complicated schemes of a great household, and only belatedly realized that she was going to freeze to death.

She lay in the snow. Just before closing her eyes, she saw someone rushing toward her.

-

The Xie family had held official posts for generations. Xie Zhao was nearly thirty and already a second-rank official, deeply favored by the emperor.

He owned a villa in the capital, its carved beams and painted rafters as magnificent as a celestial palace. It was a golden house built to hide a beloved woman away.

The woman living there was his nephew's wife, his beloved, Yu Nian.

-

After fainting in the snow and waking up again, Yu Nian's little head worked even less well than before.

But sometimes she dreamed of things from long ago.

Winter, the dead of night, the mountains.

She watched the house below burn fiercely. Her parents were inside. She turned away and looked at the person in front of her, whose face she couldn't make out. They reached out and tightened a hand around her neck.

Terrified and helpless, she could only say:

"Brother Xiao Zhao, please loosen your grip. I can't breathe."

That's right. Back then, she hadn't called Xie Zhao Uncle. She called him Brother Xiao Zhao.

-

Theme: Face life with optimism