After Being Reborn, My Adoptive Brother and I Got Our Happy Ending (Mystery)

[Bright, adorable beauty x exceptionally handsome Minister of Justice]

Li Ye was blessed with bright eyes and pearly teeth, natural intelligence, a talent for painting, and a gift for writing. Her elder brother doted on her and protected her as she grew up, and she was a kindhearted, beautiful young woman.

Unfortunately, beauty's fate is often short-lived. Her sickly elder brother, the only family she had, passed away. She married into the Zhao family, to whom she had long been betrothed, but endured endless suffering in their grand household and died young.

Now that she has been reborn, she refuses to be trapped in that secluded courtyard again. First she'll save her brother, then break off her engagement and take her fate back into her own hands. The moment she does, she shakes her divorce letter until it rustles loudly, then beams and invites the sworn elder brother who treated her best in her past life to have a drink.

.

Shang Chen entered the martial world at seventeen and joined the government at twenty. At a young age, he became a junior minister at the Court of Judicial Review, overseeing criminal cases and resolving mysteries. He was meticulous and decisive. Everyone said that Junior Minister Shang was as cold as frost and snow, stern and taciturn, but he knew the truth: he wasn't stern at all. He was simply boring.

The only thing in the world that interested him apart from laws and criminal justice was the little girl from years ago who could only be comforted when she cried if someone gave her two skewers of candied hawthorn.

.

The snow had just stopped on that bright winter day, and the snowdrifts gleamed beneath the clear sky. The little girl he'd thought he was destined to miss for the rest of his life came skipping over, waving her divorce letter. She smiled sweetly and said, "Let's go have a drink, sworn big brother."

For the first time, he didn't answer her. As he lowered his head, a smile tugged at his lips. Now that he had the chance to be her husband, who would want to remain her sworn brother?

Reading guide:

1. Only the female lead is reborn.

2. The leads have a seven-year age gap, are an exclusive couple, and are each other's first.

3. This is a sweet romance with a detective-story facade, focused on everyday life that unfolds at a gentle pace.

4. The setting is entirely fictional, a very loosely inspired Song Dynasty.

5. Everything in the story exists for a reason and serves the plot.

6. Nothing beyond familial affection will develop between the leads until their sworn-sibling relationship is dissolved.

Please add my detective novel of the same type, Embracing the Bright Moon, to your to-read list. Here's the blurb:

Li Zhenyue first met Pei Du as a child, when she accompanied her father to a deer-crying banquet. Even at that young age, she was already well versed in flattery. Seeing that the top candidate who had also slipped out for some air was there, she sang "Yo, yo, the deer cry" three times and enthusiastically invited him to feed the fish.

The top candidate was chubby and round, with an adorable steamed-bun face. He said his name was Pei Du, and that he was the youngest son of the Pei family.

The next time they met was at a private banquet hosted by the Pei family. The chubby boy had become the newly graduated top scholar, brilliant and peerlessly elegant. Eighteen-year-old Li Zhenyue did her best to close her mouth, which had fallen wide open in shock (at his beauty), and pointed at the yellowed marriage contract in his hand, trying to reason with him.

"Just toss that old thing. Your family doesn't even recognize it."

Pei Du shook his head. His slender, clearly jointed fingers pinched the battered old paper, covered in creases and about to fall apart, and shook it again and again.

"First, this isn't some old thing. Second, whether anyone else recognizes it or not, I do."

Everyone said that the Li family was reaching above its station by marrying into the Pei family. For one thing, the Lis were merchants and needed to cultivate ties with a powerful family like the Peis. For another, Li Zhenyue's father was the least successful of the Li brothers.

So Li Zhenyue, who had gotten a bargain, was obedient and well-behaved, faithfully observing every duty expected of a fiancée. If Pei Du told her to go east, she wouldn't even chase a chicken.

Until one day, a disappearance case took place in Qizhou City, and the newly appointed prefect, Pei Du, traced it back to his own fiancée. He came to her home with a cold expression and laid bare her past without batting an eye: "Li Zhenyue, eighteen years old. Two years ago, under the alias Young Master Xu, you secretly worked with a bookshop and illustrated over a hundred forbidden books."

Li Zhenyue sucked in a sharp breath. "My fiancé, let me explain!"

Lord Pei smiled faintly. "Lady Li, it seems a little late to start pulling rank now."

Theme: Face adversity with a smile, find yourself, and embrace a beautiful future