Blurb (1):
During the Longqing era, the Yellow River broke through its banks and flowed into the sea via the Huai River. Grain shipments by river were replaced by sea transport. To escape the labor of transporting tribute rice, the most powerful family in Huai'an, the Bo family, decided to manufacture a chaste widow.
Xu Qingyao, a beautiful woman believed to bring death to those around her, had supposedly killed her husband on their wedding night, then her father-in-law and stepson three years later. The family, young and old alike, chose to drown her in a pond.
The rain came down in torrents, as if the world outside were flooding into the ancestral hall, which looked just like a tomb. With her death and burial in the pond imminent, Xu Qingyao was so desperate to cling to the little bit of life she had left that she conspired with a doctor to lie and say she was pregnant.
After narrowly escaping death, even she never imagined that the child she had invented in her lie would become real in her womb.
Just then, her younger uncle by marriage, who had been expelled from the family genealogy years ago and grown immensely wealthy, suddenly returned home in splendor.
Meanwhile, her stepson, who had supposedly died in a shipwreck, changed his name and returned to Huai'an. One rainy spring night, he slowly knocked on her door.
Blurb (2):
Xu Qingyao came from a humble family and married into the prestigious Bo clan to bring good fortune to the sickly eldest young master. But the good fortune proved too potent, and that very night, the groom was sent straight to the grave.
Just like that, she became a widow.
The grand clans are full of filth. In the Bo family, only the two stone lions at the gate are clean.
"Xu Qingyao, are you really so pure? You won't be for much longer."
The man who said this with a smile, playing with the golden bell in his hand, was the second master of the Bo family, her younger uncle by marriage in name.
Just as he was about to get what he wanted, with the feast in full swing and everyone flushed with wine, she happened to hear someone mention the long-dead white moonlight of his life: "Has Master's heartache still not been cured?"
The Second Master Bo smiled coldly and poured his wine onto the ground, as if to say that spilled water could never be gathered up again.
Xu Qingyao said nothing. She simply turned away in the dark, her hand unconsciously tightening around her handkerchief.
That night, a heavy rain fell. She crossed the deep, shadowy courtyard and knocked on the door of her sixteen-year-old stepson.
Reader's Note:
1. Coercive romance
2. Two male leads:
The younger uncle is the male lead in the plot.
The stepson is the romantic lead.
3. The romance will not begin while they remain relatives.
New novel of the same type in my author collection:
"My Brother's Viperous Widow"
Yan Jilou received the letter three days ago. It said his brother had been killed by his beautiful, seductive, viperous sister-in-law and her lover.
On his way home to take revenge, he passed beneath an outdoor stage in Jiang Village and heard a performance of singing and music:
"The first strike is for your parents, who raised a daughter without teaching her shame."
"The second strike is for my brother, whose misfortune was marrying a worthless wife."
"You shouldn't have seduced Ximen and wallowed in debauchery, debasing yourself without restraint. You poisoned your husband, a crime beyond pardon. The third strike will prove your guilt..."
After hearing those three lines, his blood boiled and his pulse raced. The books and brushes in his luggage seemed to turn into blades, clamoring to hack the adulterous pair to pieces. Yan Jilou strode off toward the northwest.
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Many years later, Yan Jilou had risen through the ranks to become chief grand secretary. Looking at his delicate sister-in-law, pure as a white lotus, nestled in his arms, he still couldn't understand how the revenge he'd once been willing to risk his life to take had become a love he'd risk his life to hold on to.
A substitute for brother-and-sister-in-law romance, one-on-one, sweet romance.
Theme: Tear down the symbols of chastity and oppose feudal oppression.
