Bewitching the Lord

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[Complete. The only authorized version of this novel is on Jinjiang.] If you find errors or censored sections on other platforms, please come to Jinjiang. Leave a comment and receive a red packet.

Coming soon: Forced into a Shotgun Marriage, The Chief Minister's Second Wife Is Reborn, The Legitimate Older Brother. Please add them to your library. Scroll down for the blurbs.

The legitimate elder sister married into the Duke of Weiguo's household, but after three years without a child, she fell ill with depression.

Ying, a daughter born to a concubine, kept her head bowed and followed her legitimate sisters into the household to care for her elder sister.

Her elder sister was gentle and amiable. She persuaded Ying to become her husband's concubine so the sisters could share one husband, and promised her a generous reward.

For the sake of her younger brother's future, Ying gritted her teeth and agreed.

Who could have known that after drinking the fruit wine her elder sister offered that night, she would collapse onto the bed, delirious and burning all over?

In a daze, she saw her tall, handsome brother-in-law standing beside the bed with his hands behind his back. He looked down at her with indifferent contempt, then raised a hand and let the bed curtains fall.

That night, Ying had a dream.

In the dream, her kind-looking elder sister had a vicious heart. She sent her own younger sister to her husband's bed. The Duke of Weiguo, the youngest powerful minister in the Great Zhou dynasty, wanted to use a surrogate to bear him a son. Deceived and coerced by her elder sister, Ying agreed to bear the duke's heir for her, so her elder sister could secure her husband's favor.

Before long, she really did become pregnant. After ten months, she gave birth, and her elder sister, holding the baby boy in her arms, finally revealed her vicious true nature.

Poor Ying had her child taken away and died heartbroken. The Duke of Weiguo soon took another beautiful concubine. Not only did he bring down her elder sister and make her his principal wife, he also plotted to raise her two beloved children into failures...

Ying suddenly awoke from the dream. Everything that should never have happened had already happened. As she looked at the mature, handsome man sleeping beside her, her face turned deathly pale.

Unwilling to die without knowing why, she waited until the man had put on his clothes and was about to leave indifferently, then gritted her teeth and hooked her delicate hand around his sash.

"Brother-in-law..."

Her voice was hoarse and soft. Sobbing quietly through her tears, she said, "Please, don't go. Ying is scared."

Later, her elder sister drank poison and killed herself, and her birth mother's crimes were exposed to the world. As the Duke of Weiguo's wife, Ying no longer had to curry favor with anyone. She doted on her newborn son, then her daughter.

Her solitary husband stood beneath the window, watching the loving family of three, and sighed softly. "Ying, are you going to send me away again tonight?"

The male lead gets his face slapped and eats his words. An old flame catches fire.

*A delicate, calculating beauty x her cold-hearted, powerful brother-in-law

*The heroine is a scheming white lotus with no conscience. She starts as a concubine but will be made the principal wife.

*The male lead is stiff, old-fashioned, and slow to warm up. He's difficult to win over and won't fall for the heroine quickly. There will be domestic family drama.

*In her previous life, the elder sister poisoned the heroine after taking the child and killing her. She is not a good person.

*The male lead and the elder sister have no affection for each other. After getting together with the heroine, he never touched the elder sister again.

*The leads had a misunderstanding in their previous lives. The heroine didn't see the whole truth. See the author's notes in Chapters 1 and 5 for details.

*The age gap is eleven years. The male lead is not a virgin. Readers who only accept virgin male leads, please take note.

(This blurb was written on June 4, 2022.)

[The blurb is already too long to add more details. The heroine isn't a brother-obsessed sister. She marries the male lead to protect herself and secure her younger brother's future. Her younger brother has been frail and sickly ever since saving her, and they have a good relationship. Please don't read too much into it. In her previous life, the heroine was given medication by her elder sister that caused depression, which is why she was miserable before she died, not because her child was taken. Why did the male lead marry her after three years without having sex? Because the author is lazy. In the author's previous book, The Maid's Escape, the heroine was also the male lead's younger brother's concubine for three years in her previous life without having sex. The author simply didn't feel like making up an explanation. There's no deeper idea behind this. I just thought of the premise and wrote it. You don't have to like it, but please don't curse at me, attack me personally, or harass me.]

---Coming soon---

1. Forced into a Shotgun Marriage

Shen Tangning is the legitimate daughter of a declining marquis household. Though she is gentle and quiet, she is also alluringly beautiful, and her reputation among Chang'an's many noble young ladies is poor. When she was sixteen, her uncle arranged a prestigious marriage for her to curry favor with a powerful family.

But an accident led her to sleep with the heir of the Duke of Zhenguo at a flower-viewing banquet, despite already being engaged to someone else.

The heir, Xie Zhan, was young, successful, and as handsome as a jade tree in the breeze. He and the emperor's niece had been childhood sweethearts, and they were waiting for her coming-of-age ceremony before marrying.

But once the news spread, both sides had no choice but to break off their earlier engagements. The Duke of Zhenguo's household sent a matchmaker to the Marquis of Pingning's residence.

From the proposal to the wedding date, her fiancé Xie Zhan never appeared once.

Three months later, a heartbroken Shen Tangning hurriedly married into the Duke of Zhenguo's household, heavily pregnant.

On their wedding night, Shen Tangning held back her tears and spoke to her husband, who had lifted her veil and was about to leave coldly. "You can rest assured, Heir. Once I give birth, I'll divorce you right away. I won't drag this out or pester you."

Xie Zhan paused, but still left with a cold expression.

-

Xie Zhan had been forced to marry Shen Tangning. To him, she was a stranger, a woman with a bad reputation, his wife, and even the mother of his child.

He had no feelings for her whatsoever. If not for the child, he thought he would never even set foot in her courtyard.

As the pregnancy progressed, Xie Zhan visited her courtyard more and more often. He discovered that although she spoke little, she was gentle and kind, and never made things difficult for others.

She had no resentment toward him, either. She spoke gently and treated him with attentive care...

After some time living together like ice, Xie Zhan thought that since they already had a child and Shen Tangning didn't want a divorce, he could consider staying with her as a couple, as long as she changed her bad habits.

Then, on the night of the Lantern Festival, with the streets bright as day, he saw his pregnant wife set a lotus lantern adrift by the river. Her lovely brows and eyes looked gentle and devout.

After she left, Xie Zhan, as if possessed, fished the lantern out of the water. But the name written on it wasn't his at all:

"Brother Zhongyun, may you live long and prosper."

Zhongyun was the courtesy name of her former fiancé.

Xie Zhan tore the lotus lantern to pieces in his hands.

2. The Chief Minister's Second Wife Is Reborn

When Shen Hanzhu was thirteen, her father died unexpectedly.

Holding a marriage contract, she left the countryside in a daze and came to the capital to seek the help of Xu Ke, tutor to the Crown Prince and second-in-command in the Grand Secretariat.

After the three-year mourning period ended, Xu Ke married Hanzhu as his second wife, as promised.

Everyone lamented that the second-in-command had married a foolish country girl.

Xu Ke was sixteen years older than Hanzhu. He was elegant and gentle, like a bright moon in a clear sky.

He personally taught her to read and write, as well as the four arts and proper etiquette. His care and favor were the only light in the life of the insecure and timid Hanzhu during her girlhood.

To be worthy of him, she diligently studied etiquette, music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, even though she hated being constrained by rules.

She willingly endured her mother-in-law's contempt and her sisters-in-law's bullying. She swallowed every grievance, biting her tongue until it hurt, and tried hard to restrain herself in front of him, becoming a quiet, generous, obedient, and proper wife.

In her five years in the Xu household, her husband was warm on the outside but cold within, unable to forget the woman he once loved. She never made it into his heart, and no one in the vast Xu household ever thought well of her.

Worn down by overwork and grief, she died easily from a bout of cold. As she lay dying, Hanzhu was filled with regret and pain.

But when she opened her eyes, she was back at sixteen, in the year she had just married Xu Ke.

With her eyes red with anger, Hanzhu kicked Sun, her younger brother-in-law's wife, off the platform for insulting her.

In this life, she would no longer be that sensible, obedient, gentle, considerate, virtuous, and utterly spineless Shen Hanzhu!

What good had any of that done? She would live comfortably and freely!

-

After his wife gave birth to their first child, Xu Ke planned to take contraceptive medicine, considering how young she was.

But by chance, he discovered that Hanzhu had taken the medicine before he did.

Not only that, she was no longer as warm toward him as before. For several nights in a row, she had all sorts of reasons, delivered gently but firmly:

"I don't feel well tonight, Husband. Please sleep in the study."

"I'm on my period."

"I'm tired. I don't want to."

Later, she seemed to be considering a divorce and a return to the countryside, where she would make her own living...

Xu Ke stared at himself in the mirror, his expression complicated.

Could it be that she thought he was too old?

3. The Legitimate Older Brother

Qi Ning was beautiful, with skin like ice and bones like jade, and a captivating charm. But because she was an outsider brought into the Xie family by a mistress, she was never loved as a child.

Her stepmother was kind on the surface but cold at heart. After her father died, she often treated Qi Ning harshly.

One day, her eldest brother, Xie Chengzhou, returned victorious from the battlefield, and the whole household rejoiced.

Xie Chengzhou had hated Qi Ning since they were children and had never treated her kindly. She knew this perfectly well, so she was even more careful around him.

But he observed propriety, was strict with himself, and was considered a paragon of virtue by everyone else.

That was what Qi Ning had believed, too.

Until that night, when she knelt before her eldest brother, eyes red as she begged him:

"Brother, please save him. I'll do anything."

To her surprise, her eldest brother abandoned his usual propriety. He lifted her chin and asked with a soft laugh, "Anything?"

At his dark, possessive gaze, Qi Ning's face went deathly pale.

(The male and female leads have no love for each other while their relationship is ongoing. This is not incest, this is not incest, this is not incest.)

Theme: Stand on your own feet and become strong