My Possessive Childhood Friend Refuses to Follow the Bad Ending

Meng Jianzhi was strikingly handsome and upright, with the bearing of a pine tree. He was the young gentleman Liu Niang had long yearned for.

No one in Runing County expected that Meng Jianzhi, newly named the top scholar in the provincial exam, would become engaged to Liu Niang. Everyone said she was blessed.

Only Liu Niang knew that Meng Jianzhi had agreed to the match because the long-standing friendship between their elders had put him under pressure.

This marriage was not what he wanted.

But... Liu Niang naively thought that after so many years as childhood friends, his agreement to the engagement meant he cared for her, at least a little.

Sadly, she forgot that in six years, Meng Jianzhi had never once looked back at her. How could a marriage contract change his heart?

He went to take the imperial examinations while she stayed in Runing County. She waited for a year, only to hear that he had returned to the capital arm in arm with a noble young lady.

He said, "This marriage was never my wish. Once the engagement is dissolved, you will be free to marry whomever you like."

Liu Niang bit her lip and took off the silver lock pendant around her neck. "I'll return this to you. From now on, let's go our separate ways."

*

Everyone said that Magistrate Meng of the Imperial Guard Commandant's Office was a demon from the underworld, holding the power of life and death.

Yet when a noose tightened around his neck,

the only thing in his mind was that girl, holding out her sincere heart, tugging at his sleeve and softly calling him "Brother Meng."

That night, a heavy snow fell over the capital.

When he opened his eyes, he had returned to the day she had told him they should go their separate ways.

But Meng Jianzhi hadn't expected that when he saw Liu Niang again in this life, she would have become the emperor's newly acknowledged young county princess, with suitors lined up from the capital all the way to Runing.

He knelt outside her residence and begged, only to hear:

"Please go home, Magistrate Meng. The princess will not see you."

It feels great to abandon your wife for a moment, then spend two lifetimes trying to make up for it.

* Not a typical groveling romance. The heroine isn't a helpless little flower. She's naive at first, but grows over time.

* The male lead's rebirth and redemption arc don't begin at the start.

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Coming soon: "Your Majesty, He Regretted It Too Late". Please add it to your collection.

The thing Jiang Xuan regretted most in her life was marrying into Prince Yu's residence.

Prince Yu, Murong Yan, was a man of refined virtue and unmatched wisdom. Everyone praised him as a worthy prince.

Before Jiang Xuan married, she had once glimpsed him from afar through a beaded curtain. That one look had made her blush.

Later, an imperial decree granting their marriage arrived: "The second daughter of the Jiang family is hereby granted in marriage as the principal wife of Prince Yu."

She heard that Prince Yu had personally asked the emperor for the decree.

Jiang Xuan lowered her head in delight.

After entering the residence, Jiang Xuan kept to her proper role, conducting herself with virtue and propriety. She managed his household and cultivated relationships with the wives of court officials.

Although he was always distant and indifferent except in bed, at least he had only been with her all these years.

Jiang Xuan thought he probably loved her.

Then he ascended the throne and wanted to bring her elder sister, the former Crown Princess, into his harem. The scandal shook the court.

Only then did Jiang Xuan learn that back then, he had asked the late emperor to marry her elder sister.

Jiang Xuan's slender figure knelt before the grand hall.

"If Your Majesty insists on making my elder sister a consort, then I ask you to depose me and send me to the Cold Palace."

This was the only time in her life she had ever coerced him. As empress, she could not let her elder sister enter the palace as the emperor's former sister-in-law, tarnishing the imperial family's reputation and throwing the court into turmoil.

But she knew he would surely hate her.

So what? Her heart had died long ago.

That year, shortly before the Lantern Festival, the empress passed away. The entire Forbidden City was draped in white, and the bells of national mourning rang out.

Rumors spread among the people that the empress had taken her own life.

Jiang Xuan never expected to be reborn, let alone to return to the time before she was married.

Since Heaven had granted her another chance,

this time, she would never again be the virtuous and proper Princess Yu.

*

Murong Yan was diligent and vigilant, personally attending to every matter. Before he turned forty, he died at his desk.

But he was reborn.

Murong Yan had been waiting for the emperor to decree his marriage to Jiang Xuan.

He thought that in his previous life he had wronged her, and that his heart had died because of her.

In this life, he would make it up to her a hundredfold.

But at the imperial family banquet that day, he watched her kneel before the empress and ask for an imperial decree marrying her to a distant cousin from the Jiang family.

Murong Yan clenched both fists.

Theme: Let flowers bloom from the mud.