Southern Gu

On the day I died, an unusually heavy snow fell over Nanjun. Thick clusters of purple ash flowers lay buried beneath the snow, hiding the stains of blood and covering my bloodstained wedding dress.

That was the day Bai Zisu and I were to be married.

I happily put on the peachwood hairpin he had carved for me himself, nervously and eagerly waiting for him to come and marry me.

I waited and waited. The young man never came to fulfill his promise. Instead, thirty thousand soldiers from Dongchu arrived.

Their commander was Bai Zisu.

When I heard the people beside him respectfully call him “Your Highness,” I finally understood that everything had been an elaborate deception he had carefully planned.

His name wasn’t Bai Zisu, and he wasn’t some insignificant foot soldier. He was Bai Huai, the ninth son of the Emperor of Dongchu and a renowned general of Dongchu.

He had been deceiving me from beginning to end, all so he could attack Nanjun that day and take my divine pearl.

Even more laughable, he had deceived me, betrayed me, and gone to such lengths to seize the divine pearl for the sake of his frail cousin, Su Jiujiu.

It turned out that all of it had been wishful thinking on my part.

He had never loved me. The one he loved was Su Jiujiu.

I foolishly gave him my heart, only to see Nanjun destroyed in return.

I watched with my own eyes as he killed my mother, the Empress of Nanjun. His eyes were bloodshot, but his gaze was as cold as ever.

Even in the moments before I died, he was still demanding to know where the divine pearl was.

I gave him a heartbroken smile, drove the wooden hairpin into my slender neck, and leaped from the city wall without hesitation.

The people around me were in an uproar, but not one of them grieved for me.

Perhaps my life had been doomed from the very beginning.

But she never imagined that the moment she drove the wooden hairpin into her neck, he would panic.

At first, he had only wanted to use her, but how could he have failed to see the young woman’s sincerity?

He admitted it: he had fallen for her.

He truly had wanted to marry her. He had thought she would wait for him, that she would forgive him.

But the moment he killed the Empress of Nanjun with his own hands, he understood that nothing could ever go back to the way it was.

He held her long-cold body with the utmost care. His voice was filled with disbelief and grief as he murmured, “Why...? Aren’t you a goddess? Don’t you have a divine pearl?”

He clutched her bloodstained hand with a trembling grip, only to find that he couldn’t warm it, no matter what he did. “Luoluo, it’s snowing...”

“I’ve come to marry you.”

Please note:

1. The story is written in third person. The synopsis is not the ending, and the female lead will be reborn.

2. The male lead’s mother died when he was eight, and his father neglected him. Su Jiujiu stayed by his side and cared for him, so she is important to him, but he does not love her. He does not love her!!! The male lead has always loved the female lead.

3. This is a fictional setting, divided into four kingdoms: Nanjun, Dongchu, Beiliang, and Xiyue. Nanjun is like the Miao frontier, Dongchu is like the Central Plains, Xiyue is like the Western Regions, and Beiliang is like the grasslands.

4. I don’t know what might bother readers. Anyway, it should be angsty, so those who like sweet stories might want to skip it. (The early chapters are very sweet, so you could give them a try.)

5. Updates are irregular. Feel free to share your thoughts, but please be polite. Don’t mention other authors’ works in my comments, and don’t mention my work elsewhere. I’m just writing for fun.

6. This is my first time writing, so it’s normal if some parts of the plot feel familiar. There are only so many Be storylines, and I can’t help it: either you die or I die.

Theme: Don’t trust others too easily