Beauty's Blade

Complete: Dew-Kissed World

Upcoming historical novels: Hunting the Moon, The Noble Consort's Missing Palace, Little Sister-in-Law, The Emperor's Gate. Please add them to your collections.

Blurb:

[Alternate Spring and Autumn and Warring States setting · political intrigue · sweet and angsty]

A ruler is heartless, a beauty is a blade.

The best blade leaves no blood; the best strategy wins without a fight.

The life of a princess from a fallen kingdom.

Ji He, Princess Qingling of Lu, had two men in her life.

One was the man she loved, the other the man who loved her.

The one she loved was her moonlight.

He was a young strategist, renowned throughout the kingdoms but dead in the prime of his life: her teacher, a disciple of Guiguzi, a high minister of Lu, and tutor to the crown prince, Fan Xi.

Before the fall of Lu, she waited joyfully for him to return from observing the mourning period, only to receive the terrible news that he had been ambushed and had fallen to his death from a cliff.

Before she could put on the wedding dress she loved, she had to put on mourning clothes for her dead husband.

*

The one who loved her was Zhao Jian, the formidable ruler who would later unite the kingdoms.

He was decisive and merciless. To help his father become crown prince of Zhao, Zhao Jian killed the favorite consort of the King of Zhao and brought ruin upon his uncle, Prince Shou, who had been as close to him as a brother.

No one knew that Zhao Jian, who seemed like the wolf king of the snowy wilderness to everyone else, was humble as dust in her presence alone.

*

After her kingdom fell, Ji He was sent to serve as a palace maid in the enemy kingdom of Chu.

After enduring humiliation and surviving, she accompanied a princess of Chu to Zhao for a political marriage.

To avenge herself, she schemed to become the lover of Zhao Jian, a prince of Zhao, and offered him the Guiguzi, a text coveted by every ruler of the kingdoms.

Afterward, Zhao Jian took her hand and said, "Don't call yourself a servant. I like you best when you hold your head high."

Awakening from a dream at midnight, he held her hand against his chest and spoke with a bitter ache in his voice. "A He, you've already made a home in my heart. When will you let me make a home in yours?"

Ji He remained unmoved, pretending to be asleep and not to have heard him.

There was only one person in her heart: her moonlight, her teacher, Fan Xi.

There was no affection between her and Zhao Jian, only a transaction, each using the other.

Between them there was no love, only desire.

To her, he was a sword in her hand, a ladder to the heavens, an ally,

anything but a true lover.

[Content warnings]

* Alternate universe. Written for fun. Soapy drama. No historical research. A modest ensemble cast. A heroine who grows over time.

* Both leads are sexually inexperienced. The heroine has a moonlight, and he will remain her moonlight until death.

* The male lead has a wife in name only, through a political marriage, but they have no real relationship.

* The male lead is the epitome of fidelity. His body and heart belong only to the heroine.

* No love-hate relationship.

* Probably a tragic ending for everyone, meaning the supporting cast. The main couple gets a happy ending.

* Volume One includes a lot of the second male lead. The male lead's major role begins in Volume Two.

Upcoming historical novels

One. The Noble Consort's Missing Palace

A noble consort in a substitute marriage × her powerful adoptive elder brother

[Possessive love · groveling after betrayal · faux siblings]

[He thought she was a pawn in his hand.

He never imagined she would throw his carefully plotted game into chaos.]

Shi Yuqing was sold into a brothel by her stepmother.

That night, a man took her away from the brothel and settled her in a villa outside the capital.

She thought he was a customer who had gotten drunk in the pleasure quarters and assumed she was his kept woman.

So she boldly asked him if he could take her younger sister away from their home, where she was at the mercy of their stepmother.

The next day, the man sent her a letter written by her younger sister. It said that a kind person had adopted her and that she had escaped her stepmother's abuse.

For the next two years, Shi Yuqing was made to study music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, as well as how to please a man. Day after day passed. She spent two years being kept there without ever seeing him.

Until one day, the man came and asked her, "Do you know how to please a man?"

To secure her place, please her master, and reunite with her sister, she nodded. "This concubine does."

The man gripped her chin and pulled her into his arms. "Then please me."

Her hands, pressed against his chest, lost their strength and slipped softly into his robe, teasing him to the utmost...

That night, she used every trick she had learned in the brothel. Her hairpin fell to the ground, her clothes hung loose, and she was exhausted, yet she still couldn't make the man lose control.

He pushed her half-naked body off him, straightened his clothes, and sneered. "You're not good enough yet. Keep practicing."

Her face burned with humiliation. She was embarrassed and angry, but dared not show it.

*

Yuwen Xian left the villa and returned to his carriage, drenched in sweat. Only he knew how hard he had struggled to restrain himself and resist the urge to take her.

He couldn't touch her. She was merely a pawn in his hand, someone he had spent years cultivating so that he could acknowledge her as his adoptive younger sister and send her in place of the legitimate daughter of the Yuwen family to marry the puppet emperor.

But after she truly entered the imperial harem, watching her flatter the puppet emperor to the utmost as she tried to escape his control, he could no longer hold back.

Yuwen Xian entered her chambers at night and pinned her to the bed. "Have you forgotten that I'm your master?"

In desperation, Yuqing grabbed the gold-inlaid dagger he had given her as a dowry, hidden beneath her pillow, and pressed it against his neck.

He said coldly, "If you've got the nerve, kill me. By tomorrow morning, the entire palace will know the Grand Pillar of State died in the noble consort's bedchamber."

Full blurb posted on 2024/9/09

Upcoming novel two: Hunting the Moon

Princess × Imperial preceptor

Wild rose × lofty moon

Flirtatious temptress × saintly gentleman

After returning to the palace, Li Haining gets everything she wants. There is almost nothing in this world beyond her reach.

Except the immortal from the Temple of Sumeru, clear and radiant as the moon.

She gave her heart to the moon, but the moon shone on a ditch.

It doesn't matter. She likes forcing things that aren't meant to be. "If the moon won't shine on me, I'll hunt it down."

Sooner or later, she'll pluck that ray of moonlight and keep it all to herself.

*

Bai Cang is noble in character and upright in spirit, an imperial preceptor who stands apart from the world

Until he meets Princess Le'an, who has been brought back from among the common people.

He sees Li Haining tangled up with her own bodyguard, then enjoying moonlit nights among flowers with a hostage prince from an enemy kingdom. At the same time, she keeps flirting with him, sending him an erotic poem every day at the Temple of Sumeru and boldly declaring her love.

She is outrageous, debauched, and completely devoid of propriety.

No amount of teaching her decency or shame makes any difference.

Later, Li Haining steals her own sister's match, taking her place in a political marriage to the enemy kingdom.

But on the eve of the marriage, Li Haining vanishes without a trace.

In the Temple of Sumeru, a hidden chamber fills with fragrance.

The temple's head, usually as calm as a still well, is consumed by jealousy, no longer the slightest bit clear or upright.

"How can you take back what you said? Princess, have you forgotten those sweet words of love?"

Bai Cang's gaze is dark as he caresses her spine, pressing close to her temple and reciting, again and again, the love poems she once wrote.

Blurb posted on 2025/09/03

Premise: Those who accomplish great things must possess unyielding determination.