After the Substitute Marriage, the Cold Buddhist Monk Came Looking for Me

Currently updated every other day. The blurb for my upcoming novel, The Princess Takes in a Foreign Guard, is below.

General Yi has two daughters. His legitimate daughter is clever, exceptionally talented, and beautiful. His illegitimate daughter, Yi Manling, is lovely as a flower, but timid and meek.

The general and his wife were childhood sweethearts and deeply devoted to each other. His illegitimate daughter was born to a maid after he got drunk, and he doesn't care much for her.

The legitimate daughter is about to be married, but her fiance is killed in battle. Unable to escape the marriage, she turns her attention to her half-sister, Yi Manling, and wants her to take her place. Yi Manling is too timid to speak up. Even though she doesn't want to, she can only agree through tears.

Unexpectedly, not long after Yi Manling gets married, her fiance returns safe and sound!

--

For more than a year of marriage, Yi Manling and her husband have been little more than strangers. He has shown her not the slightest favoritism, and has repeatedly gone out with her legitimate sister, acting so intimately that they seem like a married couple.

Yi Manling watches from the sidelines, her heart unmoved. She has always been gentle and yielding, never competing or fighting for anything, as if nothing matters to her.

That is, until she meets Mu Jinghun, the Ninth Prince. He has spent many years living in a temple, and is handsome and otherworldly, with compassionate features and a string of sandalwood prayer beads in his hand. He seems sacred and pure.

He strips away her timid facade, stirring the deepest malice and resentment hidden in her heart.

He tells her to fight for what she wants, and that whether she acts with vicious intent or uses her strength against the weak, he'll take responsibility for it all.

--

Yi Manling had thought Mu Jinghun must have a heart of mercy. When she has no choice but to ask him for help, she kneels on the ground, her eyes glistening with tears, her expression tender and sorrowful.

The Buddhist prince Mu Jinghun sits on a raised platform, his white robes flowing, his bearing handsome and elegant. His long fingers gently turn the prayer beads, and his dark eyes are like lacquer. He looks down at her, his expression unreadable.

"I'll agree, but on one condition: after you divorce, you must stay by my side."

Yi Manling is startled. She looks up abruptly and meets a pair of deep, wolf-like black eyes.

--

As the legitimate daughter continues to pester him, Jia Hongxuan is at his wit's end. Then he suddenly thinks of his wife of more than a year, Yi Manling. She's gentle and charming, and has never caused him trouble. How had he never noticed her good qualities before?

After their divorce, he visits her room for the first time, hoping to make peace with her. Through a screen, Yi Manling tells him she is unwell and fears she might infect him, so he shouldn't come any closer.

His ex-wife is lying in bed, sick, and still thinking of him wholeheartedly. Jia Hongxuan feels even more remorseful.

But as he turns to leave, he doesn't notice that there are actually two people in the room behind the screen.

--

The Ninth Prince, Mu Jinghun, was born wicked, with a gloomy temperament and an unpredictable temper. The world never liked him, and after his mother died, he was framed and sent to a temple to practice Buddhism. Several years later, he returned to the capital and unexpectedly met a little tortoise.

The little tortoise spends every day curled up in her shell, timid and shrinking, letting others trample on her. She's a total coward.

But he senses the resentment buried deep inside her. He draws her in and takes control of her, making her poke her head out of her shell and bare her sharp teeth, so she can bite to pieces everyone who tries to bully her.

The little tortoise pleases Mu Jinghun. He thinks he wouldn't mind spending the rest of his life with her just as they are.

But one day, the little tortoise runs away, carrying his child.

[The heroine's marriage to the second male lead is in name only. She has no feelings for him, and the hero and heroine won't make any romantic progress until after her divorce.] One-on-one pairing, both leads have no prior partners. The ex-husband will grovel to win her back, and she runs away while pregnant.

Blurb archived on 2023/7/1

Upcoming novel: The Princess Takes in a Foreign Guard

Blurb: Liao Jinyao is the most beloved princess of the Pingjing Kingdom, exquisitely beautiful, pampered, and charming.

She was promised in marriage when she was young. Her betrothed is the heir to the Duke Who Protects the State, a promising young man with an outstanding bearing.

Liao Jinyao is very satisfied with the match. Their families and appearances are well suited, and her fiance has always treated her with great care.

But on the eve of the betrothal gifts being delivered, she catches her fiance meeting another woman in secret.

Only then does she realize it was all an illusion. Her fiance is a rotten thing wrapped in a handsome exterior.

Liao Jinyao breaks off the engagement in front of everyone. On the day she returns to the princess's residence, her carriage is traveling through the market when it is suddenly attacked. By chance, she rescues a foreign man.

The man is tall, handsome, and imposing, with a pair of sapphire-blue eyes fixed quietly on her, their gaze concealing a storm.

He says he has nowhere to go and begs her to take him in as her guard. Liao Jinyao pities his plight and agrees, personally granting him the name Ji Qinghuai.

--

On a summer day, shadows of the trees sway and a gentle breeze brushes past.

Liao Jinyao lifts the chin of the man kneeling on the ground and gently pulls away the black silk covering his eyes.

Her slender fingers rest beside his eye. "I know you're exceptionally capable. Staying by my side would only waste your talent. You deserve a better future."

But Ji Qinghuai crosses the line for the first time and takes her hand, placing it against his cheek. His sapphire-blue eyes are clear and transparent, filled with deep adoration. "All I ask for in this life is to remain by the princess's side."

Later, as the nation falls into decline and its lands are torn apart, Ji Qinghuai remains by her side, loyal to her and protecting her without ever retreating.

--

Ji Qinghuai knows that, now that he has been reborn, he must take things slowly if he wants to fulfill his wish. He has to gradually help her let down her guard before he can draw the moon in his heart into his hands.

So he carefully schemes to get close to her, exposing his fiance's false virtue ahead of time.

In this life, he is no longer the weak and useless hostage prince who, as a child, could only talk to her from the other side of a palace wall while trapped in a desperate situation.

[One-on-one pairing, both leads have no prior partners. The male lead is reborn and does everything he can to get close to the female lead, then make her fall in love with him. In the blurb, the male lead covers his eyes to hide their color.]

[Blurb archived on 2023/7/13]

Theme: Even in darkness, keep your heart turned toward the light.