Don't Leave the Green Branch

*A regretful pursuit story with old-school melodrama. Please don't read if that's not your thing.*

Blurb:

The day the Yu family was executed, Yu Mian was still a naive little child, not yet six years old.

She watched her father and brothers being loaded into prison carts. She watched her mother hang herself. Huddled in a corner, she didn't dare shed a single tear.

For the ten years she was forced into the imperial harem as a maid, she suffered constant abuse. The pinches and whip marks on her body never stopped. In the endless darkness of that torment, the only ray of light was the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace, Zhao Lianjun.

He had once saved her life when she was on the verge of death.

After that, she developed feelings she should never have had, and could only hide them away in secret.

After Zhao Lianjun ascended the throne, Yu Mian quietly watched him marry, watched him depose his empress, watched him go mad over the death of the woman he loved, and watched him treat her as his dead empress.

To stay by his side, Yu Mian gradually turned herself into someone else's shadow, but even that wasn't enough.

Whenever Zhao Lianjun flew into a rage, his eyes would turn bloodshot as he gripped her cheeks hard and said, word by word, "I told you, the only one who can stay by my side is her. You'd better do everything you can to make yourself more like her. I mean everything."

She spent three years entangled with Zhao Lianjun, enduring all the suffering she had never experienced before for the few feelings of love she held in her heart.

It wasn't until Zhao Lianjun brought back a sickly beauty from outside the palace, a woman who looked even more like the late empress, and made Yu Mian kneel in the freezing snow to bleed for medicine, that she finally understood.

Some people's hearts are like solid ice. No matter what you do, you can never warm them.

*

Zhao Lianjun and Wen Yuan were childhood sweethearts. After they married, they lived in perfect harmony, like two phoenixes flying side by side.

Who could have known that an old incident from years ago would drive a wedge between them, leaving them resentful of each other and unwilling to meet, even though they lived in separate palaces?

After Wen Yuan's death, Zhao Lianjun believed that he had always treated Yu Mian as nothing more than Wen Yuan's replacement.

It was only when Yu Mian looked at him with cold, hateful eyes just before collapsing in the snow that he felt afraid for the first time in his life.

Even though he set aside an emperor's dignity to beg her desperately, even though he severed one of his own arms to save her, he still couldn't make her change her mind.

Later, the words Yu Mian said most often as she knelt before the Buddha were, "Buddha, please send Zhao Lianjun to hell."

Some things, once lost, can never be found again.

Reader's Guide:

1. The setting is entirely fictional, with some inspiration from the Ming dynasty and many invented details. Please don't nitpick.

2. Neither lead is perfect, and the characters' values do not represent the author's.

3. If anything bothers you, feel free to stop reading. You can criticize the story, but please don't attack the author. Wishing you all the best in finding a story you love!

4. A regretful pursuit after the breakup. The ending is tragic and will not be changed.

Theme: Keep your eyes open, and fearlessly walk your own path