My Husband, Who Died in Battle, Has Returned

A delicate yet resilient concubine-born young lady x a prim, aloof scholar who is actually obsessive, unscrupulous, and utterly shameless

[Watch the refined, upright top scholar become a stand-in for love, impersonate her dead husband, and climb through her window in the middle of the night]

-

Xu Shizheng, the fourth concubine-born daughter of the Minister of Rites

Born with skin like jade and beauty like a flower, she can only hide in her legitimate elder sister's shadow, carefully making her way through life in the inner household.

When she turns sixteen, her stepmother arranges her marriage to the Empress's nephew, the promising young General Zhou.

Everyone in the capital praises Madam Xu for her virtue.

Only Xu Shizheng feels uneasy.

General Zhou was the husband her stepmother had painstakingly chosen for her legitimate daughter. Why was she suddenly getting such a good match?

-

On their wedding day, the border is under attack, and the groom receives an imperial order to leave for battle without even lifting the bridal veil.

A month later, news arrives that he has died on the battlefield. Xu Shizheng is widowed as soon as she enters her husband's home.

The Emperor posthumously grants General Zhou the title of Marquis of Zhenbei. Xu Shizheng becomes the Marquis's widow, expected to continue her late husband's family line through an adopted heir, with no chance of returning to her family and remarrying.

On the forty-ninth night after her husband's death, Xu Shizheng hides under the covers, secretly crying over her miserable fate, when the back window suddenly opens.

"My lady, I'm back."

Xu Shizheng has crumbs of a pastry stuck to her face, and can only think: ...Has he come back from the dead?

-

By day, Xu Shizheng manages the Marquis's household accounts, outsmarts the Zhou family's awful relatives, and tries to fit into the capital's upper circles.

At night, she has to get close and cozy with her "dead husband," who comes and goes like a ghost while carrying out secret missions for the Emperor. She hasn't had a full night's sleep in ages.

Lying across the bed, she yawns again and again, her sweet voice breaking with tears as she asks her husband when he can come home openly.

He keeps moving, fingertips brushing her hair and back as he says, "A Yuan, just hold on a little longer. It'll be soon."

-

Then one day, she catches sight of a red official robe on the street, and a stunning profile.

People say that is the only son of the Princess Royal, the newly appointed top scholar, Lord Xue Lin.

Xu Shizheng frowns. The top scholar... why does he look so much like the husband who sneaks into her room night after night?

-

Before her engagement, Xu Yining has a dream. She dreams that after marrying General Zhou, she is widowed. Unable to endure the loneliness, she secretly meets another man. Her mother-in-law catches them and reports her, and the furious Empress confines her to a country estate outside the city. She suffers terribly, then freezes and starves to death.

Meanwhile, her timid concubine-born younger sister, once the least noticed person in the family, is casually married off by their father to a newly appointed scholar. She follows him out of the capital when he takes up a post elsewhere. A few years later, he earns great merit for managing the rivers, rises through the ranks, and becomes a second-rank River Conservancy Commissioner before the age of thirty, outranking their father by two grades.

Xu Yining does everything she can to switch marriages with her younger sister. Sure enough, not long afterward, news arrives that General Zhou has died at the border. She laughs out loud at home.

But she waits and waits, and not only does she never see her younger sister looking miserable as a widow, she watches her thrive in the capital as the Marquis's wife.

Then, at court one day, the Princess Royal's only son, the newly appointed top scholar, disregards his brotherly bond with General Zhou and asks the Emperor to let him marry her widowed younger sister?

Xu Yining falls apart. Once they've moved away from the capital, she makes her husband work harder every day: Go manage the rivers already!

Her husband is baffled. He's spent more than ten years studying by lamplight. How would he know anything about water conservancy?

-

Reader's guide:

Sisters switch marriages / forced love / love after marriage / stealing a brother's wife / identity revealed, then chasing his wife

Romance is the main focus, with the heroine's career gradually unfolding later on.

A fictional setting. Everything is designed to serve the story.

The original inspiration dates to February 2023 and has been documented with screenshots.

Theme: Love makes the proud bow their heads