Currently updating: "After Breaking Off My Engagement, I Married a Golden-Shell Husband [The 1980s]"
Blurb for "Help! He Insists on Repaying Me with His Hand in Marriage! [The 1970s]" is below this novel's blurb ↓
Zhang Ting caught the tail end of the Qing-transmigration craze. He thought he'd been handed a clichéd male wish-fulfillment harem plot, but unexpectedly, his dream girl came to his rescue.
A second chance at life? No loss there!
Lin Daiyu was frail and often ill as a girl. Not long after her mother died, a blood-soaked young man barged into her life. Later, she left her father and was sent to the capital.
He was the one who comforted her.
He was the one who stood by her.
He was the one who paved her way and helped her out of every crisis.
Zhang Tingyu x Lin Daiyu
A cold and proud male lead, the son of a grand secretary and a close aide to two emperors × a delicate, pampered heroine who may be living under someone else's roof, but has powerful people backing her.
The leads are both sexually inexperienced. The heroine is spoiled and has a temper, while the male lead is endlessly indulgent and doting.
Note: Both leads are sexually inexperienced.
Readers who insist on historical accuracy, please stay away!
The hairstyles and clothes follow Dream of the Red Chamber. I don't like half-shaved heads or the two-braided hairstyle.
Also, I'm writing the Dream of the Red Chamber as I see it. It doesn't represent anyone else's views!
Upcoming novel:
"After Breaking Off My Engagement, I Married a Golden-Shell Husband [The 1980s]"
After Gu Cheng struck it rich as a nouveau riche, old friends of his late parents started coming to introduce him to potential matches.
Gu Cheng couldn't stand their attitude. Before meeting Luo Han, he thought: Having plenty of money and living carefree is great! No one can use that meal they gave me years ago to blackmail me or latch onto me!
After meeting Luo Han: She's so beautiful! Life isn't complete without a pretty wife to warm my bed!
But he was dressed in rags and had spouted a whole tractor-load of nonsense before Luo Han even came out. The match was off.
And because of his insults, the young woman named Luo Han got engaged soon after. Gu Cheng regretted it bitterly, but there was nothing he could do. He could only watch the woman he'd fallen in love with at first sight marry someone else.
Heartbroken, he returned to the capital to keep building his business.
The difference was that from then on, every year he deposited a large sum in the bank under her name. Meanwhile, he hovered on the edge of dangerous, highly profitable ventures and lived a life of luxury and indulgence.
That lasted only three years. He couldn't take it anymore: first, his business partners betrayed him; then, he threatened the interests of a local power broker in the capital. Someone set him up, and he lost his life.
Before closing his eyes, Gu Cheng thought: Thank goodness most of the money is in Luo Han's name. Thank goodness the deposit slips are with her mother.
*
When he opened his eyes again, Gu Cheng had returned to the year he was twenty-four.
He knew Luo Han was about to get married, but he couldn't help asking around about her.
He heard that Luo Han's fiance had gotten involved with her stepsister. Gu Cheng's mind went blank. He dropped his business and took the next ride home, thinking the whole way: In his previous life, had she kept that money herself? Or had someone cheated her out of it before kicking her aside?
He even thought that it wouldn't matter if someone had cheated her out of it. He only feared that if she'd held onto the money, it might have become a death sentence!
The first time Gu Cheng saw Luo Han after being reborn was at a department store. Her fingers were wrapped in bandages, long and slender but rough, and her eyes were dim with sorrow. Gu Cheng followed behind her helplessly, wallet in hand, not knowing what to say.
She bought the cheapest embroidery thread, used low-quality clam oil, and chose the cheapest candles... Maybe she couldn't bear to turn on the lights at night, so she had to buy candles.
Gu Cheng couldn't understand how the person he cared about most could be reduced to this over a few bills, when he himself had never cared about money.
If he'd known she'd suffer like this, he should have taken her back by force in his previous life!
Both leads are sexually inexperienced, one-on-one romance.
"Help! He Insists on Repaying Me with His Hand in Marriage! [The 1970s]"
A native of the 1970s, not reborn.
Ever since Ming Wei went to the countryside, she hadn't dared to wear new clothes or spend money, and she'd never once eaten her fill. She was terrified that anyone would find out she was a capitalist's daughter.
But while hiding her beauty kept street louts and lecherous thugs away, it gave the village's foolish and disabled men hope.
Just as she was living in fear, wondering how much longer she'd have to endure this hardship, a man like this appeared.
He let her eat white-flour sesame flatbreads and taste canned braised pork. He even bought her new fabric so she could take off the coarse undergarments that chafed her skin.
The only problem was... the woman he loved was her cousin, and Ming Wei had once tried to break up the ill-fated couple.
But to avoid going hungry and being taken advantage of again, when he proposed that they become revolutionary comrades, Ming Wei could only marry him through tears.
Note: The ill-fated romance is all in the heroine's imagination. The male lead was attracted to her looks first, then fell deeply in love.
Male lead's perspective: Si Heng traveled a thousand miles to his stepmother's hometown to repay a debt of gratitude and attend his father's funeral in his place.
Everyone thought he had turned over a new leaf. No one could have guessed he was going to repay an old kindness.
But the moment he saw the fair, beautiful little waif emerge from the water in the darkness, he thought: I can never repay what she did for me. The only thing I can do is give her my hand in marriage.
After their marriage, he takes her with him to the army, finds her a job, and gradually helps the frail, timid waif regain the healthy, fair, rounded, beautiful, pampered appearance she had as a girl.
Then... the little waif, no, the pampered girl, gets her capitalist father back.
He watches as his little darling kicks him aside without hesitation and rushes back to the Shen family, acting affectionate with her parents in a way she'd never been with him, and even encouraging him to pursue his true love.
Si Heng flips the table (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻. To hell with true love!
Theme: Keep hope in your eyes and fire in your heart.
