Raise a Peach Blossom to Be My Wife

[Intellectual, cool beauty older woman + innocent, mischievous little fox]

Iceberg x honey

When she was a student, Shen Ruotang fell in love with someone. Her love was obsessive, deep, and unforgettable. After that person deceived her, she became an empty shell.

Seeking release, she picked up a pen and turned her hopeless love into a novel, one word at a time. Then she threw herself into a busy life, studying and advancing her career until, at thirty, she became the youngest professor at her university.

But that story took root on a literary website, and in the days before Shen Ruotang's thirty-second birthday, it brought someone into her life.

Tang Nanzhi wears a pale green dress. Her fox-like eyes shimmer as she says, "Professor Shen, could I have your autograph?"

Shen Ruotang glances at the soft hair falling over the white knitted cardigan and pauses. "I don't give autographs to students."

The other woman smiles brightly, like spring sunshine in March.

"I'm not your student. I'm the new teaching assistant."

Her life suddenly changes. Nanzhi's love is so obvious that Shen Ruotang can't escape it, no matter how hard she tries.

"I'm much older than you. We're practically from different generations."

"You should leave."

"I'll never love anyone, "

Love isn't a competition. Sometimes one person comes along first and takes everything from you. No matter how hard the next person tries, it's all in vain.

But Nanzhi always smiles warmly and says, "I'm not leaving."

Looking into the misty eyes of the woman before her, Shen Ruotang feels nothing but heartache. She's still so young and beautiful. She shouldn't have to waste her youth. At last, Shen Ruotang comes up with a good excuse. "I'm getting married soon."

She sees the beautiful woman's eyes grow red, pitiful and heartbroken.

I probably won't ever see her again, she thinks.

So when Tang Nanzhi appears at her door again, her slender figure shivering in the cold wind, stubborn as ever, Shen Ruotang's cold, hard heart shatters into pieces.

She crouches to look at the woman's sprained ankle, then lifts her head to meet those tear-filled eyes. "Professor Ruotang, is it because I'm too young? Why couldn't I be older? Why couldn't I be the one?"

Shen Ruotang's breath catches. She reaches out to wipe the tears from Nanzhi's eyes, her heart burning.

"Nanzhi, do you know? I was born in a peach orchard. People say I was born lucky in love, but I never believed it until I met you."

The other woman breaks into a smile and turns playful. "Plant peach blossoms, raise peach blossoms, lovers beneath the peach trees, yearning wherever the winds may take them."

"Where did you hear that little tune?"

"I made it up!"

Tang Nanzhi's pretty fox eyes curve into a smile. She has always quietly guarded the secret in her heart: she is the flower Shen Ruotang planted by chance in her youth, nurtured by sunshine and rain for more than a decade, until she grew into a woman who loves deeply.

Drawn by your fragrance, I bloom for you.

This story could also be called Tang Nanzhi's Unrequited Love Comes True + Shen Ruotang's I Didn't Realize I'd Started Preparing to Spoil My Wife So Early

① It really is a sweet story (slow courtship, happy ending).

② Believe what I just said.

③ Modern alternate universe. Please don't read the academy or anything else as a real-world reference.

Another alternate-history Republican-era story: Flowers Beside the Alluring Beauty (EABO)

‖Scheming, haughty young heiress + bewitchingly beautiful opera star‖

In the drizzling rain of Jiangnan, the new moon is a silver hook. It is the night of the wedding.

Red silk drapes the room, and candlelight flickers. Wu Jingyi, eldest daughter of the Wu family and dressed as a groom, lifts a freshly brewed cup of peony tea and smiles. "Now that you've married into my family, you can't get away, no matter whether I'm a man or a woman."

Across from her, a pair of almond-shaped eyes widen, and slender brows knit together. On closer inspection, the woman is as beautiful as a peony, her waist narrow enough to span with one hand. After a long, nervous pause, she replies, "Then... that's just fine."

She bites her lip, thinking she's being very stubborn.

The other woman looks so obedient, both coy and lovestruck. Wu Jingyi laughs with delight.

Years later, when the Wu family's eldest daughter-in-law, Yan Xue, sits beneath the veranda waving a sandalwood fan flecked with gold, watching the butterflies flit about the courtyard, she can't help pondering to herself.

Everyone says she's a bewitching peony who stole the soul of the Wu family's eldest daughter. So what? She intends to spend her life blooming beside the peony. Besides... she can't help touching the bite mark on her neck, and her heart skips a beat.

She ran into this wicked beauty! She always bites in places that hurt. Who knows which one of them seduced the other?

Wu Jingyi: Because I have a rare blood type.

Wu Jingyi, the new heir to the Yuya Tea Estate, stands beside the endless tea fields, smiling as she gazes at the green land, tinged with the dusk of spring.

She has traveled a thousand miles to take charge of the Wu family's century-old estate.

By chance, she rescues a woman. Unable to bear watching a young woman marry her elderly uncle, she takes her as her wife. But the woman doesn't know the secret: Wu Jingyi not only disguises herself as a man, she's also an Alpha.

Oh, no! A slender, bony hand brushes her lips, and her pheromones surge like a tide, making the Alpha across from her retreat again and again. Wu Jingyi lowers her eyes, her gray pupils shimmering darkly. "Actually, I'm an... Enigma."

Bound by a marriage contract, they face everything together. The longer they walk this road, the more impossible it becomes to part.

"Peonies in the courtyard may be enchanting, but only the peony is truly beautiful."

① A marriage before love, with a reason for the female lead to disguise herself as a man.

② Enigma is a real setting, not something I made up: a rare gender capable of marking Alphas.

③ As always, readers who enjoy blood-type settings can read this. If you don't, there's also a complete story arc that doesn't affect the main plot.

The synopsis has been screenshotted.

Theme: Keep striving through hardship, and be kind and grateful. In the end, happiness will come.