The Jade Paper Empress

I'm coming back! This story is delicious. If you add it to your reading list, I'll keep writing.

Watch a crazed emperor mistake his beloved for a stand-in, then go mad trying to win his wife back.

Blurb:

Qiu Rou is a jade paper, kept captive in the Floating Dream Garden by its painter for ten years, with no freedom of her own.

Qiu Rou hates the painter for depriving her of family and friends, and leaving her unable to understand love.

She wants to experience a real life.

On the first day of her escape from the painter, Qiu Rou finds a man.

The man is blind and mad, repays her kindness with betrayal, then leaves without a word, breaking Qiu Rou's heart.

One day, with nothing but a strip of white silk covering her eyes, Qiu Rou lies on the new emperor's jade desk.

She is forced to become jade paper again, her life imprisoned in darkness once more.

The new emperor seized the throne by murdering his brother. Bloodthirsty and brutal, he becomes the person Qiu Rou hates most in the world.

Only later does Qiu Rou learn that the painter, the blind man, and the emperor are all the same person.

But the emperor does not know that the jade paper he raised from childhood did not die.

He also does not know that the country woman who saved him from danger is the very person he has been longing to find.

And he will never know that the stand-in he keeps tied to his bedside and humiliates day after day is the beloved he cherishes in his heart.

The emperor regrets it.

But by then, Qiu Rou hates him beyond measure.

A little scene:

After finishing a painting, Xia Zhuxiao seals it with his new name. "Rou'er, I'll take your surname as my given name. Even if I die, we'll be bound together for all eternity."

Qiu Rou pulls off the white silk blindfold. "Don't be ridiculous. How will you silence the officials who remonstrate with you?"

Xia Zhuxiao gently kisses the red plum in the painting and says dotingly, "You don't like me killing people, so I'll cut out their tongues instead."

A sweet, innocent little rabbit x a crazed, menacing wolf

Reader's guide:

Everyone is losing their minds

A wife-chasing crematorium

The beloved becomes a stand-in

A possessive, coercive romance

Coming soon: Counting Down to Our Wedding Night, a light, sweet romance with just a touch of angst. The title was rejected, so it's been changed to Seven-Seven Countdown.

The leads are bickering rivals who marry first and fall in love later.

Lu Tingling is clever and eccentric, and her family's ancestral funeral goods shop is famous far and wide.

Whenever someone needs to arrange a funeral, they specifically ask her to prepare the body.

She makes her living from the dead and has seen all kinds of things in the world. Her lifelong wish is to live a long life, free from illness and disaster, and die peacefully of old age.

Lu Tingling is also a miser. By the time she reaches marriageable age, she has already saved up her dowry.

She's even made a deal with the matchmaker: no spendthrifts, no one in poor health, and no cowards afraid of ghosts.

Qiao Beike, the only son of the town's richest family, has been the sole heir for ten generations.

He was born sickly, and several times came close to dying.

The Qiao family caters to his every whim, spoiling him into a willful, extravagant brat.

They cover the Qiao residence from hall to courtyard with talismans for his sake. They are so afraid of ghosts that it's in their bones.

Lu Tingling can't stand him, but she never expected that on her coming-of-age day, she'd have to prepare his body for burial.

What an ill omen!

But what she never expected was that Qiao Beike would rise from the dead in the funeral hall, pull her into his coffin in front of everyone, and kiss her.

An even worse omen!!

That very day, the funeral hall becomes a wedding hall, and Lu Tingling somehow ends up married to the resurrected Qiao Beike. They have to consummate the marriage within forty-nine days, or he'll turn to ashes and vanish.

Looking at the man before her, nearly at death's door, Lu Tingling swears she won't give in.

If she can just hold out for forty-nine days, Qiao Beike will die and she'll be free.

From then on, the Qiao family takes turns trying to bring them together, asking every day, "Did you do it last night?"

But who could have guessed what would happen later...

Qiao Beike not only survives, but he and Lu Tingling switch places.

For every day they don't consummate the marriage, Lu Tingling has to borrow another day of life.

Lu Tingling doesn't want to die young. She pins him between her arms and threatens, "Are you going to consummate this marriage or not?"

Qiao Beike grins triumphantly. "You're the one who forced me." Then he takes charge.

A chatterbox mortician who loves money more than life x a tsundere, scheming spendthrift

*A funeral goods shop rents out funeral equipment and arranges processions and ceremonial music.

Theme: Love yourself first, then love others.