A Long Dream Comes True

[0622 The novel My Camellia Bleeds for Love [Entertainment Industry] is now underway. You're welcome to add it to your favorites~]

Reader's guide:

1. One-on-one romance, both leads have only ever been with each other. Teacher-and-student upbringing, very much a coming-of-age story, with her raised from the age of four.

2. Upcoming novels: My Camellia Bleeds for Love (older woman-younger man romance in the entertainment industry) and One Glance Topples a City (modern romance, second chance). Their blurbs are at the bottom.

3. Best enjoyed alongside its completed companion novel, The Mandarin Duck Decree.

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She found her, raised her, and fell in love with her.

Like morning dew awaiting the sun, he was the spring sun she would look up to all her life.

As her master, he once arranged three betrothals for her, but every one fell through. The world thought it was coincidence. Only a handful knew that each night he arranged a match for her, he would get drunk by the icy riverbank, tossing and turning all night, distraught and beside himself.

-

On a snowy night, a four-year-old girl sold as a child bride escaped from hell. She thought she would freeze to death in the street and be buried beneath the snow.

But someone took her in, giving her a drink of water, a piece of cloth to wear, and a roof to shelter her from the rain. He named her Xiyi.

In Hengxi, a small town south of the Huai River, Xiyi lived with her benefactor for six years. Then he took her to the capital, where she became the disciple of Han Ji, the top scholar in the imperial examinations.

She moved into a spacious courtyard, the kind she had never dared dream of before. People who saw her sometimes respectfully called her "Miss Han." Her childhood days spent serving her father and brothers at home, and the time she was sold to another family for five strings of cash, felt like a distant lifetime.

The days when she could shamelessly act spoiled in Han Ji's lap, wrap her arms around his neck, and cling to him were all snuffed out by the words "the proper bounds between master and disciple."

She could not return to Hengxi, and Han Ji would never say he loved her again.

-

But Xiyi would never know that when she was sixteen, on a heady, intimate night, the charcoal fire made the whole room stiflingly warm. She slept so deeply that she fell off the soft, comfortable couch and into the arms of the man sleeping on the floor, yet still did not wake.

Her tears from a dream fell on Han Ji's face, and her dreamlike kisses found his lips. She remembered none of it, and, of course, did not remember that...

He did not push her away.

-

Later, she once went barefoot, sword in hand, hair loose, into the palace hall, all to demand justice for him. But rumors spread throughout the city, and everyone condemned them.

Their illicit relationship as master and disciple violated human morality and defied heaven's will. The world despised them and treated them with scorn, and they had no choice but to part.

But Xiyi believed that in Han Ji's benevolent heart, the heart that loved all under heaven, ninety-nine percent belonged to her.

Unfortunately, amid a world-shaking game of strategy and exquisite schemes, she was fortunate enough to become the most important false phoenix and fake dragon in the game, ascending to the highest throne in the Ninth Heaven.

With the emperor's sword in her hand, no one dared ask whether their love was a match.

A saintly man who loves only one person x the wildcat he raised himself

------------Upcoming novel: My Camellia Bleeds for Love------------

I favor camellias that bleed, fierce and intense, beautiful even in their final moments.

A brilliant but fleeting shooting star in the pop music world, the red camellia countless people missed: Camellia, Xuan Ming. After seven years away, she finally returned as a mentor on a survival show.

As a legendary senior and a miracle of the competition, all she had to do was show her face to bring back memories of her glorious past.

Countless hit songs, the Best Supporting Actress award for The Sky Falls, and The Hanging, her final film that earned her an acting award nomination: Her achievements were remarkable.

Her own take on all this:

"It's just nostalgia talking. Seven or eight years ago, people wanted to chew my bones to dust. Now they put up a couple of old photos and wail like they're at my grave. Was my blood not intense enough back then?"

As she joked, a cigarette rested between her fingers. It was late in February, with heavy dew and a deep chill, and she looked as if she might soon ascend to immortality.

Only Li Qiucheng saw her like that.

He heard the stories of her romances, and he heard of her blood and tears.

He silently thought, I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry.

I came too late.

-

Li Qiucheng of Juxing Media: in simple terms, a mute dance performer and a pretty boy there to keep someone company.

His screen time across several episodes amounted to less than three minutes. He had already made peace with earning a little attention before packing up and going home. He never expected someone to find him curled up in a corner of the terrace during the first snow on Hong Island in January.

Xuan Ming sighed and reached out to him:

"Fight for yourself, for once."

For the sake of that snow, Li Qiucheng fought his way to first place, broke out with tens of thousands of reposts, changed his fate against all odds, and won a sky full of confetti of his own.

He basked in the limelight, sharing his thoughts with thousands.

At the mentors' table, Xuan Ming applauded him with a faint smile, her hair and makeup immaculate.

She and he agreed never to speak of it.

Until Li Qiucheng was worthy of taking her hand beneath the eyes of the watching world.

"I have my camellia. I've waited many years for her. I wonder if today she'll bloom for me, even for a moment?"

Three years later, these were the final words in Li Qiucheng's Best Supporting Actor acceptance speech.

The audience erupted, while Xuan Ming could only sigh.

She had met a lovesick fool who wagged his tail for her alone and refused to be shaken off.

She might as well accept him. What else could she do?

1. Cool, elegant dance mentor x devoted younger man, a loyal puppy

2. Age gap of eight years or more

------------Upcoming novel: One Glance Topples a City------------

"She never deleted Ren Xuanhe's contact information, or even blocked him from her social media. He did the same, keeping up appearances as if they had never been entangled.

They both knew where the other was rushing about, but Wang Hai was so vast that there was never room for a chance encounter between former lovers."

Her parents divorced, her family fell apart, and she had to live under someone else's roof. After all that, Roujia's unlucky life was capped off by failing the college entrance exam. With no other choice, she traveled thousands of kilometers and arrived in the great city of Pingjing, where she met Ren Xuanhe, who also came from Wang Hai.

He asked if she was a junior from Qingyang.

Roujia nodded in astonishment, and heard him laugh warmly to ease her awkwardness.

"I've already added you, remember? Xuan Ci Hui He, Ren Xuanhe."

Amid the clamoring crowd, her heart stirred.

-

Three-tenths of Wang Hai's glitz belonged to the Ren family.

Beneath all that splendor lay plenty of romantic scandals, but the Ren family's young master was the most aloof exception.

For more than twenty years, his only tender romance came under such immense pressure that it faded away with the snow.

The year Ren Xuanhe went his separate way from her, Pingjing was buried in heavy snow. He thought with deep regret that Shen Roujia was a brave butterfly, but one destined to break her wings and fall.

When he silently turned her down, she didn't ask why. She simply left on her own.

Ren Xuanhe wanted to tell her that his family had come to Pingjing to see him, that they had arranged for him to go abroad and get engaged.

But in the end, he said nothing. He could only watch her back shrink into a thin line.

When they met again, she had changed her surname and was now called Cui Roujia.

The door to her cousin's office was not quite shut. Through the gap, he could glimpse two people kissing.

The slender figure reclining on the sofa was so familiar it hurt to look at.

Ren Xuanhe thought, This fate should have been mine. Whether I have to drag her back by force or turn around in a wretched state, she's mine.

Even if Shen Roujia had never been part of Wang Hai's glittering lights.

Reader's guide:

1. An unconventional Cinderella x young master romance. Both leads are inexperienced at first, but later the heroine is not, while the hero still is.

2. A second-chance romance. The hero goes completely off the rails.

Theme: Persevere through every setback