Yinyuan

[Free bonus chapters in my collection~] The elders say that in ancient mountains, foxes help people tie the threads of fate. Song Shiqing was born under an unlucky star and suffered from endless illness and misfortune as a child. No one knew where his mother had found the person who told her that if she let his hair grow long and raised him as a girl until adulthood, he would be able to evade disaster. When he turned eighteen, Song Shiqing cut off the troublesome hair. No one around him thought anything of it. At first, nothing happened. Soon, he began having nightmares again and again. In his dreams, he was called “Madam.” The woman who dressed him had a smiling fox’s face. The maid who trembled as she presented a wedding gift held a stillborn baby on a tray. His “husband,” whose face he could never see, would tenderly kiss the rope marks on his wrists until they bled, and force him to caress a cold, bulging belly. He was taken away at his grandmother’s funeral and made to experience an outrageously bizarre “wedding.” Even after he managed to escape, that cold, clammy feeling remained vivid in his memory. He couldn’t break free of it, and there was nowhere to hide. Song Shiqing was nearly driven mad. He couldn’t bring himself to break up with his real-life boyfriend. Only by Xie Siheng’s side could he find a moment of security. But one day, he suddenly realized that Xie Siheng seemed… uncannily like the person from his dreams. A gong who’s younger than the uke but insists on being called big brother, thinks he’s straight but has already bent into a pretzel in everyone else’s eyes, and will merge with the dream husband after the wedding × an unlucky, sweet-tempered beauty who gets frightened and flirted with every day, yet doesn’t realize he’s flirting or being flirted with [Some folk customs are my own inventions. Please read this as fiction] [Completed works in my collection] A Little Thing Like Having an Evil God for a Lover; I’m Done Playing Dating Sims in This Life Coming soon: Whoever Wants to Be a Celestial Master Can Do It In the first year after Gu Qing was adopted, his adoptive parents took him back to their hometown. The elders said he wasn’t their own child and didn’t count as family, so he should go wherever it was cool. Gu Qing went to the coolest place in the village. It was where the village used to drown adulterers in cages. No one knew how many doomed lovers had sunk there. The place was called the Greenwave Pool. Gu Qing didn’t think much of it. He picked up a stick and used it to fish for little fish near the bank. As he fished, he happened to look up. Far out in the deep water, he could just make out a huge, coiled body, like a snake. … That night, a heavy rain fell over the village, and thunder rumbled like the bellow of an ox. The old folks at home looked grim and hid in their rooms, chanting prayers to Buddha. The next day, the villagers said the mud beside the Greenwave Pool was covered in long grooves. It looked like a dragon was making its way to the river, so they had to throw pigs and sheep into the pool. Gu Qing thought they were all crazy. There was a snake that huge in the pool beside the village. Were they blind? Had they really never noticed it all these years? But an adopted child had no say in the matter, so Gu Qing could only follow his parents to the “dragon sacrifice.” That day, he stood at the back of the crowd, listlessly watching everyone sing and dance as they tossed livestock into the pool. “, It’s not a river dragon.” A voice suddenly spoke behind him. Gu Qing turned around and saw an exceptionally tall man standing there. When their eyes met, the man gave him a sinister smile. “What’s imprisoned in this pool is a real dragon.” “Probably a hundred years ago, some meddlesome Daoist cut off all four of a dragon’s claws, then drove nine soul-suppressing nails into the bottom of the pool to force him to keep this place blessed with good weather and bountiful harvests.” “Over time, the nails grew loose, and the dragon’s tail would occasionally lash onto the shore. The elders who knew the truth feared punishment, so they established this ‘dragon sacrifice’ custom.” After he finished speaking, he stared ominously at Gu Qing, as if waiting for his reaction. … Gu Qing: … He must be the village idiot Grandma Liu had mentioned, the one who’d been crazy for twenty years. How pitiful. Theme: Love can overcome every hardship in the world.