Name: After Abandoning the Cold, Aloof Male Lead, I Faked My Death and Vanished
Author: Magpie Metaphor

Synopsis

[Past life: A heterochromatic-eyed princess walking on thin ice X a cold, aloof Celestial Master burdened by vengeance] [Present life: An innocent junior sister who doesn't understand love X a gambling senior brother who loves her but cannot have her]

The whole world believes the Celestial Master's prophecy: A girl with different-colored eyes will bring disaster upon the nation and wreak havoc on the mortal realm.

The Celestial Master's lifelong mission is to find her, punish her, and destroy her.

Unfortunately, I was born with "blind" eyes, and I am the very girl with different-colored eyes he has been searching for.

I guarded myself against him, deceived him, and used him, hoping to make him fall in love with me before he discovered who I was.

That way, perhaps I could stay alive until the day I was able to atone for my sins.

Celestial Masters are always coldhearted. Or perhaps my methods were too clumsy to soften his heart or move him.

Later, I was chosen to be a princess sent away for a political marriage. He could have said no, but he never tried to stop me.

The heavens truly have a cruel sense of humor. It turned out that the day I was to leave was the day I was fated to die. At least I was ready to atone with my life.

The coldhearted Celestial Master was suited to ascending to immortality. I no longer had any lingering feelings for him, and I sincerely hoped his path to immortality would be smooth.

I was sure he would soon forget me, too.

In the great hall, I removed my veil and opened my eyes in public for the first time, revealing their different colors.

As everyone watched in terror, I pulled the crane-shaped hairpin from my hair and plunged it into the side of my neck.

Amid the shimmering light of my blood, I looked at the Celestial Master with my strange eyes. "Why are you surprised, Celestial Master? I'm only giving you what you wanted."

He truly must have hated me. Why else would his expression be so terrifying?

The mortal world is too cruel. I didn't want another life, but whether out of mercy or mockery, fate made me live again.

I forgot my past, cut off all ties to love, and became the newest junior sister in a cultivation sect.

My fellow disciples all said the senior brother was a heaven-blessed prodigy: a solitary, flawless man who was not to be sullied.

But the senior brother was very kind to me. I couldn't accept his kindness without returning it, so I treated him in kind.

Sometimes I couldn't understand his behavior, especially when dark currents stirred in his eyes and danger lurked beneath his gentle facade.

I secretly wondered if he was hiding some unspeakable secret from me.

I didn't understand love, but my senior brother patiently told me it was all right. He would teach me.

When I practiced with someone else, he lost his temper with me for the first time.

He said, "I taught you how to love, not so you could go and love someone else."

Only when I cut open this flawless jade with my own hands did I discover that beneath its pure, unblemished surface, it was covered in scars and stained with blood.

The senior brother's perspective:

The day I saw her again, I was afraid she had forgotten me, and even more afraid she still remembered me.

No one knows what I gave up to bring her back to life.

I gambled that she would love me again. If I won, I could go on living.

I thought I could never lose, but she asked me calmly:

"Senior Brother, what is love?"

Reader's guide:

1. Third-person narration, happy ending, bittersweet romance. Chapter comments are open.

2. "The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost." (G. K. Chesterton) This applies to both the hero and heroine.

[Blurb first posted on 2023/1/30, revised on 2024/12/8, and registered for copyright protection]

Upcoming story blurb begins here

"A Fake Death After the Failed Political Marriage": Love and hate tangled together, followed by a desperate quest to win her back.

Qiu Huaiyi traveled thousands of miles to marry the Crown Prince. She was the Third Prince Yu Yongting's sister-in-law in name,

but by a twist of fate, they defied all propriety and secretly became lovers, meeting in the shadows.

She always thought Yu Yongting had saved her from a life of misery. Whatever he wanted, she was willing to give him.

She indulged his insatiable demands by being accommodating, and accepted his unpredictable moods by being understanding.

Each time they made love, she felt as though she were drowning in the waves, afraid to ask herself the truth:

Was she doing this to survive in the narrow gap between life and death, or because she couldn't bear to leave her family far away in danger?

Or was the truth she feared to examine most the unspoken longing and love she had quietly buried in her heart?

Day after day, Qiu Huaiyi thought Yu Yongting must feel at least some affection and tenderness for her.

Then she heard him speaking with a rising star at court. "You mean the former Crown Prince's widow, my sister-in-law? She's scheming and has little more than a pretty face. What is there to think about?"

She pretended she hadn't heard. She pretended it didn't hurt.

She could keep lying to herself, comforting herself again and again that he said those things to protect her, that he didn't want to hand her over to someone else.

But one rainy night, she accidentally overheard a private conversation.

Yu Yongting said of everything that had happened between them, "I hate everything about the former Crown Prince. I'll destroy everything he had. As for that woman, she was just something to play with. I've barely had my fill..."

So she was nothing but a casualty of a feud between brothers, a trophy he couldn't care less about.

All he had enjoyed was the thrill of humiliating and toying with a plaything.

She had deceived herself, and in return, made a fool of her own innocence.

Then let it end here. She chose to die...

--

Yu Yongting was cold-blooded by nature. He would stop at nothing to claim the position of Crown Prince and saw the former Crown Prince as his greatest threat.

At first, the princess sent for a political marriage pursued him and clung to him, but he treated her like dirt.

Later, when he finally gave in, he still saw her only as an appendage left behind by the former Crown Prince, to be toyed with and humiliated.

He had always looked down on everyone and was well aware of himself. He firmly believed that a cold and heartless man like him would never give anyone even a scrap of his sincerity.

Until the day he heard a group of court officials murmuring, "That princess sent for a political marriage has been dead for quite some time. Her remains were found in a terrible state..."

Utterly absurd!

How could Qiu Huaiyi, who cherished her life and feared pain, simply choose to die?

How could she dare to abandon him just like that?!

Hah. A cheap, laughable trick like this might fool those idiots at most.

But as for him,

he would never believe it.