Secretly Carrying the Chief Minister's Baby

In her previous life, Li Xiaoning was the daughter of a wealthy merchant. After marrying into a duke's household, she was despised for her lowly background and suffered her husband's and in-laws' disdain at every turn. In the end, she met a tragic fate, losing her head.

Living a second life, she thought, To hell with being a marquis's wife. Whoever wants the role can have it. This time, she only wants to live life on her own terms.

So, under the pretext of recovering from an illness, she moved to the countryside, hundreds of miles from the capital, relying on memories from her previous life. There was a young tutor here, dressed in a blue robe and looking as free and graceful as a jade tree. His looks, physique, and learning made him the perfect candidate to father a child.

But after observing him for days, she found him proud and aloof, difficult to approach.

A bright idea struck Li Xiaoning. She pretended to be a helpless orphan girl and managed to move into the tutor's home.

The tutor was indeed in the prime of his youth, but he was full of talk about propriety and morality, so upright it seemed excessive.

Li Xiaoning had to use every trick in the book before she finally seduced him into sharing a bed with her. One day, while they were lost in passion, the man said he had urgent business to attend to and would be gone for a while. Once he returned, he would marry her.

Li Xiaoning touched her slightly rounded belly and smiled as she nodded. "All right." The next day, she left him a generous sum of money and disappeared.

Who could have guessed that two years later, at a banquet, the "tutor" she'd seduced and abandoned would have transformed into Xie Yu, the young chief minister who held all the power at court?

Li Xiaoning was stunned.

What happened to the poor, down-on-his-luck tutor? And wasn't the child hers alone?

The man glared darkly at the toddler playing by her feet. His voice was stern. "Under the laws of this dynasty, fraudulently entering a marriage and deceiving someone into having a child are both punishable by death. Yaoyao, would you like me to remind you who this child's father is? Hmm?"

From the male lead's perspective:

When the emperor ordered him to conceal his identity and investigate a corruption case implicating countless people, Xie Yu, the chief minister, met a beautiful woman from a tragic background. He outwardly dismissed her repeated advances without a second thought, but privately looked down on her shameless behavior. Later, however, his feelings gradually changed. Just as he had grown accustomed to her and promised to marry her, she vanished into thin air.

He searched high and low, but couldn't find her.

For the first time, the usually cold-hearted Xie Yu experienced heartbreak.

One day, two years later, he was invited to visit a friend's home. Through the layers of curtains in the courtyard, he caught sight of his "vanished" wife, smiling as she helped a toddler take his first unsteady steps. The child's face was unmistakably a miniature version of his own when he was young.

Realizing he'd been toyed with and used to father a child, Xie Yu nearly ground his teeth to dust.

This blurb was written on April 3, 2023, and an image has been posted on Weibo.

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