As Coldhearted as She Is [Reborn]

[Originally titled Reborn: Let Us Revel, a mad villainess x a fallen immortal.]

1.

Everyone said Yu Ruo was blessed. Her parents doted on her, her elder brother protected her, and even her husband was a first-rate gentleman. After she died, he remained devoted to her and never remarried, making countless young women envious.

It was just a pity that Yu Ruo was not blessed with good fortune. She died in a fire at a young age.

Sitting in a mansion of carved beams and painted rafters, Yu Ruo listened as her maid vividly recounted what was happening outside. She smiled through her tears.

The adopted elder brother whom everyone praised as gentle as the breeze and bright as the moon, and who had always cared for her, tenderly lifted her face. He licked the tears from the corner of her eye and asked in a low, intimate voice, "Why are you crying, A Ruo? Don't you like this mansion?"

Yu Ruo was like an exquisitely carved wooden doll in his grasp. All she could do was lie obediently in his arms and gently shake her head.

2.

Yu Ruo ran away twice.

Each time, her adopted brother found her.

She begged her parents for help, but her letters vanished without a trace. She begged her husband for help, but his carriage rolled on without stopping, passing right by her.

Behind her, her adopted brother's voice rose like a ghost's whisper: "Have you finally given up this time, A Ruo?"

Yu Ruo's face went ashen.

The second daughter of the Yu family was indeed still alive, but everyone thought she was dead.

Perhaps only by truly dying could she escape this gilded cage.

3.

When Yu Ruo opened her eyes again, she was seventeen.

She was dressed in a phoenix coronet and bridal robes, happily waiting for her childhood sweetheart to come marry her.

In another month, the fire would sweep through and turn her from the Yu family's second daughter and the Xu family's principal wife into her adopted brother's hidden concubine, locked away in an outer residence.

Neither her husband's family nor her birth family could protect her, and neither would.

Yu Ruo refused to repeat the past. She would escape.

Her adopted brother, Yu Xingxue, was the emperor's seventh son. For various reasons, he had been raised in the Yu household and become her elder brother.

The year she married, Yu Xingxue reclaimed his place in the imperial family and rose high in the emperor's favor. Only the crown prince, born to a more exalted station, could outshine him and stand against him.

The crown prince was carefree and charming, yet devoutly believed in Buddhism and Taoism. He often secluded himself for spiritual cultivation at Waguan Temple.

Yu Ruo carefully plotted and dressed herself to the nines, arranging several chance encounters with the crown prince.

But the crown prince was detached and desireless, unmoved by her.

With nothing left to lose, Yu Ruo resorted to a forbidden drug.

The desireless crown prince's eyes reddened, his expression taut with restraint. Smiling, Yu Ruo draped her arms around his neck and breathed sweetly into his ear: "My husband doesn't want me. Your Highness, would you take me instead?"

Yu Ruo didn't know that in the fourth year of her previous life, the crown prince, who had always been detached and carefree, would ascend the throne amid bloodshed. The once-favored seventh prince would be struck down by his own hand, leaving no remains.

And in the new emperor's bedchamber, amid incense smoke, an unmarked memorial tablet stood in the desolate, empty room year after year.

He entered the mortal world and stained himself with sin to save her. He tapped the wooden fish and recited the sutras to redeem her. She was the one he loved and hated, the obsession that bound him to the mortal world., Pei Lanyuan

Reader's Guide:

1. A melodramatic love triangle. The heroine is a little spoiled and a little mad; the hero is a desireless immortal who falls into the mortal world.

2. The heroine only wants to protect herself and take revenge. At first, she loves no one, including the hero, but the hero is absolutely devoted to her.

3. A freewheeling practice novel.

Theme: Defiant resistance