Name: Dream Collector
Author: Autumn Is in Full Swing

Synopsis

My historical romance next door, My Fiancé's Personality Suddenly Changed, and my contemporary romance, The Camellia Speaks, are open for preorders. Please add them to your collection! (Throws a tantrum and rolls around)

In the ninth year of Yonghe, a string of cases in which bandits abducted brides left the people in fear, yet the court did nothing.

It was only when news arrived that Ye Qing, the Fourth Prince's Consort, had been captured by bandits on her way to her wedding and forced to die in their stronghold that the emperor was finally roused to action.

They say the emperor wept bitterly and posthumously appointed Ye Qing's father, Ye Lingyun, Grand Tutor to the Crown Prince.

And after that, nothing more was done.

No one knew that Ye Qing had woken inside her coffin. She pounded on it in near despair, but all she got in return was her father's rebuke for being childish, after which he had the coffin nailed shut even more tightly.

At that moment, Ye Qing's heart died completely, and she grieved over the absurdity of the marriage in which she had been made a substitute bride.

Before she closed her eyes, she had sworn that if she survived, she would seek justice for herself and her mother.

When she opened her eyes again, she had been chosen by the City of Wraiths and become one of its four assassins, Que Yue. With a new identity, she appeared once more in Nan Jing.

Three years later, the Empress Dowager controlled the government of Nan Jing.

The conflict between the emperor and empress dowager had intensified, while the emperor's inhumane system of slavery brought the people nothing but misery.

The Crown Prince, however, was vehemently opposed to slavery. The emperor flew into a rage and ordered Que Yue to take his head, while spreading the news that the Crown Prince was plotting a rebellion.

They say Que Yue did not shed a single tear when she killed her own father.

They say she presented the City of Wraiths with two fake heads before making her escape.

Some say it was because Que Yue was cold-blooded and merciless. After all, she had shown no mercy even to her own father.

Others claim that she had long been conspiring with the Crown Prince to rebel.

In short, no one knows the real reason.

On a night of torrential rain, she collapsed inside Jingchen Temple.

The backlash from the parasite the City of Wraiths' lord had planted in her left her in excruciating pain. This was the punishment the City of Wraiths reserved for traitors.

In a daze, Que Yue seemed to see the figure of a man. It looked like Chu Shutong, the hostage prince of Northern Qi.

To her surprise, she discovered that his blood could suppress the poison from her parasite.

What a godsend.

She was determined to leave the City of Wraiths and the hypocritical Nan Jing behind.

[Gentle, long-suffering hostage prince from an enemy kingdom x cold, beautiful, unhinged female assassin]

Que Yue always thought that once she found the Divine Jade Token and got rid of the hateful parasite, she would retreat to the mountains and live a quiet life, far from worldly strife.

Little did she know that from the day she became a substitute bride, she had entered a vast game of chess.

And Que Yue had long since become the center of this struggle for power.

Who is the one pulling the strings?

--------------------The following are upcoming novels

The cries of the dead rose and fell along the bridge over the Nai River, but my heart was calm, making me seem out of place there.

“Miss, is there truly no one or anything you cannot bear to leave behind?”

I froze for a moment, and my thoughts drifted involuntarily to Xie Changzhou.

At first, I always thought there would be plenty of time. I even gave him my chance to become a god, but in the hundred years that followed, I still could not melt his heart of colored glass.

As I lay dying, I wrote him thirteen letters, only asking Xie Changzhou to save my life with Snow Coldweed. But in the end, things still did not go as I had hoped.

*

A piece of astonishing news spread through the cultivation world today.

A new god had arrived from the Upper Realm, the first high god to ascend with the spiritual roots of a mortal.

Strangely, flesh and blood had grown around this high god's heart of colored glass.

In full view of everyone, he gouged out his own right eye, then leapt from the Immortal Execution Platform to undergo tribulation and find his wife.

Xie Changzhou loved all living things, and he loved one person, too. He had even decided to give up his chance to become a god and spend his life with her, but in the end, she did not live to see it.

His heart of colored glass meant that he was destined to know neither love nor affection, and he would never shed a tear.

But on the day she died, he wept bitterly, tears falling in great drops.

*

By then, I had already been reincarnated.

Though my spiritual roots were terrible, at least my parents loved me, and I had a refined, gentle fiancé.

One day, I seemed to notice that my fiancé's right eye had suddenly grown cloudy.

Had he... suddenly gone blind?

Endless rain fell over Tianshan, and the lanterns cast wavering shadows.

His large hand gripped my chin as he pressed close to me, kissing me with near brutality.

“You are not allowed to marry anyone else.”

A coppery sweetness slowly spread through my mouth. I instinctively shoved him away and glared at him furiously.

But he only tugged at the corner of his mouth and said with a faint laugh, “Do you know what terrible thing I'm going to do next?”