Kill That Slender Horse

[A runaway courtesan who killed her patron x a young top scholar ordered to investigate the case]

Song Yunyao had spent ten years as a courtesan in training. Then a dashing patron bought her.

He treated her with endless care and affection, and she thought she had found a place to belong for the rest of her life.

It wasn't until he offered her to the eunuch in charge of mining taxes that she understood: from beginning to end, she had been nothing but a horse to him.

That night, she killed both her patron and the eunuch with her own hands.

She fled into the boundless dusk, the wind stirring her bloodstained hair.

She would not be a horse.

She would be a person.

-

A year later, a major case involving a miners' uprising in the south and the killing of an imperial mining inspector came to light, shocking the court and the country.

The brilliant young top scholar Shen Buqi was ordered to investigate the case.

After numerous inquiries, the missing courtesan Yao'er became the key to solving it.

With the investigation stalled, he unexpectedly came across villagers brawling in a neighboring village.

The beautiful woman standing alone among the crowd, eyes cold and fierce as she deftly cracked a man's head open, was none other than the girl he had met in the mountains a year earlier.

-

As rain poured down, Song Yunyao fled in panic to a ruined temple in the mountains, where she encountered the third son of the Shen family, Shen Buqi, who had gone into the mountains alone to seek out ancient inscriptions.

Looking at the girl before him, clutching a hairpin, covered in blood, and on the verge of collapse, Shen Buqi smiled gently and asked, "Would you like to try these roasted chestnuts?"

Reader's guide

1. The female lead is not a virgin; the male lead is.

2. The setting is fictional. Please don't nitpick historical details.

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Coming soon: Her Life as a Tusi Chieftain. Visit my author page if you're interested.

[Brave, resolute, rebellious female chieftain x cool, self-restrained, down-and-out civil official]

Chu Yuechuan was born into the Yun clan on the southwestern frontier. Because her father was a Han Chinese man who abandoned his wife and daughter, she lost her right to inherit the chieftaincy and could only serve as a priestess in name only.

At home, elders fought for power and left the clanspeople hungry.

Beyond their borders, feudal lords schemed against them and stirred up conflict with the Han Chinese.

Chu Yuechuan stared at the chieftain's seal, sleepless night after night.

She would take her mother's surname, seize the seal, abolish live sacrifice, move the village, break the clan rules, and find a way forward.

She would lead her people out of the deep mountains and miasma-filled forests, away from backwardness, hunger, and poverty.

The elders called her a dreamer, and Han officials laughed at her for overestimating herself.

Even the young man who loved her asked, "Aman, aren't you afraid the mountain god will punish you?"

Lying in the fields with a stalk of rice between her teeth, she replied without a care:

"If the mountain god really does punish me, then let him strike me down and use me as a sacrificial offering."

Later, a Han Chinese official whose reforms had failed was demoted and sent to the region.

He watched her reckless schemes and ignored her pleas for help.

Yet on a rainy night when a mountain flood struck, he limped toward her one step at a time, raised an umbrella, and sheltered her from the torrential rain and tears.

He said, "If the mountain god really does punish you, I'll face it with you."

-

Xu Henian was born into a family of scholars and officials. He had been a favored son of heaven, destined to top the imperial examinations.

He entered government service at sixteen and spent nine years carrying out reforms alongside his grandfather, only to see his family home confiscated, himself imprisoned, and both his parents take their own lives.

He was lucky to survive, but stripped of his honors and exiled to the Yunnan-Guizhou region, where he could only serve as a low-ranking official dealing with the local chieftains.

On his way to take up his post, a former political rival sent him travel money and clothes, along with a poem by Master Zizhan.

He stared at the line, "Bamboo staff and straw sandals outpace a horse," then looked at his two legs, now completely numb, unable to tell whether the words were mockery or comfort.

Until one day, trapped in a miasma-filled forest, with the Bamon people holding him down at knifepoint, he thought his miserable life might finally come to an end.

Then a whistle sounded in the wind. A young woman from another people, wearing a bridal dress, rode toward him on horseback with the sunset at her back. With a flick of her whip, she snapped the long blade in two, then shouted at him in halting Han Chinese:

"Han Chinese, get up!"

Xu Henian looked at her, trembling all over, and for no reason he could explain, remembered a line from the poem:

"The slanting sun on the hill welcomes me."

-

The woman he loved was a peerless hero. That day, she came riding on auspicious clouds of seven colors and told him to get up.

Note: The leads are both each other's first, with a seven-year age gap. The male lead is disabled at first but will recover later.

Theme: Live with dignity.