Plucking the Flower from the High Peak

[Over 300 saves and I'll start posting. If you like it, please add it to your collection!] [The blurb, written in July 2023, has been screenshotted on Weibo.]

Bai Wan is the most insignificant passerby cannon fodder in a novel.

Weak-willed and dull, of humble birth, neither talented nor beautiful: that is how outsiders see Bai Wan. In the original story, she marries up to Prince Wei, who cherishes her as a treasure, and she lives a happy life.

That would once have seemed like the best possible ending for her.

But it no longer does for Bai Wan. At the flower-viewing gathering, she catches a distant glimpse of the beautiful, spirited crown prince, and falls in love with him.

The crown prince is upright, disciplined, virtuous, and wise, a bright moon hanging high in the sky. The thought of him spending his life with another woman drives Bai Wan mad with jealousy.

*

Three months later, a great incident rocks the capital: the crown prince vanishes without a trace, and at the same time, a concubine daughter of the Bai family dies of illness.

She was such an insignificant figure that no one pays her any mind, apart from Prince Wei, who mourns her sorrowfully.

*

Xie Fusheng is chaste and detached, devoted to his official duties. His life's wish is for the people of Great Zhao to never again be displaced, and to live in peace and prosperity.

Until Bai Wan appears and completely ruins the life he had planned.

She is obsessive, vicious, and even mentally ill. Because she loves him, she kidnaps him and imprisons him in a mountain village, forcing him to marry her.

This miserable life lasts two years. Just as he grows accustomed to it, the royal family finds him, and the madwoman is imprisoned and tortured, just as he had hoped.

Xie Fusheng writes the edict in his own hand. As he listens to the eunuch vividly describe Bai Wan's wretched condition in prison, he changes the sentence he had written, death by a thousand cuts, to execution by waist severing, then changes it again to death by poisoned wine, leaving her corpse intact.

Xie Fusheng knows Bai Wan is insane, yet he still visits her before she dies. Covered in wounds, she looks at him with none of her former loving tenderness. She curses him to die a horrible death, then drinks the poison without hesitation.

Xie Fusheng finds it ridiculous, but when he sees Bai Wan draw her last breath, he feels no satisfaction at having avenged himself, nor any sense of relief.

*

Many years later, Xie Fusheng ascends the throne. He still holds no selection of consorts and names no empress, until at a palace banquet, the moment he sees Prince Wei's consort, his reason completely crumbles.

This woman, whom he once swore was a nightmare and wanted to devour alive, is also the wife he now yearns for with all his heart, the one he misses beyond measure.

A dark story, with a genuinely mentally ill heroine.

If you like it, please add it to your collection.

The blurb has been screenshotted on Weibo.

Theme: She is obsessive and vicious, but she loves you