The Heroic Lord and His Delicate Flower

Pei Jin was born in the countryside, with no powerful family to back him, yet he had the wholehearted support of an army of soldiers.

He was determined to seize the realm and claim the imperial throne.

Then he would find the frail concubine who had stabbed him through the chest with a hairpin and gently called him a filthy peasant dog unworthy of love.

He would conquer her, then kill her.

-

Shen Youci was forced to marry Pei Jin as a princess's stand-in.

On their wedding night, he demoted her from wife to concubine.

Pei Jin threw her in among the refugees to learn farming and weaving alongside them. "The princess is extravagant and debauched. She isn't even fit to be my concubine. I, Pei Jin, don't keep hothouse flowers. Only when you give up your princessly airs will you be worthy of becoming my concubine."

Though Pei Jin treated her abominably in every way, she coaxed and tricked him for two years until he fell in love with her. He gave her golden hairpins and fine clothes, and cherished her dearly.

One night, beneath a clear sky and bright moon, Pei Jin stroked her swollen belly. "Youci, do you resent me for how I treated you before?"

"I've never resented you, my husband," Shen Youci replied tenderly. Then she turned and plunged her hairpin into Pei Jin's chest.

"Why?" Pei Jin's starry eyes went blank with disbelief.

She calmly wiped the hairpin clean and slid it into her hair, smiling gently. "Filthy peasant dog, and you thought you could be loved?"

A beauty who could topple kingdoms x a warlord of a chaotic age

A few tips:

1. Both leads are each other's only partners, one-on-one romance. Marriage before love, with a love-hate relationship.

2. The beautiful, alluring heroine slowly lures the hero into falling for her, then strikes.

3. The hero is a ruler in a chaotic age. At first, all he cares about is the realm, and he truly tries to kill the heroine. Later, he falls completely for her.

4. Romance and plot, with a setting inspired by the Han and Wei dynasties.

------------------The following is a preview of an upcoming novel-----------

In the same series: Hothouse Flower x Warlord

"The Husband I Poisoned Has Returned":

Lin Zhiyuan was a delicate flower raised in a rich, sheltered household.

Her slender waist was boneless, her shoulders too weak to bear a burden and her hands too frail to lift one. Even carrying Pei Lian's sword for a little while left blisters on her hands.

When enemy troops attacked, she only held Pei Lian back.

With her slender waist and long legs, she couldn't even run, and fell to the ground in tears.

Pei Lian stabbed at the enemy with one hand and carried her with the other, asking impatiently, "What can you even do?"

Zhiyuan murmured, "I can have your children..."

Pei Lian commanded an army of thousands and was the lord whom the people of Jiangdong revered. He was decisive and ruthless, yet possessed the heart of a sage.

His one flaw, they said, was his wife, who was so frail and delicate that she was unfit to be the wife of a lord who ruled over an entire region.

Pei Lian thought so too.

Zhiyuan was so fragile that he had to keep her safe in the hothouse of his inner quarters.

She mustn't show herself in public and bring shame on him. All she had to do was stay quietly at home and bear his children.

Until his beloved Zhiyuan coaxed him into swallowing poison by calling it candy,

then brought her father and five older brothers to lay waste to his city and raise a flag bearing the character Wei.

As he watched her, frail and timid, look down at him while he coughed blood, she said gently and earnestly, "Your eyes are so wide, it's scary. Close them, husband, and go on your way without making a fuss."

-

Wei Zhiyuan was the royal family's only daughter. Her parents treasured her as their own lives, and her five older brothers doted on her like a precious jewel.

Watching her father grow gaunt from the war, her mother weep day and night, and her brothers return from battle gravely wounded, she decided to sneak off and teach that detestable King of Wu, Pei Lian, a lesson.

Her maid fretted, "The King of Wu can kill ten people with every step. How can a princess possibly teach him a lesson?"

Zhiyuan said, "I heard he was promised in marriage to a girl from the countryside when they were children."

The day Zhiyuan stood before Pei Lian, the sky was gloomy and corpses lay across the land.

The man towered over her like a mountain, bending down with a crushing weight as he scrutinized her, his body radiating bloodlust.

Zhiyuan blushed and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Husband, I've finally found you! Boo-hoo-hoo..."

Theme: The sky is vast and the earth is wide; I make my own worth.