Moths and Snow Willows

Hang Chenyin marries Shen Zhi, a general of the Imperial Guard.

After their wedding, Shen Zhi doesn't say much, but he is gentle and considerate.

Hang Chenyin simply doesn't like her dull husband and has always treated him coldly.

The following year, no one could have imagined that her honest, unassuming husband would suddenly do something shocking.

He tied himself and Chen Lanshi to the edge of a cliff and made her choose.

The one she didn't love would die.

One was the husband she saw every day, the other a man she'd admired when she was young.

Hang Chenyin chose the latter.

Shen Zhi had always known it would come to this. His smile held endless self-mockery and self-loathing.

"A Yin, if I die, can you stop hating me?"

Hang Chenyin hadn't realized this wasn't a joke, and she panicked.

She rushed forward to stop him, but she was too late.

She watched helplessly as he closed his eyes, leaned backward, and fell into the abyss.

*

Hang Chenyin had always hated Shen Zhi, until he died right in front of her.

*

A month after his death, it felt as if a piece of her heart had suddenly gone missing.

Two months after his death, Chang'an's winter was bitterly cold, and snow blanketed his grave.

Three months after his death, the court found the Fourth Prince, Prince Xin, who had been missing for many years.

Reader's guide:

1. One-on-one romance. The male lead is devoted to the heroine in both body and heart. Happy ending.

2. The male lead grew up away from home, raised by wolves. The heroine is the daughter of a prominent family and dislikes arranged marriages.

3. The heroine pursues the male lead, but there's no angst. A little romantic rivalry. The male lead is a hopeless romantic from beginning to end, and once they fall in love with each other, it's incredibly sweet.

Next story: Sharing a Pillow with Pear Blossoms

Several days after his wedding, Prince Jing finally shares a bed with his wife.

That night, his wife furrows her brow and makes soft, broken sounds, as if she is trying to hold them back. Her voice is unlike her usual one.

He is blind and cannot see his wife's face.

Later, whenever his wife makes those husky, stifled sounds at night, he urges her to relax.

But he may be blind, not deaf.

His wife's voice is wrong.

So many things about her are wrong.

Months later, by a twist of fate, his sight returns.

His beloved wife, who has spent seven days fasting and praying to Buddha, returns home with him.

That night, his wife sits shyly on the eastern bed in a moon-white gauze robe, her eyes full of affection and her manner charmingly coy.

Prince Jing parts the curtains with his fingers and looks at the stranger before him. He doesn't move, his clenched knuckles turning pale.

If the woman before him is the wife he married, then who was the wife he shared a bed with night after night?

*

Prince Jing visits his father-in-law's residence to celebrate his birthday.

His wife's family welcomes him warmly. Only his wife's younger sister can't meet his eyes and seems to want to flee.

But her slender, graceful brows, her delicate nose, her charming lips... They're all just like the woman he held by the waist and caressed night after night in the darkness.

Prince Jing narrows his phoenix eyes and deliberately adjusts the gold-and-jade belt at his waist with long fingers.

His sister-in-law's legs almost give way.

Prince Jing watches her guilty reaction from the side, his gaze driving her into a corner, then suddenly freezes.

Beneath the loose front of her pear-blossom-white robe, her belly is already beginning to swell...

[Reader's notes]

1. The male lead is inexperienced and only loves the heroine.

2. There are other circumstances behind the sister-in-law's consummation of the marriage.

Theme: Make the most of the present