The Beloved Childhood Sweetheart

Xie Shuning thinks her childhood friend, an older boy, has hit his head and gone crazy.

It is not a long story. One day, he fell out of a tree, and when he woke up, it was as if someone else had taken over his body. The boy who used to delight in driving his tutors away now could not put down a book. The one who believed he would never need to work hard as long as his father and brothers were around started training diligently in martial arts.

Xie Shuning: I must still be dreaming. I'm seeing things.

Yet no matter how many times she woke from her sleep, nothing changed.

Pei Yunzheng had become a proper gentleman praised by everyone in the streets and alleys.

And that was not all. The boy who used to feel embarrassed by how much he depended on her now freely offered her the shelter of his wings. He always wanted to eliminate every troublemaker around her, and his methods could be downright ruthless.

He was not her childhood sweetheart. He was crazy.

The day Pei Yunzheng died on the battlefield was one of the rare snowy days in Shengguo in many years.

He closed his eyes. His consciousness slowly drifted away from his snow-covered corpse, but rather than entering the underworld and meeting the Judge of the Dead and King Yama, as the stories said, he remained in the world of the living.

He wandered there year after year.

He saw the culprit responsible for his father and brothers' deaths rise through the ranks until he held power second only to the emperor.

He saw his eldest sister, left to support the Pei household alone after his death, bear the blame for the Pei family's failure to defend the city. She cruelly broke off her engagement to the man who had waited years for her, then wasted away in the crumbling Pei residence.

He also saw the childhood friend who had grown up with him. After he left for the battlefield to avenge his family, she obeyed her father's orders and married a nobleman in the capital. She made a bad match and was mistreated by her husband and his concubines until she died.

When he opened his eyes again, he had returned to his youth, before disaster struck the Pei family.

The treacherous man was still trailing after his father and brothers, fawning over them. His eldest sister was discussing marriage with the man she loved. And the girl he had loved since childhood was standing beneath a tree, waiting for him to toss her some fruit. Her deer-like eyes blinked at him, making the boy's eyes redden and his head spin. He promptly toppled out of the tree.

Everyone said that Second Young Master Pei had fallen out of a tree and gotten his head straightened out. He was no longer the peacock who looked down on others, nor the young man who relied on his father and brothers' military achievements to run wild in the capital.

He reined in his temperament, went to apologize to the tutors he had driven away, and trained in martial arts with his father and brothers every day. He was transformed, as if reborn.

In his previous life, he had said to the girl in pale yellow, "Young Master Qin is a man of good character and renowned talent. You and he, Yaoyao, are the perfect match."

In this life, he slapped away the hand of the beast in fine clothes, who had pretended to help the girl, and pulled her into his arms. He leveled his sword at the faithless man. "Who do you think you are, daring to touch her?"

After years of killing on the battlefield, his nature was no longer as pure as it had been. He changed little by little, and so he could not tell how brutal each of his attacks had become.

Until one day, a pair of jade-white hands brushed his brows and lashes. Her voice was gentle, her gaze full of pity.

"It must have been so hard all these years, hasn't it?"

The tears he had held back since boyhood fell at once.

*The male lead is reborn. In the early part of his life, he is a proud and carefree young boy. Later, and after being reborn, his experiences make him obsessive and cold, though he knows how to act polite.

*As the title suggests, the main story is about spoiling his childhood friend until she becomes the most envied young lady in the capital. Whoever objects or trips her up gets beaten. It follows a face-slapping route, but in truth, the childhood friend is the one who saves the boy.

*The childhood friend is no self-sacrificing saint. Saving him does not mean making him give up his desire for revenge, but helping him open his heart.

*A pair of star-crossed lovers, but together they are oh so sweet.

Cover artist: Shuimo Danqing-Paigu Xiaobao

Theme: Longing remains only on the lilac branches and at the tips of the cardamom shoots