As Cold as Ice

My new novel, Abandoning the Phoenix Pair, is now available. Please add it to your reading list! (A wife-winning chase within a marriage, driving a cold and aloof crown prince to the brink) As crown princess, Pei Yun believed she had done everything properly and had nothing to reproach herself for. But in her thirteenth year in the Eastern Palace, she fell into an icy lake and watched her husband swim toward another woman. Suddenly, she felt the suffocating tedium of a life constrained by rules and status. When she opened her eyes again, she was six years in the past. She wanted a different life. She wanted to make things right. She wanted to avert the disaster that would befall her mother and brother, preserve her family's glory, and save her child from dying young... But that cold, dull man was so stiff and proper that even in bed he insisted on following the rules. She was done catering to him! * The Crown Prince, Li Changye, was upright and composed. Raised by the late empress, he had always placed the greatest importance on propriety. His crown princess was just as mindful of decorum. She handled everything with care, kept the Eastern Palace in perfect order, and treated him with respectful obedience. Li Changye was busy with state affairs. Though they rarely spoke, he believed they were both reasonably content with one another. Then one day, his reserved, rule-abiding crown princess suddenly changed. She became more understanding and considerate toward others, but increasingly impatient with him. Even on the night they were to consummate their marriage, she frowned, cried out in pain, and looked at him with undisguised disgust. Li Changye froze. For the first time, the proud man felt his self-respect take a serious blow... #I thought we were perfectly in tune. Turns out she can't stand me. 1. One couple, one-to-one romance, both leads' first relationship. 2. If it's not for you, please don't read. Let's all be happy. Take a look at my upcoming novel, Abandoning the Phoenix Pair. (A husband groveling to win back his wife, a lofty beauty driven to the brink) ---Shen Yanzhi, I don't want you anymore. When Meng Shu was sixteen, she brought her gravely ill mother to the capital for treatment. With nowhere else to turn, she sought help from the Shen family, once close friends with her grandfather. By chance, this brought to light an old marriage agreement between their families. The Shens valued their promises and wanted to fulfill the elders' wishes, so they arranged for Shen Tuo, the illegitimate son of the second branch, to marry Meng Shu. But after an accident, Meng Shu was left with a scandalous reputation and married Shen Chou, the legitimate second son of the first branch, who had just passed the highest imperial examination with top honors. Her mother-in-law despised her, the world looked down on her, and her husband was indifferent. Every day of married life was torture for Meng Shu. In her third year of marriage to Shen Chou, a fire broke out in the south courtyard. Meng Shu returned to the night she had been set up and lost her virtue to Shen Chou. * Shen Chou opened his eyes and found himself three years in the past. He watched a figure hurry out of his bedroom. He knew it was his wife, Meng Shu. In his previous life, she had died in a fire. This time, he had already decided to marry her with all the proper rites and make her his bride in a grand ceremony. But before he could send a matchmaker, Meng Shu went to Shouchang Pavilion to pay her respects to his grandmother. Sitting in the main hall, he thought that since they had already been husband and wife in this life, she must have come to reject her engagement to Shen Tuo. As soon as she spoke, he could find a way to ask for her hand. Meng Shu did indeed take out the marriage contract. She knelt before his grandmother, her gaze resolute. “This junior knows her status is too low to be a suitable match for the Shen family. I ask the Old Madam to cancel our families' engagement, so that we may each go our separate ways in peace.” Reader's guide: 1. One couple, one-to-one romance, both leads' first relationship. 2. Old-school melodrama warning!!!! If it's not for you, please don't read. 3. The prescriptions mentioned in the story are entirely fictional. Do not use them as reference. Upcoming: A Beautiful Concubine Becomes a Wife After five years away at war, Song Siyan returned victorious to the capital and only then remembered he had a wife he had met just once. The war had been urgent, and his family had hurriedly chosen a woman to marry him so he would have an heir. Song Siyan could no longer recall what she looked like. He only vaguely remembered a thin, delicate fifteen-year-old girl, shy and timid, who had cried bitterly beneath him on their wedding night. Not long afterward, a letter arrived from the capital saying that Lady Shen had asked to be put aside. Song Siyan understood that his mother had looked down on Lady Shen's humble origins. Since she had waited for him for five years, he decided he would offer her some compensation when he returned, then part with her on good terms. On the way, the army passed through Lingzhou and was caught in a heavy rain. The troops stopped to rest, and the prefect of Lingzhou presented him with a curvaceous beauty. * With the three hundred taels her mother-in-law had given her, Shen Jia happily left the Song household, which had tormented her for five years, and headed south to live with her aunt. But she ran into bandits along the way and was eventually offered to the newly enfeoffed Marquis of Yongding. Drugged, Shen Jia blushed like a cloud at sunset, her body slick with sweat. Looking at the handsome, dignified man before her, she hesitated for a long time before reaching out to her former husband for help. Shen Jia knew Song Siyan hadn't recognized her. Afterward, she claimed to be a widow who had been abducted, and wept as she begged him to let her go home. At first, Song Siyan agreed. Later, he changed his mind... * Unwilling to return to the Song household, that den of wolves, Shen Jia waited until they were nearly at the capital and fled one night. She had barely made it a mile when Song Siyan and his men blocked her way. “Where are you going, my wife, carrying my child?” Shen Jia trembled as her identity was exposed. “My lord, we are divorced.” The man's eyes darkened. “I never agreed!” Theme: Fear not the darkness. Move forward with courage.