Plucking the Water Lily

Fu Qu is a little airhead. She's slow-witted and speaks slowly. Her "father," the emperor, doesn't like her, and the people in the palace mock her. They even trick her into leaving the palace, and she nearly ends up in a brothel.

Fortunately, she met Chi Yuan. He bought her freedom and took her back to Sang Mountain, where he taught her to read and write, dress and eat. He gave her medicine every day and even gave her a brother.

Her brother protected and cherished her just like Chi Yuan did. Fu Qu thought she was so happy that even when they asked for the blood from her heart, she offered it without hesitation.

That day, she watched a young woman’s faint silhouette behind a screen and listened to Chi Yuan gently coaxing her. She let his dagger pierce her heart.

But he drove the dagger deeper and deeper, until Fu Qu had almost bled out and collapsed on the floor. Her brother and Chi Yuan took her heart's blood to treat the woman behind the screen, never once looking back at her.

Fu Qu was so, so cold. She clutched Chi Yuan's robe and begged him to stop, to heal her wounds and give her medicine as he always had.

But Chi Yuan remained unmoved. After a long while, he told her in a cold, indifferent voice, "A princess of Jiang deserves to die."

In that instant, Fu Qu came to her senses. So the reason he had given her medicine every day, treated her well, and coaxed her into happiness was that he wanted to use her body to cultivate poison, so he could treat the woman he loved by exchanging one life for another.

After all, she was a princess of Jiang. She deserved to die.

Chi Yuan had never cherished her. His love was false, her brother was false, everything was false.

After she died, she was thrown into a mass grave. Only a broken pearl flower remained on Sang Mountain. Several days later, King Beichen, Ye Jing, accidentally found it and finally learned that the younger sister he had searched for over so many years was Fu Qu.

But for the sake of his sworn sister, he had let someone cut out his own sister's heart.

Meanwhile, General Chi Yuan, the man who had wielded the knife to cut out her heart, had already gone mad. He ran all the way to the mass grave, stumbling and falling as he begged Fu Qu to come back to life.

[Reading Guide]

1. The heroine's true identity is a princess of the previous dynasty, not the biological daughter of the dog emperor. Her abduction was permitted by the current emperor. Stop saying it's ridiculous for a princess to be abducted and end up in a brothel! The dog emperor didn't kill her because he thought she was stupid. Don't expect him to treat her like his own daughter!

2. The hero is Qin Chiyuan. For certain reasons, his surname rarely appears in the story, so I won't spoil it for now. King Beichen, Ye Jing, is a relatively important character, so he has a fair amount of scenes, but he's the heroine's brother, not her love interest.

3. The heroine is fundamentally innocent, sweet, and sincere toward others. She is not intellectually disabled, she is not!

4. An outrageously melodramatic, tearjerking revenge story: bitter, spicy, old-fashioned, and drenched in angst.

5. The first part of the blurb is from the heroine's perspective. The hero has loved only the heroine from beginning to end, and his love is unwavering. However, I won't whitewash what the hero and her brother did to her. The harm they inflicted will ultimately come back to haunt them (yes, the ones who deserve to die will die, and the ones who deserve to pay with their lives will do so. This is important!!)

6. The characters are flawed, and each of them goes through a process of growth. They are not perfect characters.

Theme: Do not let hatred blind your heart.