Plucking the Moon Branch (Reborn)

◎ Resilient sweet girl x lovestruck young man | reborn woman x transmigrated man

◎ Mutual salvation / fated entanglement / a touch of mystery

On her wedding day, Jiang Xu never saw her childhood sweetheart and betrothed. Instead, she was used to settle a gambling debt and lost to Gu Yunhuai, a man notorious for his wicked reputation.

The cherished daughter of a scholar was casually pawned off overnight, cast down into the mire.

With the pearl in another's hands, Jiang Xu felt both disgusted and afraid of her new "buyer."

That night, she dreamed of the flames of war raging across Jiangnan.

The wilderness was bitterly cold at night. Carrying her on his back, Gu Yunhuai made his way along a road strewn with corpses, carving out a path to survival through a storm of arrows and a sea of fire.

He slew loyal officials and massacred an entire city. The former local tyrant became the sharpest blade in the new emperor's hand.

The young general endured half a lifetime of her cold words and neglect, then fell on the battlefield, never giving her the chance to lay bare her true feelings.

Reborn in their youth, Jiang Xu would no longer be the bright moon he kept high above him.

She would be the osmanthus beneath the moon, leaping from the branch into his arms.

The male lead's perspective:

After staying in the dark for too long, sometimes you think of giving up on returning to the light.

At the moment Gu Yunhuai decided to sink into his nightmares, a girl from another world entered his life like moonlight in a dark room, her laughter breaking through the gloom.

"What bad person thinks they're not a good person?"

"I believe you."

Later came a lifetime of wind and snow, and battles where his life hung by a thread.

Her words, "I believe you," carried him through the darkness time and again, alone and struggling against fate through wind and snow, all for the sake of that bright, beautiful moon, that she might never know hardship again.

On the fifth day of the fifth month, Jiang Xu hid a five-colored cord in her palm and stopped walking beside him.

A cool touch brushed his wrist. Gu Yunhuai looked up, startled and delighted.

Beneath the moon, the girl lowered her head to tie the cord around his wrist. Her hair tickled his palm, and even the depths of his heart began to itch.

"May blessings and good fortune find you. May you live in peace and health."

The girl's voice was devout.

He felt secretly guilty about his improper thoughts, but Jiang Xu took his wrist and swung it beneath the moonlight.

"There, now I've got you tied down."

In their past life, someone had carefully washed the pearl clean of mud and lifted it up for the rest of her life.

Not to wear at one's waist like a possession,

but to place high upon a pedestal like a deity, and protect for a lifetime.

Gu Yunhuai had guarded that osmanthus branch beneath the moon for many years, never daring to dream of plucking it.

But one day, the young woman came to him beneath the moon, carrying an osmanthus branch.

"She wasn't a pearl in my palm. She was the moon I didn't dare reach for."

"And then my moon came to me."

Reader's guide:

① A sweet, purely romantic story, one-on-one, both leads sexually inexperienced.

② An atypical dual rebirth. The heroine regains all her memories from her past life in Chapter 5. The hero's transmigration has a hidden story, and he will also regain his memories from his past life later on.

This story isn't perfect. Thank you, princesses, for reading and adding it to your collections~

My next story, After I Broke the Commander-in-Chief's Heart, is updating now. It's a reunited-after-a-breakup romance, with a married couple of schemers navigating everyday life.

Imperial Guard Commander x brothel intelligence agent. Please add it to your collection!

Contest entry statement: The heroine grows from a woman used to pay off a debt into a master of traditional Chinese knotted buttons. With the hero's encouragement, she commits to her dream and finds her direction in life. Starting with a knotted-button shop, she breaks through the restrictions that keep women from starting businesses and promotes the art of knotted buttons. The hero transmigrates from a police profiler into a local tyrant. In the face of misunderstanding and hatred, he holds fast to his dream and protects fairness and justice, finding personal fulfillment in another world.

Theme: Never forget your original aspiration.