The Seventh Year as a Miserable Couple

Ning Jinhua and Lu Hanxiao were made for each other. She was the daughter of a duke’s household, and he was a prince’s heir. Childhood sweethearts and young spouses, they nevertheless ended up as a love that withered into regret.

Perhaps even the most passionate love cannot withstand the passage of time. After they married, the young couple spent little time together, and each felt the other had changed. She thought him cold and heartless; he resented her spoiled, willful nature. They fought countless times, made up only to fight again, and broke up and reconciled so often that they became a famous unhappy couple in the capital.

In the sixth year of their marriage, Ning Jinhua packed her belongings and left the estate to live elsewhere. Lu Hanxiao, meanwhile, left the capital and returned to his fief in southern Yunnan to care for the ailing old prince. The couple were separated by a thousand miles and did not exchange a single letter.

Ning Jinhua thought, let it be. The young man who once held a flower lantern for her was probably long gone. Better to part ways than to keep loathing the sight of each other. When he returned, she would divorce him.

*

A year later, Lu Hanxiao trampled over heaps of corpses to become the new Prince of Zhennan, ruling over his own domain. That same year, the Ning Duke’s household in the capital became embroiled in a treason case, and the entire family was exiled.

By the time the news reached southern Yunnan, it was the depths of winter. Snow poured down outside, and the drifts had already risen above the ankles.

Lu Hanxiao fell silent for a long moment, then threw on the fox-fur cloak Ning Jinhua had sewn for him and set off for the capital in the middle of the night.

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Theme: Love needs to be expressed.