Scheming to Marry the Dark Moonlight

On the night of the Qiqiao Festival, Zhong Yu was trapped in Changle Pavilion. By the following day, rumors had spread throughout the capital that she had lost her chastity, and her fiancé’s family had broken off the engagement.

Her father was away on a diplomatic mission, while her stepmother schemed to seize the family property. To protect herself, Zhong Yu had no choice but to seek a husband who would marry into her family.

After meeting several unsuitable candidates, Xiang Han, Duke of Wei, arranged to meet her. Not only did he help her deal with her stepmother, he also wanted to marry her and make her Duchess of Wei.

Zhong Yu was overjoyed, but after their wedding she was abandoned in a dilapidated, remote courtyard. There were rats in the rooms, bats outside, live snakes in the dining hall, and every so often she got to enjoy her husband Xiang Han measuring her neck with one hand and personally explaining the methods of torture.

Zhong Yu thought it over for a whole night before finally realizing what she had done to offend this sinister husband of hers.

The candlelight flickered. She slowly slipped off her robe and stood before Xiang Han, but he lowered his eyes, unmoved. "Are you trying to use your beauty to make me spare you?"

Then Zhong Yu was punished by being sent to kneel in the ancestral hall.

After that, she lived cautiously each day, treating Xiang Han with the utmost respect and daring not to make a single mistake. Fortunately, Master Dinghui at the temple told her that her birth chart foretold a second marriage, after which everything would be fulfilled.

Zhong Yu hoped that one day Xiang Han would show mercy and release her. She would marry another husband, a gentle and considerate man...

By day, he enjoyed boundless glory. At night, he was plagued by nightmares. Xiang Han often recalled his youth, when the girl he had once treasured in his hands deliberately set a dog on him and nearly got him killed.

On the night of the Qiqiao Festival, Xiang Han sat by the window of a wooden cabin, calmly sketching the beauty in Changle Pavilion not far away, frightened and helpless. Now he held supreme power and had exacted all his vengeance. Yet there was one person who remained a thorn in his side...

A year and a half later, in the wooden cabin, Zhong Yu saw Xiang Han sitting in the place where she had once been, in Changle Pavilion amid the wind and snow outside. Snow covered him from head to toe, and he was nearly frozen stiff.

Xiang Han was rescued. When he opened his eyes, he saw Zhong Yu wiping him down with snow. Overjoyed, he heard her say, "You’ve suffered what you deserved. From now on, we’re even."

Reader’s Guide:

1. Marriage first, love later. Both leads have no previous partners. Happy ending.

2. The male lead returns in glory, hoping to torment the heroine who once admired him, only to be tormented by her instead. He’s a jerk and only comes to regret it later.

3. The heroine transmigrates through time. She has modern values, but less of the shame and modesty expected of women of that era. The one who did bad things to the male lead in their youth was the heroine’s original body. Although this is a transmigration story, that is only to establish the heroine’s character. The heroine does not pursue a career.

4. From the heroine’s point of view: a horror story, a crime investigation, and an accident involving self-sacrifice.

5. From the male lead’s point of view: a mix of wish fulfillment, sweetness, and angst.

6. This is a fictional setting, so please don’t nitpick the history.

My historical fantasy novel, I Saw Master Xu in His Youth, is now out. Please add it to your reading list. Here’s the blurb:

On a rainy night in Shengjing, Qingyao saw sixteen-year-old Xu Yun in the dim candlelight.

Seventy years later, he would be an elderly man, still teaching despite being frail and ill. Now, he was a handsome, melancholy youth.

After sitting in on Xu Yun’s classes for three years, Qingyao learned human speech and took human form.

Though Xu Yun did not know she existed as his student, he was nonetheless worthy of being her teacher.

Xu Yun never married or had children. As he lay dying, only a careless young page boy was by his side. Qingyao asked the elders of her clan to help her return to Xu Yun’s youth. She would find him a good match who could stay by his side for life.

She would make sure Master Xu had a house full of children and grandchildren, someone to rely on in his old age, and a fulfilling life.

Xu Yun was born on the fifth day of the fifth month. Shengjing had been battered by days of heavy rain, and on the day he turned one month old, his mother and aunt disappeared without cause. Their disappearance remains an unsolved case in Shengjing to this day.

Not long after his mother’s disappearance, his father fell from a cliff and died while searching for his wife.

People of the time all sighed, "A child born on the fifth day of the fifth month kills his father and mother. If they raise him, disaster will befall his parents."

When Xu Yun was sixteen, a severe drought struck Shengjing. The earth split, trees burned, and wells dried up.

The Chi Dragon deity issued an oracle: unless a young man from the Xu family became her servant, she would not bring rain.

As Xu Yun fell into the Chi Dragon Pool, despair consumed him. Yet he vaguely felt someone gently tugging at his sleeve from behind. In a daze, he thought he saw A Shao, the household maid who tended the stove, leap in after him.

From then on, with A Shao by his side, Xu Yun gradually uncovered the truth behind his mother and aunt’s disappearance sixteen years earlier, in a Shengjing overrun by demons and ghosts and shrouded in mist.

Theme: Share the scenery and the joys of life together