I Pretend to Be Deeply in Love

Jing Ning got engaged to the love of Fu Zheng's life.

The bad news was that the love of his life didn't like him.

So sad, so miserable, so heartbroken...?

In front of outsiders, Jing Ning was Fu Zheng's most devoted simp: handsome, always at his beck and call, and unfailingly obedient. Fu Zheng's friends couldn't help envying him.

Even after their engagement was called off, Jing Ning seemed unable to forget Young Master Fu. He traveled a great distance to attend the engagement banquet for Fu Zheng and his younger brother, Jing Yue, gazing with red-rimmed eyes at the man he loved standing arm in arm with someone else.

What a simp. He was really such a simp.

Jing Ning had simped so hard, he was almost starting to believe it himself.

All right, the truth was, he was pretending.

The most important rule in The Illegitimate Son's Survival Guide was: "Pretend to be deeply in love."

That trick had kept him safe in the Jing family for years.

So, after the Jing family once again treated him like a commodity and sent him to the side of Ji Bingchen, head of the Ji family, the foremost of City A's three great families, Jing Ning still planned to use the same trick.

According to the rumors, Ji Bingchen had bedded countless lovers and was debauched and violent. They said no one ever came out of his bed alive.

But when Jing Ning arrived at the Ji residence, nervous and not yet having had a chance to make his move, Ji Bingchen said to a handsome man in a wheelchair, "Your task is to take good care of him."

The man in the wheelchair had striking features, an otherworldly bearing, and impeccable manners. He was utterly different from Ji Bingchen.

He was Ji Bingchen's older brother, the eldest young master of the Ji family: Ji Wenting.

Everyone knew Ji Bingchen was the public face of the Ji Corporation, but no one knew that the man supporting him from behind the scenes was Ji Wenting, who had once been a formidable force in City A.

But fate had been cruel to a brilliant man. A car accident had cost him the use of his legs, and he had never appeared in public again.

Many people guessed the brothers had fought for power, and that Ji Bingchen had plotted against him...

But on Jing Ning's very first day with Ji Wenting, he saw the second young master, rumored to be ruthless, kneeling in punishment at Ji Wenting's order.

That only strengthened Jing Ning's resolve to stick close to Ji Wenting.

He did everything he could to please him, feigning devotion and showing him meticulous care.

There was no other choice. Their lives, his and his mother's, were in their hands.

Although Ji Wenting treated him gently, Jing Ning knew the eldest young master was clearly not taken in by him.

After Jing Ning deliberately ruined a marriage arrangement that outsiders had considered a sure thing, his true self was exposed to Ji Wenting.

For the first time, someone saw through Jing Ning and uncovered the darkness inside him.

He was ready to be thrown out of the Ji residence. In a daze, he packed his bags, planning to run away.

Who could have guessed that the next morning, this baffling Ji family eldest young master would smile and ask him, "Would you like to marry me?"

Huh???

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Gentle, gentlemanly, daddy-type gong X a sweet-looking shou who's not what he seems

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Content warnings:

1. One-on-one, happy ending. Because of family circumstances, the shou is a bit of a pushover at first, but he'll grow stronger later and become a little sweet on the outside, dark on the inside.

The gong's legs will recover. It's a marriage-first, love-later story, but they don't get married right at the beginning.

2. There will be comeuppance for the scum gong and the shou's family.

3. The gong and his younger brother share a purely familial bond.

4. Extreme gong- or shou-stans, please understand.

Theme: Growing fiercely through hardship.