My Goal in This Life Is to Grow Old Together [Matriarchal]

Blurb:

Ji Xuanqing was a brilliant young talent, passing the imperial examinations and becoming the top scholar at eighteen.

A powerful family spotted her at the exam results board and arranged for her to marry their beloved son, Ji Changkong.

They were young spouses who supported each other.

Through the rises and falls of court politics, through life and death, he never left her side. With his frail body, he did everything he could to hold up half the sky for her.

Sadly, consumed by ambition, she gradually lost her way and grew distant from him.

When an enemy kingdom marched south and invaded the capital, she hurried to flee south with the emperor, leaving him to die amid the chaos of war.

She got her wish: she rose to the highest ranks and wielded immense power, abandoning her conscience and becoming utterly ruthless.

In the end, she was alone, a notorious traitor of her age, with countless people wanting her dead.

Though her power reached the heavens, she dared not sleep at night.

The net of Heaven is vast, and there were always righteous people ready to defend the state.

She had fought all her life, only to end up with nothing.

As she lay dying, she caught a glimpse of the day they first met: his faint smile beneath the poplar trees.

What did imperial power or wealth matter? Nothing made her happier than having him by her side.

Ji Changkong, I will never fail you in our next life.

When she opened her eyes again, she was back at the moment they had begun to drift apart. His expression was distant, and his eyes held none of their former affection.

But she didn’t care. He was a caged bird in her palm. He couldn’t fly away or escape her.

Her goal in this life: to grow old together.

**

The male lead’s perspective:

He hated her coldness and resented her lack of love. He asked to be released from the marriage, but she refused. He hid away in a remote corner of the estate, never to see her again.

One night, he woke to find that she seemed like a different person, loving and protecting him.

But as things he had never known about began to come to light, his heart grew cold with disappointment. He tried to divorce her several times, but each attempt failed. Like a caged songbird, he was in her grasp, with no freedom at all.

But when the day finally came and she handed him divorce papers without a trace of emotion, he understood what it meant for his heart to turn to ashes.

He bent down, his soft cheek brushing her hand with cautious tenderness.

His vivid red lips parted, his voice full of entreaty: “My wife, please don’t send me away, okay?”

Please add my new novel to your reading list: After the Divorce, Rekindling Our Love with My Ex-Wife (Matriarchal Society)

Preview of a future novel:

Matchmaker’s words, parents’ orders.

Under the weight of those words, Meng Chengyu married a man she considered shamelessly wanton.

In the inner chambers of her household, she treated him as though he did not exist, leaving him to endure endless harassment, morning and evening greetings, and feuds with her sisters-in-law.

Until he grew ever more haggard, no longer resembling the flamboyant man he had been on their wedding day.

They divorced. When they met again, it was at the debauched banquet she despised.

He sat on a high platform beside a royal relative, his manner refined, every inch a noble gentleman, polished to perfection.

His slender neck was wrapped in a pristine white robe, fastened at the very top with a pearl. He looked chaste and aloof.

People said he was promiscuous, and she too had despised him for not guarding his chastity.

That day, one breathtaking glance and a brief exchange were enough to stir desire in her.

Her propriety and self-restraint had been nothing more than a paper screen, and a single teasing touch from him brought it all crashing down!

Lu Xiuli was of noble birth. Though he was not the slender, willowy beauty currently in fashion, he was tall and handsome, with a face no one could disparage.

His elders cherished him, and he owed the Meng family a debt of gratitude. They arranged for him to marry the woman he had once thought beyond his reach. He reined in his arrogant, carefree ways and devoted himself to managing her household.

But he gave his heart to the wrong person, and waited a long time for her to return his love.

Forced into a divorce, he grew more despondent by the day.

Princess Zhangtan, who treated him like her own younger brother, couldn’t bear to see him like that. She abandoned her whole garden of male companions, gave him a manual for seducing his wife, and often held lavish banquets to bring the two together.

With dry wood and blazing fire, a man and a woman alone, Lu Xiuli really did manage to make his dream of becoming a new groom every day come true.

Theme: Return to your original intentions, and never fail the one you love