Return to the Garden

[The main story is complete. Dive in without worry!]

My ongoing serial, The Heir Went Mad After Faking His Death, is featured in my author page. Blurb below. Please add it to your favorites!

Low-key, reserved, loyal puppy-dog male lead x resilient, determined career-driven female lead

Tian Zhi lives in Tianjia Village, where her family has made and sold wine for generations. Their life is fairly comfortable.

But then disaster strikes without warning. Her parents are thrown in prison, and though she narrowly escapes, her greedy Second Uncle and his family sell her to human traffickers.

While fleeing for her life, she meets Lu Cheng, who is fleeing too. The two have no choice but to form a temporary alliance.

Later, he is badly injured and falls unconscious. When he wakes up, he has lost his memory.

With no other choice, Tian Zhi reluctantly takes him home. From then on, the villagers of Tianjia Village always see a tagalong trailing behind Zhi, the girl from the eastern end of the village.

Tian Zhi is also surprised. The man who had been cold and disdainful toward her when they first met seems like a different person after losing his memory. He obeys her so completely that if she tells him to go east, he never goes west.

He has a fair, refined face and looks like a young nobleman, yet he's quick with his hands and hardworking.

Tian Zhi folds her arms and asks him inquisitively, "You're so capable and hardworking, always trying to please us. Are you after something from my family?"

Tian Sheng only looks at her and shakes his head evasively. "I'm not..."

In the end, his memory-loss ruse is exposed, and he is revealed to be the Prince Qing of the Great Qing court.

From then on, a wooden sign stands outside the Tian family's gate forevermore. It reads: Small house and modest courtyard. Wealthy idlers, please keep out.

PS:

1. The story is set in a fictional world. I referenced Baidu quite a bit for the heroine's career, so feel free to point out any errors.

2. Her career takes center stage early on, with romance as a secondary thread.

My ongoing serial, The Heir Went Mad After Faking His Death, is featured in my author page. Please check it out!

Blurb below:

[Bewitching, seductive beauty x unhinged aloof nobleman]

From childhood, Qi Yao was blessed with delicate features and a bewitching, alluring charm.

But after her father dies, she falls overnight from a young lady of an official family into the gutter, with her life in the hands of her kind-faced but ruthless aunt.

To avoid repeating the fate of her previous life, in which she and her mother both died tragically, she resolutely sets out to seduce her cousin's aloof fiancé, Lin Qi'an.

Born to a family of dukes and marquises, he is a high-ranking noble whose status is beyond reach in the capital. At a young age, he has risen to the highest ranks of government. He is peerlessly handsome, with no equal in the world.

In the meditation room, she slips him a potent drug and makes a thorough pass at him, assuming that marrying into the marquis's household and escaping her aunt's control is all but certain.

But this man is nothing like the other young noblemen she knows. Qi Yao is thoroughly humiliated and thrown out.

She thinks Lin Qi'an is entitled to be aloof, given his lofty status. Besides, she has plenty of tricks up her sleeve.

Just as she expected, after she tries every trick in the book, desire finally finds its way into the aloof nobleman's cool, dark eyes.

But afterward, she overhears him speaking to a subordinate. His familiar voice chills her to the bone.

"Brazen and presumptuous, deluded by wishful thinking. A woman so debased is lucky to be sent away with the position of concubine."

Lin Qi'an was raised by his grandmother to live by the principles of a gentleman, concealing his emotions and desires.

But ever since meeting Qi Yao, she has acted shamelessly and audaciously. To marry into the prestigious Lin family, she sneaks into his carriage and offers herself to him, stopping at nothing.

He despises her and looks down on women like her, who have no sense of propriety.

After she drugs him, he'd rather hurt himself than touch her.

But then she lifted the carriage curtain and slipped inside.

The rain fell in soft sheets. Soaked through, she leaned against him, her graceful figure shimmering beneath her thin dress. "Please, Young Master, take pity on me..."

He gripped her chin and looked at her wounded, watery eyes. His fingers lingered over her red lips, intrigued. Though he had meant to refuse, somehow he agreed to help her deal with her troubles.

He thought that since she had offered herself to him, he could simply give her the title of concubine and be done with it.

But after he had paved the way for everything that was to come, she vanished without a trace.

When he found her again,

in the drizzling rain of Jiangnan, she held an umbrella over a young scholar and called to him tenderly, "Husband."

Her smile was as bright as spring sunshine, burning his eyes.

His face darkened as he stood in the rain. He snapped the blade in his hand, and blood poured from his wound, but he seemed not to notice.

Theme: Self-reliance and strength.