It Seems an Old Friend Has Returned

Upcoming: A Dream Left Unextinguished. Completed novel in my collection: After Marrying My Enemy from a Past Life

A self-serving noblewoman x a principled gentleman fallen from grace

Yao Yunzhi met a notorious performer at a music house.

She had heard that he often ingratiated himself with the wives of officials, changing sides with the wind. He was a frivolous, unscrupulous man.

Just days ago, he had been hunted everywhere for sowing discord between a married couple. Now he could only hide from place to place, like a stray dog with nowhere to go.

He knelt before Yao Yunzhi, his dewy, peach-blossom eyes lowered. His voice was husky and mournful, yet there was a hint of dangerous, cunning curiosity in it. "Please take me in, madam."

Yao Yunzhi studied him carefully.

He was as beautiful as jade, alluring and seductive, almost too bewitching to be a man. Yet there was something about his brows and eyes that resembled her deceased fiance.

-

Five years ago, her fiance's family was framed and executed to the last person.

To protect herself, Yao Yunzhi abandoned Yan Huaixu, the eldest son of the Yan family to whom she had been betrothed since childhood, and married into the prime minister's household, the very family that had destroyed the Yans. She became a young madam whom everyone scorned and envied.

In outsiders' eyes, her husband was gentle and considerate, indulging her in everything. They were perfectly in tune with each other and treated one another with mutual respect.

But only she knew that all the splendor and prosperity on the surface were nothing but a long, hopeless shackle to her.

Since he left, those happy days would never return. The years passed like a storm without end.

Yao Yunzhi took the performer into her household and ordered him to imitate Yan Huaixu's mannerisms, to play the part of her old love and stay by her side.

Living under the same roof, they seemed to keep out of each other's way. No outsider ever noticed the undercurrents roiling beneath the surface.

-

Ren Jiusi was born among common folk. He had no great ambitions and lusted after wealth and beauty. Once freed from his lowly status, he naturally obeyed Yao Yunzhi, who had rescued him from dire straits. In bed, too, he served her with all his heart, and they were a rare match.

But for some reason, Yao Yunzhi often sensed that the gaze he turned on her sometimes held a chilling murderous intent, and at other times an indescribable pain.

Before long, Ren Jiusi became embroiled in a major treason case, and Yao Yunzhi was accused of harboring a wanted criminal.

Once again, she faced an impossible choice, lost and unable to decide.

Just then, a voice rang out beside her ear, anguished with reproach:

"Yao Yunzhi, five years ago you abandoned Yan Huaixu once. Are you going to abandon him a second time now?"

[Content warnings]

1. The heroine is not a virgin, while the hero is.

2. The heroine is self-serving, but she still has some sense of morality. She won't go too far.

3. While the heroine is still married to the second male lead, she develops no romantic feelings for the male lead. She takes him home for another reason.

4. The male lead seems weak, but he won't stay that way forever.

5. The blurb leaves out some characters' motives and plot details due to its limited perspective, among other reasons. It does not reveal the whole truth.

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Here is the blurb for the upcoming novel A Dream Left Unextinguished

1.

Song Linghui was the late emperor's most beloved youngest daughter. She and her consort, Zhao Yanqing, had been childhood sweethearts, deeply in love.

But just one year after their wedding, Zhao Yanqing was framed by villains and thrown into the imperial prison. Many of his old friends were implicated as well: some had their families executed, while others were exiled.

Song Linghui knelt before the palace hall for three days, but the emperor never came. Instead, she was met by Li Tiao, the emperor's newly favored minister, known as the "Living King of Hell."

She said coldly, "If you still have a shred of conscience, let them live."

Li Tiao looked down at Song Linghui, prostrate on the ground, his tone as indifferent as his expression. "A chance to live is won through struggle, not by begging for it."

Three months later, Zhao Yanqing's sentence was changed from execution to exile. On the very day he set out for Lingnan, Princess Dingguo remarried Li Tiao, the chief grand secretary. The wedding procession stretched for dozens of miles, and its pageantry was even more lavish than before.

Everyone lamented that Song Linghui was cold and faithless, casting aside her marriage. Others condemned her for failing to tell right from wrong and conspiring with a treacherous minister like Li Tiao.

Only Song Linghui knew that she and Li Tiao were merely using each other, and that in the end, they were simply not on the same path.

2.

Li Tiao first met Song Linghui at a banquet in the Qionghua Palace.

He slipped away from the feast to avoid drinking and chanced upon Princess Dingguo, who was disguised as a young eunuch. From that moment on, the sight of her every smile and frown became a fate he could never escape.

Li Tiao thought that the marriage he had schemed so hard to obtain might earn him even the briefest glance from her. But her eyes had always belonged to that noble and honorable Zhao Yanqing. Even on nights spent beneath the red candles and gauzy bed curtains, whether awake or dreaming, she called only his name.

Before long, Zhao Yanqing cleared his name and returned to his former post. She visited the Zhao residence again and again, turning Li Tiao into a laughingstock across the land.

Since her heart was no longer with him, Li Tiao no longer wished to force her to stay.

But before he could give Song Linghui the divorce agreement he had written, she stormed into his bedroom and held a dagger to his throat, demanding, "Were you the one who had Zhao Yanqing and the others imprisoned back then?"

Li Tiao took her hand and pressed the blade even deeper into his flesh. Blood gushed from the wound.

Song Linghui dropped the dagger and said coldly, "Li Tiao, I was wrong to trust you before. From now on, we each go our own way, and there will be nothing between us."

A bleak smile appeared on Li Tiao's face. "Huihui, when did you ever trust me?"

3.

When they met again, a powerful minister of an era had become a prisoner, despised by all.

Every new law he had enacted, good or bad, was repealed. Every achievement of his, great or small, was erased.

From the imperial family to commoners, everyone called him a treacherous minister. Anyone who disagreed was branded an accomplice of Li Tiao.

For a time, no one at court dared to speak a word in his defense or call his treatment unjust.

But the Princess Dingguo, who had always seemed so skilled at changing sides with the wind, did not turn to Zhao Yanqing, the new Minister of Revenue, this time.

One day, the sound of the petition drum rang through the palace.

"Who are you here to plead for?"

"My husband, Li Tiao, former chief grand secretary."

Theme: Saving others is also saving yourself.