My Beloved Cousin

[Lighthearted, sweet romance, both leads are virgins, 1v1]

The author's ongoing serial is The Heir Went Mad After I Faked My Death.

A bewitching, flirtatious beauty x a volatile, aloof beauty. Blurb below. Please add it to your collection!

Blurb for this novel

Everyone in the capital knew that the Wei family's legitimate daughter, Wei Yunxi, was an idiot.

They say that when she was little, her father, Vice Minister Wei, offended someone, and an assassin broke into their home, wounded Madam Wei, and kidnapped the legitimate daughter.

When she was finally found, she was hanging in a ruined temple, barely alive. After she was rescued, she became an imbecile with an unsound mind.

For the first ten years of her life, Wei Yunxi really did pass her days in a daze. But one day, someone pushed her into an icy lake. When she woke up, her idiocy had miraculously vanished.

Her wet nurse had frozen to death saving her. Wei Yunxi buried her with her own hands, only to be discovered in her normal state by Yan Zhizheng, the legitimate son of the great general Yan and her nominal cousin.

From then on, this cousin, usually taciturn and inscrutable in the capital, found himself a new pastime:

He took great pleasure in seeing through her act of playing the fool.

After he had mocked her sharply a few times, Wei Yunxi decided that if she couldn't pretend to be stupid, she could pretend to be pitiful instead.

When servants bullied her:

Yan Zhizheng: If you want me to help, shouldn't you show a little sincerity?

Wei Yunxi: (With teary, sparkling eyes) Cousin, what do you need me to do?

Yan Zhizheng: Forget it. It's only a servant. You owe me for this.

When a few young dandies mocked her for being stupid and tried to take liberties with her:

Yan Zhizheng, taking the opportunity to fish for information: Tell me everything you know, and I can deal with them for you.

Wei Yunxi: (Hugging herself) If Cousin doesn't want to help me, Yunxi wouldn't dare insist. I only ask that you don't look at me in such a wretched state.

Yan Zhizheng: (Furrows his brow gravely) You called me Cousin, so I can't just stand by and watch you die. Now you owe me a second favor.

The umpteenth time someone gave her a hard time:

Wei Yunxi: (Before she can even speak)

Yan Zhizheng: You owe me another favor. Don't forget to pay me back later.

When she realized this worked pretty well, Wei Yunxi figured Yan Zhizheng wouldn't really ask her to repay those favors.

That was until her childhood sweetheart and fiancé, the second son of the Shen family, landed in danger. Out of regard for their old friendship, Wei Yunxi begged Yan Zhizheng to save him.

Yan Zhizheng suddenly dropped his usual good temper, backed her into a corner, and pulled her into his arms.

"You've owed me so many favors, Cousin. Don't you think it's time we settled accounts?"

Wei Yunxi hadn't expected him to really ask her to repay them.

"Then how do you want to settle them?"

Yan Zhizheng smiled faintly. "Given our relationship, Cousin, I only want one thing in return."

Wei Yunxi agreed at once, even afraid he might change his mind.

But in the end, she was the one who changed her mind. She had never agreed to pledge herself to Yan Zhizheng!

Reading notes:

1. The hero is not a good person by conventional standards.

2. The heroine was injured and isn't very bright. She's not particularly clever!

3. The setting is fictional, very fictional. Whatever's convenient goes.

4. The hero is a jerk early on, then falls hard later. There's a slight groveling arc.

The Heir Went Mad After I Faked My Death

[Bewitching, flirtatious beauty x volatile, aloof beauty]

Qi Yao was born with delicate features and an alluring, bewitching beauty.

But after her father died, she fell overnight from the life of an official's daughter into the mud, with her life in the hands of her outwardly kind but secretly ruthless aunt.

To avoid the fate of dying alongside her mother in her previous life, she resolutely set out to seduce her cousin's fiancé, Lin Qi'an, the aloof beauty admired by all.

Born to a ducal family, with a noble status, he was one of the most untouchable aristocrats in the capital. He had reached the highest ranks of court at a young age, a peerlessly handsome man without equal in the world.

In a meditation room, she slipped him a powerful drug and thoroughly took advantage of him. She thought that marrying into the marquis's household and escaping her aunt's control was as good as settled.

Who could have guessed he was nothing like the other noble young men she'd known? Qi Yao was humiliated and thrown out.

Qi Yao thought it was only natural for the aloof Lin Qi'an to be haughty. Besides, she had plenty of tricks up her sleeve.

Just as she expected, after she tried every means at her disposal, those cold, ink-dark eyes of his finally grew hot with desire for her.

But afterward, she overheard him talking with a subordinate. His familiar voice turned her blood to ice.

"She's frivolous and shameless, deluded and presumptuous. A woman who debases herself like that should consider herself lucky to be given the position of a concubine."

Lin Qi'an had been taught by his grandmother since childhood to behave like a gentleman, never showing his joy or anger, with no desires or demands.

But ever since he met Qi Yao, she had been brazen and audacious. To marry into the prestigious Lin family, she climbed into his carriage and offered herself to him, stopping at nothing.

He despised her and looked down on a woman of such low standing.

After she drugged him, he'd rather injure himself than touch her.

But that time, she lifted the carriage curtain and climbed inside.

The rain fell in soft, lingering threads. Soaked through, she leaned against him, her shapely figure glimmering faintly beneath her thin dress. "Please, my lord, take pity on me..."

He lifted her chin, gazing at her wounded, tear-filled eyes. His fingers rubbed her red lips with interest. Though he meant to refuse, somehow he agreed to help her deal with her troubles.

He thought that since she had offered herself to him, giving her the title of concubine would be enough to send her on her way.

Who knew that after he had paved every step of the way, she would vanish in an instant, as if she had evaporated from the world?

When he found her again,

in the gentle, ceaseless rain of Jiangnan, she held an umbrella over a scholar and called him softly, "Husband."

Her smile was as bright as spring sunshine, stabbing pain into his eyes.

His face darkened as he stood in the rain. He snapped the blade in his hand in two, letting blood gush from his wound as if he couldn't feel a thing.

Theme: Breaking free of constraints