My Cousin Regrets It Too Late

In Ye Tan Yin's heart, her cousin was the finest man in the world.

But it wasn't because he was a distinguished young nobleman with a striking presence and handsome features that she thought so.

When she was little, she fell seriously ill. Ever since, she had been frail and weak, relying on expensive, rare medicinal herbs to stay alive.

She was alive today only because her cousin was kindhearted. He had taken in and cared for her, an orphan with no family, and spared no expense gathering precious herbs for her to take.

He treated her kindly and respected her, so of course she came to love him.

But she had never dared hope she would marry him.

She was a sickly girl with little time left to live. All she sincerely wished was for her cousin to have the best things in the world, and a wife who loved him as much as he loved her, without being held back by anything.

If there was something she could do to help her cousin and ease his burdens, that would be wonderful.

She had never imagined, though, that one day her cousin would ask her to seduce her cousin's beloved, and make him so infatuated with her that her cousin would finally come to her senses and stop suffering over the man.

He believed that with her beauty and her understanding of men, she could surely do it.

As for how far she would have to go, if necessary, she could even become the man's concubine. That would be an excellent home for her, too.

If the man took her as a concubine, her cousin would give up on him.

Even as he said all this, her cousin's tone remained gentle.

Ye Tan Yin suddenly wanted to laugh. So her cousin thought that becoming a concubine was already more than she deserved.

So he was just like everyone else. He looked down on her and saw her as nothing but a pretty plaything he could hand off to anyone.

Yu Jing had always known that his frail cousin, the sort every man instinctively wanted to protect, was a woman full of schemes.

She was a lotus that had grown from the mud, and every trace of her fragrance came from the nourishment she drew out of it.

She had driven countless young gentlemen out of their minds, then picked out the most promising branch to climb.

She had no sincerity in her at all. Everything she did was for her own gain. After weighing her options, she had finally set her sights on him.

To be chosen by a woman like her was an insult.

To fall for a woman like her meant he must have lost his senses.

He pushed her toward the heir of the Marquis of Yongning. That way, he would no longer have to endure Ye Tan Yin's temptations, and his younger sister would give up her infatuation with the heir of the Marquis of Yongning.

Two birds with one stone.

Back then, he never thought that he would regret it later and snatch her back from the heir of the Marquis of Yongning.

If she was so eager to attach herself to the powerful, wouldn't he be a better choice?

They had grown up together and knew each other inside and out. No matter how wretched she was, he would accept her.

But this time, she refused to use those despicable tricks to win him over and sway him, the tricks that had left him unable to escape her spell even in his dreams.

All she did was cling to the token of her love with the heir of the Marquis of Yongning, ignoring every word he said, as if she truly loved the heir more than anything.

He stood for a long time in the sparse snow falling through the night.

It had to be a lie. She couldn't possibly like that man.

How could she ever have truly loved anyone?

Later, he finally learned that the adoring look she used to give him had not been an act. She had once truly, deeply loved him.

Only then did Yu Jing understand what it meant to have his heart torn apart, his very soul ripped to shreds.

Reader's Guide:

Both leads are virgins

Theme: Don't mistake someone else's sincerity for deceit