A story of ruthless abduction, a groveling pursuit of his wife, and a female lead who is not a virgin while the male lead is an emperor (the plot explicitly confirms he is a virgin).
On the day before the young emperor secretly sent Gu Ying out of the palace under the pretense that she had died of illness, she was still wearing the cloak he'd taken off and watching the capital's first snowfall with him.
When they first met as youths, she fell in love with him. When he was made Prince of Linzi, she resolutely entered his household and became his female bodyguard.
She used her frail body to take a blade for him, and when she was gravely wounded, he would stay by her bedside to care for her.
They had faced life and death together and supported one another. She even bore him a son, who was raised by the Princess of Linzi.
When he took the throne, he cast aside imperial protocol and came to her chambers in the middle of the night. Since her lowly status meant she could not attend his coronation ceremony at court, he came to show her what he looked like in his imperial robes.
Gu Ying thought that she and Wei Chen were in love with each other, so when she was secretly sent out of the palace, she was full of doubts but not heartbroken.
She had someone deliver a message asking to see the emperor.
She waited a day. Wei Chen never came, but she did receive an answer.
The new emperor's verbal decree: By the Wei family's ancestral rules, the mother must die for the child to inherit. Helping her fake her death and leave the palace, never to see the crown prince again, was the last of his mercy.
The year after leaving the palace, Gu Ying returned to the capital with her husband to visit relatives. On New Year's Eve, they watched the lanterns and snow beneath the city gate tower.
A company of Imperial Guards came through the snow, their armor clanking as they respectfully addressed her: "By imperial decree, Your Majesty requests the lady's presence at the old palace."
Since ancient times, emperors have been fickle in love. Wei Chen had never thought of this as an insult. Removing the mother and keeping the child, then driving Gu Ying from the palace, was a decision he would never regret.
Sometimes he thought of the close friend he'd had as a young man. But after he ascended the throne, the two people closest to him were gone: one he had driven from the palace, and the other had resigned from office on the grounds of illness and vanished without a trace.
Later, he had people look into Gu Ying's whereabouts, but she seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.
Fortunately, he heard that his close friend, who had resigned on the grounds of illness, had returned to the capital and taken a wife.
He invited him to the palace for a reunion, prepared a generous gift to congratulate him on his marriage, and asked about Gu Ying. His friend regretted that they had not seen each other in a long time.
Wei Chen never suspected his friend of deceiving him. He even agreed that if either of them heard news of Gu Ying, they would gather again to drink and reminisce.
On New Year's Eve, Wei Chen stood atop the towering city gate, gazing at the lights in countless homes, when he suddenly spotted two old acquaintances in the crowd.
The two people who had once been closest to him were strolling together, hand in hand, a loving married couple.
The young emperor's eyes turned bloodshot with fury.
The original blurb was saved as a screenshot on 2024.8.21
Revised on 2025.10.18 at 0:50
Revised again on 2026.8.13
Theme: Bloom, and the breeze will come
