After I Used and Abandoned the Powerful Minister

My next novel, How to Drive the Aloof Beauty Mad, is described below. Please add it to your reading list. It launches in May!

[Flirt-and-run temptress] x [powerful official who takes what he wants]

That year, with an army at the border, Chu Ling was ordered to seduce an envoy from the Liang Kingdom who had come to negotiate.

The envoy was not quite what she had imagined. He was a handsome young man who couldn't help blushing whenever he spoke to her.

The mission went far more smoothly than expected. The man even proposed to her. But then Chu Ling received a message from her clan leader and realized she had mistaken him for someone else.

In the middle of the night, she returned through the rain, and the man had lost his value. She discarded him without mercy.

-

Three years passed, and Chu Ling had a fiancé of her own. He was dull but dependable, and all she had to do was wait for the wedding.

But an imperial decree forced her to travel to the capital, where she was to be presented as a tribute woman to the powerful.

Chu Ling tearfully said goodbye to her clan and fiancé. When she saw those dark eyes, deep as a pool, beneath the rows of pavilions, a chill ran down her back.

A middle-aged official with a face full of wrinkles smiled proudly. "Well? The women of Baiyue are renowned for their beauty. Isn't she every bit as lovely and refined as the young ladies of Liang?"

Those dark eyes lifted, giving her a casual glance, before he said, "She is beautiful."

"I'll take her."

Xiao Cong took her home. As he caressed her smooth skin and felt the faint trembling beneath his palm, he murmured, "Every bit as lovely as a young lady? You were practically melting in my bed back then."

-

Everyone said Xiao Cong had changed after his trip to the southwest. Once a mild and proper scholar who had placed first in the palace examination, he had climbed step by step to the center of power, becoming cold, ruthless, and so severe in his self-discipline that it was almost pathological.

But no one expected him to brazenly take a stunning beauty, gorgeous as a demon, right out of the residence of a high-ranking second-grade official.

He wanted to torment her, thinking it would give him satisfaction, but he fell under her spell again.

Until one day, Xiao Cong accidentally learned that her former fiancé was a foreign prince living in exile, and that she wanted to elope with him.

Their carriage had not even left when it was intercepted. The curtain was lifted, revealing Xiao Cong's eyes, dark and unfathomable in the storm.

Her fiancé could not move with a sword at his throat, while Chu Ling was held tightly against Xiao Cong's chest, eyes brimming with tears as she continued to curse him for being insane.

Xiao Cong chuckled. "I've been insane for three years already. Can't you tell, A Ling?"

"Want to get married?" His voice was hoarse. "Marry anyone but me, and I'll kill them. Go ahead and try."

Notes and warnings:

1. The heroine seduces people for her own gain, and the hero takes what he wants. Neither is a good person.

2. Happy ending, both leads' first time. Nothing happened with the fiancé, and she doesn't love him. The hero does use force at times, so please respect everyone's preferences.

3. The beginning is a little bittersweet, but the hero is absolutely, utterly in love.

4. The "elopement" in the blurb is based on a misunderstanding.

---- Please add my next novel, How to Drive the Aloof Beauty Mad, to your reading list ----

Gu Juezhou was born into the Marquis of Pingyuan's household. Incomparable in beauty, noble and aloof, he entered court at sixteen and earned the emperor's favor over the years. His future was bright and smooth.

Most of the unmarried noblewomen in Yujing had dreamed of marrying him. Yu Man was one of them.

On the day she first arrived in the capital from Yangzhou, she lifted the curtain of her carriage with her slender hand and saw a young man on horseback, graceful and elegant. Even the spring sunlight seemed to favor Gu Juezhou, falling especially brightly on his face.

She wanted to marry him from that moment on.

-

Gu Juezhou disliked and was annoyed by this young lady of the Duke's household.

Yu Man was too coquettish and lacked every quality a proper young lady should have. She was also from Yangzhou, where Gu Juezhou's most respected elder brother had died.

But Gu Juezhou knew that Yu Man really liked him.

She searched all over Yujing for a master craftsman to make him a fine bow. People said she had secretly drawn his portrait and kept it hidden in her bedroom. Even in her feverish dreams, she murmured his name: Gu Lang.

One cup of wine at a banquet bound them together, and circumstances forced them to promise to marry. Gu Juezhou should have been utterly disgusted, but looking at the girl before him, her eyes lowered and cheeks flushed, he thought for the first time, Fine. At least she likes me enough to fulfill her duties as a wife.

Gradually, he too began to lose control, falling little by little at her feet and into her tender embrace.

-

Until one day, he finally saw the portrait that, according to rumor, proved how deeply his wife loved him.

But the man in the portrait was his elder brother, not him. It turned out that all his wife's tender affection was because he looked so much like his brother.

When Gu Juezhou confronted Yu Man, her usually lovable face turned icy for the first time. "Now that you know, let's divorce. As it happens, aside from your faces, you and he have nothing in common."

The normally arrogant, favored son of heaven swayed, feeling deeply humiliated. He stubbornly declared that if she wanted a divorce, so be it. Plenty of women wanted to be his wife, and she had better not interfere when he married again. Then he stormed away.

Not long afterward, the eldest son of the Gu family, who was supposed to have died five years ago, suddenly returned.

The eldest son had come home safe and sound. The Gu family wept with joy and held a grand banquet to welcome him, decorating the entire residence with lanterns and streamers.

No one knew that inside the second young master's room that night, Gu Juezhou clung tightly to Yu Man's waist as she stood dressed in her finest, as if afraid she would run away. His eyes red, he pleaded in a low voice, "A Man, please don't go see him, all right?"

Yu Man slowly pried his fingers away, her expression half amused and half mocking. "Second Young Master Gu, didn't we agree not to interfere in each other's affairs?"

#If he stops interfering, she's afraid she'll become his sister-in-law#

Theme: Heaven moves with vigor; the noble-minded strive without ceasing.