Marrying Up

Fu Xiangsi and Rong Yue are the most famous loving couple in the capital. No one knows that Rong Yue never entered the bridal chamber on their wedding night. Afterward, he used ill health as an excuse to sleep in his study. He treated Fu Xiangsi with courtesy, but was utterly cold toward her.

Yet whenever they went out to banquets, Rong Yue would take meticulous care of her and fuss over her endlessly.

Unable to make sense of it, Fu Xiangsi could only believe that he truly had some unspeakable ailment. So she searched through old books for a health-restoring recipe and prepared medicinal food to take to his study. Outside the study, however, she overheard the story behind their marriage.

It turned out that Rong Yue had married her but refused to share her bed so that the son he had with the woman he loved could be officially brought into the household as his legitimate heir, on the grounds that the principal wife had no children.

Then what had all her lavish wedding gifts been for?

But she had married into a family of higher standing, and her father's and brother's futures still depended on Rong Yue's support. Confined to the inner household and without control of its affairs, she would be doomed as soon as his illegitimate son entered the family!

If one of them had to die, better Rong Yue than her!

Fu Xiangsi knew that a nobleman in the capital went to Fahua Temple in the suburbs to pray on the fifth day of every month.

On the fifth day of the fifth month, with rain pouring down, she opened the gates of her country estate and welcomed in a traveler seeking shelter.

Three months later, Rong Yue died unexpectedly. Fu Xiangsi, pregnant with his posthumous child, happily became a widow.

Theme: Independence and self-reliance