In the Dust

Rivals-to-lovers couple | Second chance romance | The male lead chases his wife into the crematorium | Friends with benefits to official couple

Smiling fox versus rich young master

Highly educated femme fatale versus playboy bad boy

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Chen Xizhuo met Chen Huan in high school. They got together right after graduating, but just two months later, she was left battered and broken.

Chen Xizhuo was invited by his mother to their house, and taken to the basement.

When Chen Huan arrived, she slapped him across the face.

"If you'd let me go sooner, I wouldn't have had to take that beating."

That was the first time in Chen Huan's life he'd ever been slapped. Of course, Chen Xizhuo got kicked in return.

As if things couldn't get any worse, when she got home, her aunt-by-marriage threw her out, dumping all her luggage outside.

But Chen Xizhuo didn't panic. Instead, her aunt's filthy insults brought her a little satisfaction.

"Auntie."

She stood at the foot of the steps. The sunlight was dazzling, but not as striking as her beautiful features.

"Who do you think he is, some poor boy like my cousin? He's not someone you get to insult."

-

They met again at his buddy's birthday party. Chen Xizhuo was his buddy's new girlfriend, the fiancee he was willing to marry even if it meant cutting ties with his family.

Chen Xizhuo raised her glass to him from across the room. Chen Huan smashed his glass, heedless of the occasion.

By then, she could make herself look presentable on her own and stand in front of him without shrinking back. She could finally look like a proper person.

Chen Huan thought Chen Xizhuo had gone from one man to another and was more calculating than anyone.

But he still couldn't forget her.

"What about the one before?"

"Just having fun..." Chen Xizhuo smiled meaningfully. "We each got what we wanted."

"You moved on fast."

"And you? The last one was pretty."

Chen Huan sneered. "Like you said, we each got what we wanted."

He wanted nothing from anyone, except her.

But Chen Xizhuo was cheaper than anyone. After all the playing hard to get, she still became his secret mistress.

-

The next time, Chen Xizhuo was the one who left him. They went their separate ways.

Chen Huan saw her smiling brightly, with an up-and-coming power player from their circle by her side and a chubby little girl holding her hand.

The girl looked up and asked her to pick her up.

He was so furious he wanted to tear her apart on the spot and squeeze her throat as he demanded to know who the girl was.

"Obviously, she's my daughter."

Chen Xizhuo still had that shameless, slutty air he hated most, acting like she didn't care about anything. Her fingernails dug into the base of his thumb.

With a tug, she pulled his hand away.

"It's none of your business, Chen San."

Chen Huan hated being called Chen San more than anything.

But for the first time, he kept his temper in check and waited for Chen Xizhuo to step into the gentle cage he had built, one step at a time.

He wanted Chen Xizhuo, body and soul, to belong to him.

He wanted her eyes to see no one but him...

Reader's guide:

Click in to watch two sharp-tongued champions with over eight thousand brain cells between them, neither willing to give an inch!

Extreme push-and-pull: yes; evenly matched: yes;

Playboy reforms: yes; the male lead chases his wife into the crematorium: yes.

If anything seems unreasonable, it's foreshadowing. Neither lead is perfect. When these two get together, all it takes is a spark for them to go up in flames.

Includes a subtle ensemble cast, though they don't get much page time. The people they meet at each stage of life may give each other what they lack or need. They may make amends for their mistakes or leave each other's lives for good.

Content warning: Both leads are virgins. There are heterosexual, female-dominant, and male-male relationships among the side characters. They don't get much page time, and their romances won't be explored in detail.

Please add to your collection and leave comments~ Thanks, my sweethearts (screams) (heart)

Currently updating

Secret crush | Villain's genuine love | Obsessed man chases his wife | A humble acquaintance turns into a deadly high-stakes rivalry

In the past: Quiet and reserved versus wickedly roguish

In the present: Arrogant, top-tier con man versus restrained, cold, sickly beauty

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Every year, countless newcomers entered the industry, hoping to become the next Danya. Reality crushed many of them, and they left in frustration, yet her name remained firmly established as one of the biggest in the talent management business.

As Huaxing Entertainment's top agent and director of talent management, Danya was the agent everyone wanted to work for.

In five years in the industry, Danya had brought Huaxing up to the level of the two established entertainment companies in the field. Her clients had swept the awards in Chinese entertainment.

Everyone wondered whether the newly crowned Best Actor Su Qingye, whom she had personally built into a star, had secretly married her. He had fought his way out of the old apartment blocks alongside her, and was a top-tier star who never acknowledged rumors about his love life.

Only those in the know understood how ruthless she was, in both methods and temperament. The idea of her dating one of her clients was sheer nonsense.

She didn't love anyone in the industry. Her true white moonlight had arrived in the world on the hottest days of summer, yet was as gentle as the first light of morning, the warm sun at noon in midwinter, the sunset at dusk, and the night sky in autumn.

That person came from a family with the kind of status and influence everyone envied. People said she had climbed to her position only to win his family's approval.

But during the year when rumors linking her to her clients were at their peak, someone leaked a photograph.

With nothing to her name, she stood in the rain before a Huayra R. Even standing still, its headlights blazed; its engine roared and thunder rumbled. Danya's beautiful face was no longer youthful then. She stood in front of the car, looking wretched and pale, yet her eyes blazed with the ruthless ambition of a beast. It was the kind of life-defining shot every director wanted to capture.

The man behind her rise was the head of Huaxing Entertainment, a man who rarely appeared in public and sat in a wheelchair. An outside force had used ruthless tactics to crush the local power players, and Danya was almost an exact copy of him when he was younger.

The mysteries surrounding this woman were even more tantalizing than those surrounding each generation of top-tier stars.

Before thirty, she had already built a vast network of connections in talent management. Everyone called her Sister Ya. Decisive and shrewd, she was the subject of a running joke among fans: no one dared to go head-to-head with the stars under her management.

Danya simply kept the man's words in mind: a calm calculation is like a dog that doesn't bark, or a venomous snake that hasn't bared its fangs. It is more intimidating than any hysterical outburst.

After everything was settled, she stood before the man. The floor-to-ceiling windows were wide open, and the sheer curtains fluttered in the wind.

It was a rare, peaceful, pleasant afternoon.

"I'm getting married."

The man who had always held himself above others looked terribly pale and powerless now. Danya admired his tense jaw and the tips of his fingers, white from gripping so hard.

Then she suddenly smiled.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

Those words finally broke the composure Bai He had fought so hard to maintain. Though they stood in the sunlight, Bai He's gaze was as cold as snake venom in his bones.

"Danya."

His voice was hoarse and rough. "Will you let him kiss you like that, too?"

-

"She isn't an orphan driven forward by hardship. From the moment I first met her, I knew she was a vine that had never drawn nourishment, a still-unopened... ambitious woman."

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Reader's guide:

There are second, third, and fourth male leads | The female lead has a pseudo-white-moonlight figure in a nontraditional sense | Both leads are virgins and villains | The male lead is absolutely a virgin, the only dark jasmine in the female lead's heart | His legs will recover | The moment his wife leaves, he goes crazy

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Theme: Love yourself before loving another