Xu, Do You Want a Wife or Not?

[Completed! Remember to rate the author! Please add my next novel, Little Madam, I'll Take Responsibility for You, to your reading list!]

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

Soldiers in brown uniforms beat gongs and drums as they led a line of convict slaves into Shanghe Village on hemp ropes.

All the village girls went to look over the convict slaves and choose wives, but Xu Yishui didn't go.

She'd had a dream. In it, she married a sweet, soft-spoken blind woman with amnesia, and they lived together happily for a while. Then the woman's sight and memory returned.

The blind woman abandoned Xu Yishui, took all her money, and became the glorious Crown Princess Su Fuling, who would one day become an emperor with power over the entire court.

To cover up her shameful past, the emperor sent people to massacre the village and set it ablaze.

The fire burned fiercely, and Xu Yishui died in the slaughter.

So when she saw the little blind woman at the very end of the line, her white clothes muddy, her eyes gray and vacant, being led along by the soldiers' rope, Xu Yishui turned away with all her might.

In her dream, the warmth of blood spilling from her aching neck as a blade sliced through it had felt all too real.

Xu Yishui wanted only to live a quiet, peaceful life.

But at dusk, the village chief knocked on the door of Xu Yishui's thatched hut.

"Old Xu, do you want a wife or not?"

--

No one knew that behind the imperial throne, beneath the fragrant canopy, the exalted emperor would bitterly plead with a country girl.

"Xu Yishui, look at me."

"Xu Yishui, please be gentle with me..."

Su Fuling was overjoyed.

After all these years, through life and death, Xu Yishui had finally returned to her.

She was the one Su Fuling loved and desired above all else.

[An alternate-history society with a slave system. Slaves have low status and no rights. Inspired by the film The Herdsman.]

Upcoming novel in the same historical setting: Little Madam, I'll Take Responsibility for You

It was snowing heavily when Dongqing was acknowledged as the Chancellor's daughter.

The next day, they dressed her in festive clothes, and she clumsily mounted a horse. Hustled into the role, she had to receive the new stepmother in place of the sick Chancellor Zhu.

Her new stepmother, Chu Mingwan, was said to have once been a woman of exceptionally high status.

She was the daughter of the Duke Who Guards the Nation, a noblewoman who had roamed the battlefield from the age of fourteen and wielded a silver spear with such skill that she was hailed as the Jade-Faced Young General.

But later, her leg was broken.

After a defeat ruined her reputation, she was left disabled, and now she was being married off as part of a political alliance to become a second wife.

The suona played a lively wedding tune as the red decorations spread far and wide.

Zhu Dongqing dismounted, brushed the snow from Chu Mingwan's wedding clothes, and personally pushed her wheelchair into the Chancellor's estate.

Zhu Dongqing thought she had been quite considerate toward her new stepmother. She couldn't understand why the other woman seemed to dislike her so much.

--

On the day Chu Mingwan married into the Chancellor's estate, her stepdaughter came to receive her.

They said Zhu Dongqing had been kidnapped as a child and had spent many years suffering in the remote mountains of Qianzhou before being reunited with her family. She was supposedly a crude and ill-mannered person.

But Zhu Dongqing's hands were steady as she pushed Chu Mingwan's wheelchair. Chu Mingwan understood that rumors weren't always true.

Still, she had already resigned herself to spending the rest of her life in this deep compound. As a second wife who couldn't walk, she thought it best to keep her distance from this young woman who had only just returned to the family.

Until the Chancellor's estate joined forces with the General's estate in a rebellion. The ringleaders were executed, but the wives and daughters who had been unaware of the plot were spared execution in recognition of their past service. Instead, they were demoted to convict slaves and exiled to Qianzhou.

"You don't need to worry about me." The journey into exile would be hard. Why burden herself with a disabled woman?

But Zhu Dongqing lifted her steadily from the wheelchair.

"I was the one who welcomed you into the family. It's only right that I take responsibility."

[The main story will have a lighthearted tone. A sweet one-on-one romance. Please add it to your reading list! Inspired by stepmother fiction.]

Theme: When happiness comes knocking