How an Alpha Househusband Wins His Wife's Favor

Top's POV! A weak top is still a top!

Qu Qingrong transmigrates into the body of a useless Qianyuan. In just a few days, she'll be sent to the Northern Frontier for a political marriage.

She doesn't want to die, so she kneels before the Grand Princess, Gu Cuiyun, and begs her to save her.

Gu Cuiyun glances at her and says four words: "Go back and wait."

The next day, an imperial decree arrives: the Grand Princess wants her as her live-in son-in-law.

The whole capital goes up in flames, and so does Qu Qingrong. She's a useless nobody who can't even release pheromones. What could the Grand Princess want with her?

But she doesn't need to figure that out. Staying alive is what matters. Qu Qingrong begins her campaign to "win her favor." She serves tea and water, then stands meekly nearby. When Gu Cuiyun reviews memorials, she grinds the ink, barely daring to breathe. When Gu Cuiyun returns to her residence late, she waits at the gate with a lantern, standing there until the middle of the night, when her legs go numb.

"You don't need to try so hard to please me. We have nothing to do with each other," Gu Cuiyun says, coldly refusing her.

Qu Qingrong gives a strained smile. "Of course, of course." In her heart, she thinks: What if you change your mind because I don't take good care of you?

Until one day, Qu Qingrong accidentally stumbles into Gu Cuiyun's secret chamber.

The walls are covered in countless portraits. Every single one is of her.

Qu Qingrong is stunned. Just then, the door behind her opens, and the woman's obsessive voice falls beside her ear.

"So you found out..." Gu Cuiyun's voice comes from behind her, unhurried, like a blunt knife slowly slicing through the air. "Then I don't need to hide it anymore."

Only later does Qu Qingrong learn that everything she thought was happening had been part of Gu Cuiyun's plan, a trap designed to swallow her whole.

She tries to escape, packing her things in the dead of night. She has barely left the palace gates when the imperial guards surround her residence.

The haughty, untouchable Grand Princess has flames burning in those eyes, cold as winter.

"You can't run away." As Gu Cuiyun says this, she slips a jade bangle onto Qu Qingrong's wrist.

Qu Qingrong looks down at it and mutters, "So what did all my attempts to please you these past few days mean to you?"

Gu Cuiyun thinks for a moment. "Adorable."

Qu Qingrong blushes. "...Shut up."

The bangle is cool, but the fingers touching her skin are burning hot. Qu Qingrong's breathing turns ragged as the crisp scent of cedar overwhelms her, as if it will wrap itself tightly around her whole body.

The hand fastening the jade bangle gently turns hers over, their fingers interlacing. Gu Cuiyun's thumb slowly draws a circle in her palm.

"Keep trying to please me." Gu Cuiyun's voice seems to hold both ice and fire. "I like watching."

Everyone in the capital knows the Grand Princess spoils her useless Qianyuan son-in-law without limit.

But no one knows that every night, the useless Qianyuan wonders: How did this Kunze get me so completely under her thumb?

Coming soon: Thirty-Six Stratagems of an Honest Carpenter

A transmigrated woman wakes to find a baby asleep in her arms. While she stares in bewilderment, a woman with bright eyes and thick brows brings in a basin of water and smiles foolishly at her. "Dear, wash your face."

The transmigrated woman looks at the countless patches on her clothes, then around the drafty room, and takes a deep breath. Make money. She absolutely has to make money. No one can stop her.

But she never expected that the biggest obstacle wouldn't be poverty. It would be her carpenter wife.

The honest, simple woman somehow finds a battered old book. Its title reads: Thirty-Six Ways to Seduce a Woman.

From then on, everything changes at home. The little carpenter starts practicing her fingers, her waist, and her gaze, until even her daughter asks, "Mom, is your eye twitching?"

The little carpenter blushes, shakes her head, and keeps practicing.

Three months later, she has abs, a strong waist, and her wife comes home... even less often.

The little carpenter crouches by the door and flips open the last page, feeling aggrieved. It says: Pull back to make her come to you.

She freezes, then jumps to her feet. So her wife isn't staying away because she doesn't want to come home. She's afraid that if she does, she won't want to leave?

The night her wife comes home, the little carpenter pins her against the door.

"Dear."

"Hmm?"

"I've learned every trick in the book."

"...And then?"

The little carpenter lowers her head, the tips of her ears bright red. Her voice is as quiet as a mosquito's buzz. "Would you... like to see how well I learned?"

The next day, her wife, blushing and holding her lower back, hurries straight back to town.

The little carpenter chases her to the door and calls out, "Will you come back tomorrow?"

A distant voice answers with one word: "Yes!"

Later, a neighbor asks the little carpenter, "Why does your wife keep running off?"

The little carpenter thinks for a moment, her face turning red to the roots of her hair. "She's afraid that if she comes home... she won't be able to leave."

The neighbor: ???

Later still, everyone in the village knows that the honest carpenter on the east side of the bridge has her money-minded wife completely under her thumb.

But the little carpenter knows the truth: she's the one who's been completely conquered.

Theme: Love your partner like tending a flower