The Entire Martial World Thinks I've Been Hit with a Love Curse

Shen Juansheng is known as the greatest strategist in the martial world. Beneath his illustrious reputation, everyone knows that his schemes are unmatched. He is a rare, peerlessly handsome young gentleman, though a little frail, and people have long called him a sickly beauty.

Who could have guessed that one day he would suddenly pull a young woman in front of everyone?

"She's planted a love Gu in my heart," said the young man in black, the corners of his eyes faintly red. He looked at her and smiled, his tenderness like the soft colors of spring.

Everyone watched as he lost all his usual composure. Trembling from head to toe, he pressed himself against her neck.

"From now on, I'm her Gu slave."

The whole martial world erupted. The man famed for "ten plans in every move, never missing a single one, with a thousand changes of heavenly secrets and not a trace left behind" had actually miscalculated so badly that he'd fallen victim to a demoness's love Gu!

The flower on the lofty peak had been utterly disgraced. Who in the world wasn't laughing at him? The news spread through the martial world at a suspiciously rapid pace.

At that moment, Qing Guiyu was frozen in his arms. What love Gu?

*

Other people save a beauty and win her heart. She saves one and gets publicly humiliated.

Qing Guiyu had always thought herself lucky. Not only had she survived the war, she had also been accepted into Medicine King Valley to study medicine.

Until she found a beautiful young man afflicted with cold poison outside her home. She took care of him for a few months, and once he'd mostly recovered, sent him on his way.

He seemed guilty and reluctant to leave because she'd been injured saving him, so she casually tried to comfort him.

"I only saved you because you're good-looking, but sooner or later I'll get tired of looking at you."

The boy lowered his head and bit his lip, as if he'd suffered some terrible injustice.

She could never understand how that clear-eyed, pure-hearted boy had grown into the martial world's most vicious strategist, famed for his cunning.

Seven years later, with his life nearly at its end, the tenderness he pretended to feel under the influence of the love Gu was nothing but a desperate, dying man's ploy to make her cure his poison.

Until at last, she played into his scheme and traded her life for his.

But not for his sake. For someone else's.

*

Back then, fate toyed with Shen Juansheng. Just as his last spark of life was being snuffed out, someone pulled him back from the brink of death.

But the cold poison still gnawed at his bones, and he might not live to see another winter.

How could someone with no tomorrow dare speak of longing?

The moment that fanciful thought rose in his heart, he had already repaid seven years of kindness with betrayal.

He could not see her. He had no right to ask.

Now he was so cold he was close to death. Whether he was going mad or not, even if he had to burn himself embracing a flame, he would cling to this warmth.

Reading Guide: A laid-back but capable, spirited healer heroine x a sickly, obsessive, unhinged strategist beauty

One-on-one romance, happy ending. A healer saves herself versus a strategist winning hearts and minds.

A fake life swap, a real faked death. There is no actual love Gu in the main story.

In short, after she saves him, he turns around and accuses her of planting a love Gu on him.

There's more to it, but after all that trouble, isn't a redemption arc only fair?

The heroine spends her days seesawing between "stabbing him to death" and "saving him a billion more times."

The hero spends the whole story destroying himself as he pursues her, a calculating, self-consuming obsessive who keeps using his brains to dance on the edge of disaster.

A power-play mastermind falls head over heels, resolving the problem of intelligent characters with too much pride to be keen on romance.

Intellectual attraction and unhinged beauty, with the addition of a white-moonlight swordsman, best enjoyed with a love-triangle showdown.

Good news: the obsessive got better! Bad news: the obsessive went mad!

Theme: Life is precious. Give sincerity in exchange for sincerity.