Fake Spouses

The Xunyang dike bursts, and thousands of miles of fertile fields are swallowed by floodwaters.

The widow Wei Yangliu can no longer make ends meet, so she takes her five-year-old daughter and sets out to seek help from her older sister, who married and moved to Jingzhou.

But her sister’s family is struggling too. With nowhere else to turn, Wei Yangliu stumbles upon an unusual business deal: someone is offering a hundred bolts of silk to hire a common-born woman to pose as his wife for a year.

He’ll pay another hundred bolts to acquire a child.

It’s an astronomical sum. Wei Yangliu rushes up to him. “If you’re hiring someone, why not hire me, my lord? I already have a daughter. A family of three will look much more convincing!”

She saves all the rewards he gives her, then, once the year is up, collects another two hundred bolts and leaves without hesitation.

*

The third young master of the Wang family of Langya is noble as snow. Over the coming year, he must not only change his name and identity, but also find a fake wife.

He doesn’t care about her looks or figure, but she must meet two requirements:

First, she must be common-born, neither from a noble clan nor a slave.

Second, she must be a little older, so she seems like a woman who has raised a child.

Later, Wei Yangliu talks him into keeping her as his impostor wife.

Later still... he accidentally takes an aphrodisiac and sleeps with her.

She is innocent too. He’ll take her back to Langya and provide for her and her daughter, but he won’t take her as a concubine. There is a strict divide between nobles and commoners, and she isn’t qualified to be a high-ranking concubine.

But when the year is up, she really does take the silk and leave, without even a single word for him?

Did she really think he was just a fake husband, with fake feelings and fake tenderness?

P.S. The female lead has had previous partners, while the male lead has not.

The female lead has a daughter with her former partner.

The male and female leads’ first time together was not actually caused by an aphrodisiac.

March 2, 2025

Theme: It’s never too late for a woman to start