Marrying into Wealth

[Across the way: The Pursuit After Divorce Papers, the Chancellor’s Wife Tossed Them Aside has begun! Blurb at the very end...]

In the capital, where beauties compete for attention, Chu Yu’an, a woman of ordinary talents, secretly loves the unattainable Ji Jinghe. Fortune favors her: with the title of the Chief Grand Secretary’s daughter, she gets to marry him as she wished.

She married him with hope, carefully trying to please him, only to learn a few days later that her husband already loved someone else.

She gave him an orchid she had lovingly tended, but he passed it on to someone else. He treated the sachet she made with her own hands as if it were trash. Even the food she cooked herself ended up being fed to the guard dog.

When her father was framed and killed, he watched coldly from the sidelines. Just when she had nowhere to turn, she heard that he intended to divorce her and marry someone else. At last, she gave up hope.

Without support, fallen into the dust, she knelt before her father’s grave and burned the divorce agreement she had written herself along with the spirit money...

She would protect her younger brother and avenge her father. Even if everyone despised her, she was determined to become the wife of this newly risen nobleman.

~

In a capital teeming with talent, Ji Jinghe was the brightest star.

At only twenty, he passed all three imperial examinations and became the youngest Grand Academician in the Eastern Pavilion at court.

To uncover the truth behind his mentor’s murder, he did not hesitate to use his own marriage as a political bargaining chip,

marrying the daughter of the man who had killed his mentor.

Knowing their marriage was nothing but a calculated exchange, he deliberately ignored all of Chu Yu’an’s kindness and affection.

Their relationship grew ever colder until they were practically strangers.

Fate had a cruel sense of humor. Only after setting aside their prejudices and learning the truth did the tenderness that had quietly seeped into their marriage begin to wind around his heart, little by little.

Only then did he learn

Her calligraphy was excellent and her tea-making skills exceptional, but she had always been low-key and never liked to show off;

She treated people kindly, nothing like the arrogant and rude woman others described;

She was actually beautiful, but not used to dressing up;

She could speak softly and flirt with others, yet had never once smiled at him...

She was wonderful in every way. It was just a shame that she no longer loved him.

Content warnings: One-on-one, both leads sexually inexperienced. Not a power fantasy about an overpowered heroine. The male lead has no first love. Neither lead is perfect, so please don’t read if that bothers you.

After chapter 20, the scumbag husband starts trying to win his wife back [dramatic! old-school! read with caution, ]

[Next story... Please add The Chancellor’s Wife Tossed the Divorce Papers Aside to your reading list]

The Pei family had been a distinguished clan for generations, serving the court for a century.

To continue the family line, Pei Xu took it upon himself to shoulder the family’s honor and disgrace. At only twenty, he had already risen to the Grand Secretariat and held a high position in the cabinet.

He was refined and extraordinary, with the grace of jade, peerless in the world.

Following an ancestral marriage agreement, Pei Xu married a military family’s daughter he had never met.

He did not care about her appearance or family background. All he needed was for her to manage the household and look after his mother and sister-in-law.

Who would have thought that after their wedding, he’d discover just how unruly his wife was?

Finding the women in the inner quarters’ flower viewing dull, she staged a military boxing routine in the courtyard, sending birds fluttering in panic and disrupting everyone’s gathering.

She climbed over the wall in the middle of the night to watch soldiers train at the field outside the city, then got mistaken for a thief and arrested by the city patrol.

Even though she knew he was a neat freak, she still had no restraint, repeatedly provoking him in bed and crossing his boundaries...

Even when he punished her, she never learned her lesson and did it again next time.

Pei Xu thought that if she remained stubborn and unfit to take on the duties of the family matriarch, then he had no choice but to divorce her and marry someone else.

The Pei family never kept people who did nothing, and he had no qualms about being the bad guy.

*

Yang Qiao had been thinking about Pei Xu for years, but sadly, their marriage was not a happy one.

She had grown up among soldiers and knew nothing about the skills needed to manage a household.

To win Pei Xu’s favor, even when he casually mentioned fresh fish in winter, she would brave the bitter cold and the chilblains left from years ago, wading into the river with her bare hands to catch him perch.

But perch was hard to find, and sincere affection even harder.

He never gave her a second look.

She always thought they just needed more time together, and things would get better.

Until she heard someone speaking to Pei Xu outside the door:

"Yang Qiao is unfit to be a wife. Divorcing her and marrying someone else would be the best course."

Pei Xu replied coldly, "Divorce paper is expensive. She’s illiterate and wild as a thornbush. She could never be suited to the brush and ink at my desk."

The world is vast. Why force what cannot be...

As he wished, Yang Qiao left him a divorce agreement and ran away.

Looking at the neatly written, heartfelt divorce agreement his wife had left behind, the man who had always been composed began to panic:

It was only a small mistake. What would it hurt to teach her a few more times? He could just take responsibility for her.

*

Later, Yang Qiao picked up a handsome mute man from the street, and he followed her around all day, refusing to leave.

He climbed an icy cliff with his bare hands, tearing his nails and leaving his flesh bloody and mangled, all to find her a medicinal ingredient that could cure her chilblains.

The saddle chafed her skin, so he secretly mended it for her in the night. Even though the coarse needle left his hands red and swollen, he said nothing when she asked him the next day.

...She couldn’t drive him off or shake him.

Then the mask came off, and Yang Qiao realized she’d been tricked!

"Pei Xu, didn’t we agree we’d have nothing more to do with each other?!"

The man looked dazed, as if he had decided she was the one for him.

"I haven’t signed the divorce agreement, so I’m still your husband."

Theme: A plain flower blooms in a quiet corner; even a tiny moss flower has its fragrance