Wild Branches [The Powerful One Bows Their Head]

(Bonus chapters will drop at random!)

Disability | Rivals-to-lovers couple | Separation anxiety | The powerful one learns to bow her head

Supreme hedonist and beauty-obsessed reigning ace agent x genuinely unhinged, faux-gentlemanly, possessive, scheming, gloomy male ghost

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Every year, countless newcomers enter the industry hoping to become the next Shan Ya. Reality crushes many of them, and they retreat from the competition. Yet Shan Ya's name remains firmly established, as if she were half the sky in the talent-agent world.

As Huaxing Entertainment's chief agent and director of talent management, Shan Ya was the agent everyone wanted to work with.

In five years in the industry, Shan Ya had raised Huaxing to the level of the two long-established entertainment companies in the field. Her artists swept the awards across the domestic entertainment scene.

Everyone speculated that Su Qingye, the new Best Actor she had personally groomed, was secretly married to her. He was a top-tier star who had clawed his way out of a tenement building alongside her and never acknowledged a single rumor about their relationship.

Only those in the know understood how ruthless she was: ruthless in her methods and hard-hearted by nature. The idea of her dating one of her artists was absurd.

She didn't love anyone in the industry. Her true white moonlight had arrived in the world on the hottest days of summer, yet was as gentle as the first light of dawn, the warmth of the winter midday sun, the sunset at dusk, and the night sky in autumn.

That person came from a family with a status everyone envied. People said Shan Ya had climbed to her current position just to win the approval of her lover's family.

But in the year when rumors linking her to one of her artists were at their peak, someone leaked a photograph.

Shan Ya, with nothing to her name, knelt in the rain. Even in a still image, the headlights blazed, the engine roared, and thunder crashed.

She looked up at the man before her.

He was the head of Huaxing Entertainment, the man who had helped her rise to power, who sat in a wheelchair and rarely showed his face. An outsider, a powerful dragon, he had crushed the local snake with ruthless methods. Shan Ya was almost his younger, female likeness.

The mysteries surrounding this woman were even more fascinating than those surrounding the top-tier stars who rose and fell with each generation.

-

After everything had finally settled, she stood before the man. The floor-to-ceiling windows were wide open, and the pale moon-white curtains behind his wheelchair fluttered in the wind.

It was a rare, peaceful, comfortable afternoon.

"I'm getting married."

The person who had once seemed untouchable now looked utterly pale and powerless. Shan Ya admired his clenched jaw and the pale, strained tips of his fingers.

She suddenly smiled, her gaze falling to his hands.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

Those words finally shattered the composure Bai He had struggled to maintain. Though he was sitting in the sunlight, his gaze was as cold as venom sinking into one's bones.

"Shan Ya."

His voice was hoarse and rough. "Will you let someone else kiss you like that, too? Do you have a soft spot for a stray mutt like Su Qingye, or do you only like a cunning old fox like Jiang Jingyi, who's so good at putting on an act?"

"What do they have that I don't?"

-

Bai He had known it from the very first time they met.

"She's not a lonely girl pushed forward by hardship. She's a vine that's never been nourished, a still-sleeping...ambitious woman."

But sometimes, he still missed those days.

Thunder roared at their first meeting. A woman with nothing to her name stood before a Huayra R in the rain. Her beautiful face was already striking, not at all childlike. She stood in front of the car, battered and pale, but her eyes blazed with the savage ambition of a beast. It was the kind of shot every director longed to capture.

She said, "Please take me in."

"Mr. Bai... I'll do anything for you."

The rain poured down.

Bai He stood there, looking down at her from on high. In the end, he chose to hold an umbrella over her.

But in the end, he was the one left bloodied, desperate to hold on to the thorny rose he had raised with his own hands.

Shan Ya had a dazzling array of rumored boyfriends, yet Bai He became exactly what he himself had once despised: a desperate, broken gambler with nothing left.

-

Reader's guide:

There are second, third, and fourth male leads | The heroine has a nontraditional fake white moonlight | Both leads are pure and both are villains | The male lead is absolutely a virgin, and he is the heroine's one and only pure-black jasmine | His legs will recover | The moment his wife leaves, he goes mad

The man who seems aloof, composed, and in control only realizes his wife is his emotional support after she leaves. In private, his separation anxiety spirals out of control. If this is your thing, come on in ^з^

New novel preorder starts here з

Elite high school | Mutual salvation | Villainess climbs the ladder | Dramatic life

Cool, elegant villainess vs. irreverent bad seed

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Her mother married into the Cong family as a second wife and enjoyed a life of comfort, while she was chosen in place of her stepsister and sent to the main branch to suffer.

The first time Cong Poli saw Chen Chen, the boy was tall and long-legged, surrounded by a crowd of rich young men and treated like a star. Cong girls pursued him in droves, but he didn't so much as glance at her.

From that day on, Cong Poli knew where she wanted to go: the brightly lit, all-night party palace, Club Seventeen.

-

As a marginal figure sent there to try her luck, she would need to win his favor if she wanted to join Congyun after graduation.

So later, she spent two years fooling around with Chen Chen, eventually ending up in bed with him. It was completely unexpected, yet somehow the most natural thing in the world.

On the high school rooftop,

Cong Poli rested her wrist on her knee, her head lowered. She suddenly stumbled, then steadied herself and kept reading. "Your fiancee is about to be humiliated."

Chen Chen glanced sideways at her, then leaned back again.

He had just finished doing something nasty, yet still looked perfectly innocent. He ignored her comment.

Cong Poli finally looked up at him, frowning.

"Li, what do I get if you get what you want?"

At last, she closed the book. Looking at the boy leaning against her right arm, Cong Poli said calmly, "What makes you so sure I'll get what I want?"

The wind was strong. Chen Chen's lazy demeanor finally faded. He sat up and tucked her hair behind her ear.

"You will. I promise."

The boy's features were so captivating that Cong Poli was momentarily dazed.

-

Later, she got her wish, rising step by step until she became the Cong Group director in charge of Muhua. She also became the untouchable white peony, lofty and revered throughout the entertainment industry and the world of finance.

"Yesterday, an unknown. Today, a minor celebrity." Chen Chen's voice was lazy as he lay in bed. "When do I get my turn?"

Knowing he was joking, Cong Poli turned her head. "Wasn't it you last night?"

"...Heh." Chen Chen lowered his head, eyes closed, and buried his face against her neck. "You're so good at time management, Li."

She made no comment. As friends with benefits, neither of them had any right to interfere in the other's life.

"Why didn't you throw tea in her face yesterday?"

Cong Poli had heard from his older sister that Chen Chen had once thrown tea in Cong Poling's face. But back then, Cong Poling hadn't entered the industry, and it had happened at Yunding Club Sixteen, a place the paparazzi couldn't get into.

Most importantly, it was Chen Chen who had thrown it. If he wanted to, he could.

"It would be bad for PR." Her tone was flat. She hated calculating sunk costs more than she enjoyed momentary satisfaction.

Chen Chen said nothing, but lightly bit her neck, pushed her down again, and laughed.

"C'est ma faute, mint."

My fault, Li.

Cong was her surname, and Poli was her generation name. Only Li was truly hers.

Chen Chen had always called her by the last character of her name.

-

The young master Chen had spent seventeen years with everything handed to him on a silver platter. He had always been openly, flagrantly bad.

He never expected his habitual, lazy indifference as an onlooker to be disrupted by a girl he didn't know.

Later, he would remember that day.

He had pulled her to her feet and casually taken her knife. His first words were, "No bloodshed at Club Sixteen."

It really was an ill omen, foreshadowing the rough road ahead for them both.

He had thought she looked like a delicate little flower and was terribly boring. Then she suddenly spoke.

"Want to know how to make it hurt the most?"

With everyone watching, he was immediately grabbed in a hug. Only then did he notice the bloodstains on her white dress.

"You."

Cong Poli's voice was very low. Only Chen Chen could hear her.

Her pale, refined brows relaxed. Her delicate features, coming together in a face of understated beauty, made her look bold and bright-eyed. "I just have to hold on to you."

Those people would be eaten up with jealousy, as long as you didn't push me away.

That's how this liar...easily made her way to his side.

Reader's guide: Both leads are villains | No sex before adulthood | FWB means friends with benefits | Friends with benefits become an official couple | From school to the city, a villainess climbs the ladder

Theme: Lovers who sink together and fight each other along the way