1.
In her previous life, Wen Xueling was an unloved concubine-born daughter of the Marquis of Jingzhong's household. The only thing people remembered about her was her lovely appearance.
Unfortunately, even her beauty, which needed only a touch of makeup to shine, couldn't compare to her younger sister Xueyun.
Xueyun was the marquis's legitimate daughter, born to a noble family and breathtakingly beautiful. The sons of the great families in the capital were all smitten with her, and would gladly offer ten thousand gold to marry her.
But the person Xueyun loved was the Regent, whose fame resounded throughout the land.
In her previous life, Wen Xueling wholeheartedly believed that Xueyun treated her well.
Xueyun begged her mother, the Marchioness, to find her a good marriage. That match was Cui Mo, the elder brother of the current Regent, Cui Yi.
Only later did she learn that Cui Mo had always loved Xueyun. He married Wen Xueling simply because she looked somewhat like Xueyun.
After the wedding, she also discovered that Cui Mo was physically impaired and incapable of consummating the marriage. Every night, fueled by alcohol, he would curse and humiliate her, then beat her with a whip.
One day, the Regent Cui Yi came to visit the household.
As she poured tea for Cui Yi, he caught sight of the scars on her arm and suddenly seized her wrist, anger showing in his eyes.
Xueyun happened to see it all.
2.
One day, she discovered she was pregnant.
Cui Mo knew the child wasn't his and had someone force a bowl of abortion medicine down her throat.
The medicine was dangerous. In the end, she died along with her unborn child.
Only after her death did she learn that everything had been Xueyun's scheme. Xueyun had arranged for someone to rape her, and she had believed the man that night was her husband, Cui Mo.
Xueyun had treated her this way only because the Regent Cui Yi had once looked at her, his concubine-born half-sister, a few times while visiting the marquis's residence.
Xueyun mistakenly thought Cui Yi liked Wen Xueling, so she deliberately had her mother marry Wen Xueling off to Cui Mo, who was impaired in both body and mind.
The Regent Cui Yi was born into the Qinghe Cui clan. He was twenty-nine and still unmarried, and although officials had gifted him countless beauties, he kept them in the back courtyard of his manor as decorations.
Cui Yi was a famed military hero. At twenty-one, he took an enemy general's head amid a chaotic battle. At twenty-two, the emperor made him a marquis.
He went on to campaign for years, and everywhere he went, every inch of land beneath his feet became part of the Great Yin Empire.
At twenty-seven, Cui Yi was made a prince by the emperor, becoming the only prince of a different surname in the two hundred years since the founding of Great Yin.
Later, the dying emperor entrusted the young heir to his care and appointed him regent. From then on, Cui Yi held the court and the empire in his grasp.
The world knew Cui Yi as a genuine god of death on the battlefield, but no one knew he was also a man of great learning.
The essays he wrote when he took the imperial examinations were praised by the great scholars of his time.
Yet Cui Yi, whom the world thought could have no regrets in life, stormed into the mourning hall on the night he heard that his elder brother's wife had died suddenly.
He even ignored propriety and split open his sister-in-law's coffin.
At the sight of her pale face inside, the usually composed Regent Cui Yi held a sword in his hand, and it was trembling.
Theme: To grow old with you, unchanged for all my life.
