Spring Returns Again

[The Chase After Her] [Forced Pursuit] [Both Leads Are Inexperienced and Have Only Ever Been With Each Other]

Gentle, stoic noblewoman x obsessive, unhinged, disfigured emperor

On the eve of her wedding to the Crown Prince, Jiang Ling drank one cup too many at the spring banquet. She was then discovered sharing a bed with Xie Yunji, a disfigured prince.

Ridicule and mockery came pouring down on Jiang Ling. She could no longer become the Crown Princess.

With no other choice, she married Xie Yunji and followed him to his bitterly cold fief.

During her three years of marriage to Xie Yunji, she managed the household and cared for him despite her frail health after childbirth, helping him evade countless overt and covert attacks from the capital.

All she got in return was his constant coldness and distance.

Jiang Ling knew he still resented what had happened back then, and believed she still had an unresolved attachment to the Crown Prince. Even when he kept his guard up against her family, who were supporters of the Crown Prince, and severed all her ties with the Jiang family, she never tried to explain herself.

All she wanted was a peaceful life and to be a proper princess consort.

Until Xie Yunji led his troops into the capital, with the throne within his grasp, and brought back the childhood sweetheart who should have been his wife.

Under the hazy moonlight, Jiang Ling was on her way to bring Xie Yunji ginseng soup when she saw him standing with his childhood sweetheart.

A gust of wind blew peach blossoms onto Xie Yunji's shoulder. His childhood sweetheart brushed them away and said something to him.

He smiled.

He had never smiled at her like that, not even when their child was born.

*

Though Xie Yunji was a prince, the emperor had disliked him from birth. He was gloomy and obsessive. One half of his face was as beautiful as a demon's, while the other was as hideous as a fiend's. He wore a half-mask at all times, and everyone avoided him like the plague.

Only the princess consort who had been mistakenly bound to him by fate treated him with such thoughtful care.

But Xie Yunji knew that was only a facade. She had always loved the Crown Prince, and nothing had changed.

Even in their most passionate moments, no matter how hard he tried to coax a response from her, she could hold back every sound.

He hated how composed and restrained she was.

After he ascended the throne, the Jiang family was convicted because of the former Crown Prince. Xie Yunji issued an edict appointing Jiang Ling as a consort of the highest rank.

That very day, Jiang Ling returned the edict. She asked an eunuch to convey a message to Xie Yunji: "I wish to take the tonsure and become a nun. All I ask is to spend the rest of my life with a lamp and the Buddha."

Xie Yunji sneered, his fingertips turning white as he gripped the edict.

She was only doing this because her heart had been broken over the former Crown Prince, and because she was unhappy that she couldn't become empress. She was trying to use this to threaten him.

If she didn't want to be a consort, he wouldn't make her one. But leaving the palace was out of the question.

She could stay in the palace without a title or status. Sooner or later, she would break.

She could hate him all she wanted. He didn't care. But she could forget about escaping him.

And there was no way he would let her spend the rest of her life quietly pining for her former Crown Prince.

For the rest of her life, whether she wanted to or not, she would stay by his side.

He had thought he could endure her ignoring him from then on.

But once they truly became strangers, he dreamed every night of the Jiang Ling who used to smile softly at him.

After pacing outside the tightly locked palace gates for several nights, Xie Yunji finally couldn't take it anymore. He brought the son he shared with Jiang Ling and said,

"Go knock on your mother's door."

*The male lead is obsessive and genuinely mentally ill. There are misunderstandings, a painful chase to win her back, and a happy ending.

Premise: Leave the past behind and embrace the future