The Art of Luring and Landing

------★ Novel Blurb ★------

[1]

Tang Song had always known.

An entire world stood between her and Qiao Yulan.

He was the youngest person in charge of the Asia division of an international auction house, a trendsetter in the art-collecting world. Every move he made carried an innate air of privilege. She was just an ordinary intern, with little to show for herself besides a modest talent for painting and a quiet, patient nature.

But he treated her too well.

So well that, though she knew there was something hidden in their relationship, she pretended not to see it.

She once casually mentioned that she liked drinking tea on rainy days, and he had a full tea set brought into the office. He had premium Da Hong Pao tea, made from the original mother tree on Wuyi Mountain, flown in, brewed it, and handed her a cup.

When a client gave her a hard time over a report, he quietly slashed their budget by forty percent during the meeting. Afterward, he told her casually, "People who bully someone of mine have to pay the price."

But what truly made her fall for him was that business trip.

She came down with a fever after failing to adjust to the local climate. In the middle of the night, she went to the front desk to ask for medicine. When she opened her door, she saw him standing in the corridor with a bowl of congee. The cuffs of his white shirt were rolled up to his forearms, and his hair was damp from the rain. That night, he sat beside her bed and watched her finish the congee, then took her temperature three times. Only after her fever went down did he lean back on the sofa and fall asleep.

She thought she was careful enough not to fall in love with someone she knew would never truly cherish her.

Until she found the contract in his desk drawer. From her very first day on the job, every step had been part of his game, and she was the chosen pawn, the one he could sacrifice.

She stood at the door of his office and asked, "Was I your pawn from the start?"

He put down his pen and looked up at her, his tone indifferent. "What do you think?"

She stared into his eyes. "Was the way you treated me well part of the game, too?"

He paused for a moment, then parted his thin lips. "You didn't think I was serious about you, did you?"

She didn't cry. She only smiled and shook her head.

After quitting, she changed her phone number, moved, and disappeared from the city for good.

[2]

Even Qiao Yulan himself couldn't understand how someone like him had fallen for her.

What he understood even less was this: she had everything she could want, but how could the girl who used to quietly read reports at his house until she fell asleep simply walk away?

At first, he thought it was just a habit.

He was used to finding a cup of coffee at just the right temperature on his desk every morning, to finding a box of lozenges on his desk after business trips, to seeing her sit in the corner during meetings, taking notes and occasionally looking up at him. He thought he could give up these habits whenever he wanted.

But she didn't give him the chance.

In the first month after she left, he couldn't sleep at night. He checked whether she had applied to other auction houses or left the city.

In the second month, someone spotted her at an antique market in another city. He flew there that very day and stood on that street from nine in the morning until dark. He smoked most of a pack and walked through every shop three times.

He lost control completely in the third month.

After getting drunk at a late-night business dinner, he went to the apartment complex where she used to live and stared blankly at the window that had once lit up. That window never lit up again, but he watched it for two whole hours.

He suddenly remembered the question she'd asked on the day she left. He should have told her the truth.

He should have said, "Yes, it was a game at first, but at some point, I fell for you before you did. I didn't bring you that bowl of congee just because I happened to be nearby. I've never been this patient with anyone in my life, but you took all that patience with you when you left."

[Outwardly baiting, secretly luring | Strangers in public, losing control in private | Winning her back and making it official | Healing | Suspense]

[Auction tyrant VS intern, bewitching hunter VS teasing cat]

(The blurb and full outline have been screen-recorded and archived as evidence: 2024.7.15. The full novel will be completed on 2026.10.1.)

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★[Reader's Guide]

1. Both leads are each other's only partners. Older male lead, one-on-one romance, happy ending.

2. Contains materialist suspense. Characters, locations, and events are entirely fictional; please don't take them seriously. Neither lead is perfect. Please don't send writing advice.

3. Every chapter plants subtle clues that all pay off in the end. No padding. Please don't skip chapters (I'm begging you)~

-------Coming Soon: Please Follow-------

The bickering-couple romance next door, The Sour Fruit's Temptation, is getting ready to launch. Here's the blurb for you, dears~

[Face-slapping and winning her back | Male lead goes crazy for love | Amnesia and a fresh start | Suspense]

Proud, devoted, aggressive, and secretly vulnerable VS. Flirtatious without knowing it, black-hearted turned pure-hearted,

Obsessive wife-watching lawyer X witty, two-faced wife

The Buddha said that life has eight winds: gain, loss, disgrace, fame, praise, ridicule, suffering, and joy. Whoever remains unmoved by the eight winds has seen the Tathagata.

Shi Yanqi once thought he was a man unmoved by the eight winds.

Until he married Jiang Wanzhen.

[1]

Shi Yanqi, an elite lawyer forced to inherit the family business, was known among the wealthy as a cold-faced Buddha. Refined and noble, upright in conduct, his only stain was a marriage forced on him by his family.

Jiang Wanzhen had a pretty face, but not much going on upstairs. Her daily routine consisted of shopping, parties, flaunting her wealth, and giving service staff a hard time.

Everyone in the Lingnan elite circles knew: the eldest Jiang daughter was infatuated with the second son of the Shi family, and her pursuit had become a citywide spectacle of humiliation.

On their wedding day, people in their circle raised their glasses in congratulations, their eyes alight with anticipation for the show.

She pursued him; he avoided her. She moved closer; he retreated.

In the marital bedroom, she slept on the east side of the bed and he on the west. The distance between them was far more than three feet.

Shi Yanqi flipped through the calendar every day, precisely calculating the countdown to the end of their marriage.

Until the accident.

She was on her way to buy him a birthday present when she got into an accident and suffered a head injury.

When he arrived, the person in the hospital bed had just woken up.

Their eyes met. She blinked, then blurted out, "Hey, which celebrity are you?"

Shi Yanqi: "?"

[2]

She had forgotten everything.

Including how to spend money, torment people, order champagne in ten languages, and pursue and cling to him.

Now Jiang Wanzhen got up at eight every morning and went into the yard with a glass of milk to feed stray cats.

She made her own breakfast, then went to work diligently.

When she saw him in the hallway, she would nod politely. "Morning." Then she would walk right past him.

The good news: she had finally stopped clinging to him.

The bad news: he had started wanting her to cling to him.

The worse news: she looked at him no differently than she looked at the potted pothos she kept.

[3]

They minded their own business, getting along on the surface like two strangers sharing a rental.

Until one late night, after she'd had a little to drink, she looked at the man across from her, dressed in a suit and reading financial statements, and suddenly found it all unbearably dull.

In high heels, she swayed over to him. The strap of her red dress slipped half an inch off her shoulder, and she raised the corner of her eyes. "How about we..."

Shi Yanqi looked up. His gaze slid over her collarbone, and he said calmly, "You've had too much to drink."

"Who has?" She sat on his desk and leaned close. "I just wanted to ask you..."

"Ask what?"

"Are you impotent?"

The air froze for three seconds.

He put down the financial statements, took off his gold-rimmed glasses unhurriedly, and suddenly smiled.

It was the first time she'd seen him smile, and the first time she'd regretted something. It turned out a wolf was hiding beneath the Buddha's face.

The good news: he was perfectly capable.

The bad news: more than capable.

The worse news: afterward, he acted as if nothing had happened. The next day he made her hangover soup and drove her to work as usual, then went right on being more than capable that night.

Jiang Wanzhen stared at the marks on her neck that she couldn't hide in the mirror, grinding her teeth in anger.

[Bonus Scene]

One day, Jiang Wanzhen found an old diary in the corner of the walk-in closet.

That night, she leaned against the bedroom doorframe and looked at Shi Yanqi, who was pretending to read financial statements. "So I really did send you 'good night' every day."

"And you didn't reply to a single one." She opened her mouth. "Was I... really that free?"

His back stiffened slightly.

Then he closed his laptop, walked over, and scooped her up in his arms. His voice turned fierce:

"...I'll make up for every single one now."

"Until you tell me to stop."

(Blurb saved: 2025.12.23)

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Theme: Ordinary people can become the protagonists of their own stories.