The Art of Luring and Landing

★ Novel Blurb ★ 【1】 Qiao Yulan has three desires he has never felt for anyone else: possessiveness, the urge to conquer, and the need for control. After meeting Tang Song again, he gets his first taste of all three entwined. Even though the way he gets her is so despicable that even he looks down on himself for it. The first time they meet again, she offers him an Americano. Her fingertips touch the back of his hand and flinch away, but she still looks up at him with a smile and says, “Long time no see.” The second time, using her position as his subordinate, she arrives at her desk first, just so she can hand him a neatly organized auction catalogue when he walks by. The third time, she takes a drink for him at a gathering with their coworkers. Drunk and barely able to stand, she still tugs at his sleeve and asks, “Why did you leave without a word back then?” On the night she cries the hardest, he shows his own vulnerability for the first time too: he once caused someone’s death. Tang Song’s heart is soft as rice paper. A single drop of ink can soak through the whole sheet. Everyone loves her clear, bright eyes, like a sky after the rain. And Qiao Yulan, elegant and dazzling on the outside, is a madman who climbed to the top through schemes and trickery. Other than money and power, all he has is a lifetime’s worth of underhanded machinations. He wants her. But he still envies everyone who makes her smile. After every tender moment, when she is exhausted, he refuses to let her sleep, asking her again and again: “Why does that elementary school classmate of yours always like your posts?” “Who’s ‘Teacher Chen’ in your phone? Why did you put a smiley face next to his name?” “Why aren’t you replying to my messages? You used to reply right away.” Tang Song gets so fed up she throws a pillow at him, but he seizes both her wrists in his palms, raises them above her head, and pins them to the pillow. “Throwing things at me?” He lowers his head, brushing her mouth as he teases her with a touch that is almost there, but not quite. “Go ahead. Once you’re done, I’ll make you pay for it with interest. I’ll keep at it until you beg.” 【2】 But those who play with fire are bound to get burned. Later, after Qiao Yulan buys that expensive necklace, Tang Song helps him put it in the safe, only to discover a stack of old documents. It turns out everything she owes him was a trap he set himself. She neither cries nor makes a scene. She simply leaves her work badge beside his pillow, picks up her suitcase, and walks out into the rainy night. When the elevator doors open, Qiao Yulan is standing outside, soaked through, his eyes even redder than hers. “Long time no see.” But none of the wounds from back then can be erased with a single apology. There is no way he can let her go. When she wakes again, they are on an unfamiliar island. Qiao Yulan gazes at her, cradling her hand in his. “I sat in the last row at every auction you hosted.” “When you smiled at the audience, I pretended you were apologizing to me.” “I never approved your resignation. You quit without permission, so according to the contract, you owe me two years’ salary as a penalty.” “If you can’t pay, you can pay with yourself.” She turns her face away, refusing to look at him. He isn’t annoyed. He bends down and presses his lips to the delicate pulse at her wrist, kissing it again and again. “Not going to nod?” He chuckles, his breath scorching her ear. “Then don’t blame me for buying all those paintings of yours and hanging them above my bed.” “The person in your paintings is me. Tang Song, you can’t deny it.” 【Auction tyrant VS. intern, bewitching hunter VS. teasing kitten】 【Strangers in public, out of control in private | Open flirtation, secret seduction | Winning her back and making it official | Healing | Suspense】 (The blurb and complete outline were screen-recorded and archived as evidence: 2024.7.15) The end ★【Reader’s Guide】 1. Both leads are each other’s first and only, with an older male lead. One-on-one romance, happy ending. 2. Includes materialist suspense. The characters, places, and events are entirely fictional. Please don’t take them seriously. Neither lead is perfect, so please don’t send writing advice. 3. Every chapter contains clues that come together in the end. No padding, so please don’t skip chapters (pretty please)~ Coming Soon: Please Pre-Subscribe The bickering-couple romance next door, 《Craving the Tart Fruit》, is about to launch. Here’s a look at the blurb, darlings~ 【Face-slapping and winning her back | Male lead goes mad with love | Memory loss and a fresh start | Suspense】 Proud, devoted, high-attack-low-defense VS. flirtatious without knowing it, black on the outside and white within, possessive lawyer who pretends to be aloof X witty, two-faced married woman The Buddha says: Life has eight winds: gain, loss, disgrace, fame, praise, ridicule, suffering, and joy. Those unmoved by the eight winds will see the Tathagata. Shi Yanqi once thought he was unmoved by the eight winds. That is, until he married Jiang Wanzhen. 【1】 Shi Yanqi, an elite lawyer forced to inherit the family business, is known among the wealthy as a cold-faced Buddha. Refined and dignified, he conducts himself with impeccable propriety. The only stain on his life is a marriage forced on him by his family. Jiang Wanzhen has a beautiful face, but not much sense. Her daily routine consists of shopping, parties, flaunting her wealth, and bullying waitstaff. Everyone in the Lingnan elite circles knows that the eldest Jiang daughter is infatuated with the second son of the Shi family. She pursued him so relentlessly that she became the talk of the town and made a spectacle of herself. On the day he married her, people in their circle raised their glasses in congratulations, their eyes full of anticipation for the drama to come. She pursued him; he dodged. She advanced; he retreated. In their 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. Every day, Shi Yanqi flipped through the calendar, calculating the countdown to the end of their marriage. Until the accident. On her way to buy him a birthday present, she was in an accident and suffered a brain injury. When he arrived, the person in the hospital bed had just woken up. Their eyes met. She blinked, then suddenly asked, “Hey, which celebrity are you?” Shi Yanqi: “?” 【2】 She had forgotten everything. Including how to spend money, bully people, order champagne in ten languages, and pursue and cling to him. Now Jiang Wanzhen gets up at eight every morning and feeds stray cats in the yard with a glass of milk in hand. She makes her own breakfast, then goes to work diligently. When she sees him in the hallway, she gives him a polite nod. “Morning.” Then she walks right past him. The good news: she finally stopped clinging to him. The bad news: he has started wishing she would cling to him again. The even worse news: she looks at him no differently than she looks at the pothos plant she keeps. 【3】 They keep out of each other’s way, their outward harmony resembling that of two strangers sharing a rental. Until one late night, after she has had a little to drink, she looks at the man across from her, suited up and studying financial reports, and suddenly finds it all unbearably dull. She teeters over to him in high heels, one strap of her red dress slipping half an inch down her shoulder. She raises the corners of her eyes at him. “Why don’t we…” Shi Yanqi looks up, his gaze sliding over her collarbone. “You’ve had too much to drink,” he says flatly. “Who’s drunk?” She sits on his desk and leans closer. “I just wanted to ask you…” “Ask me what?” “Are you impotent?” The air goes still for three seconds. He puts down the financial report and slowly removes his gold-rimmed glasses, then suddenly smiles. It’s the first time she has seen him smile, and the first time she regrets anything: it turns out there’s a wolf beneath that Buddha’s face. The good news: he can do it. The bad news: he can do it too well. The even worse news: afterward, he acts as though nothing happened. The next day, he makes her hangover soup as usual, drives them both to work, and keeps doing it again that night. Jiang Wanzhen glares at the marks on her neck in the mirror, unable to hide them, and grits her teeth in anger. 【Bonus Scene】 One day, Jiang Wanzhen finds an old diary hidden in the corner of the walk-in closet. That night, she leans against the bedroom doorframe and looks at Shi Yanqi, who is pretending to study financial reports. “So I really used to text you ‘Good night’ every single day.” “And you never replied to a single one.” She parts her lips. “Was I… really that bored?” His back stiffens slightly. Then he shuts his laptop, walks over, and sweeps her up in his arms, his voice rough with urgency: “…I’ll make it up to you now, every single message.” “Until you tell me to stop.” (Blurb archived as a screenshot: 2025.12.23) The end Theme: Ordinary people can become the protagonists of their own stories