Marrying the Younger Brother of the Aloof Beauty

At fifteen, Yin Liuchun married the man she loved.

He was Ling Youzhi, the eldest legitimate son of the Ling family.

Ling Youzhi was as pure as white jade, with an ethereal presence. Devoted to Buddhism, he married her only to save her life. After the wedding, he spent his nights before the Buddha, never sharing a room with her. Fortunately, he was an honorable man who treated her with respect and compassion.

Though she knew he felt no romantic love for her, she was content. She took great care of his family, and everyone praised her medical skills.

At sixteen, Yin Liuchun died unexpectedly.

When she opened her eyes again, rain poured down around her, and corpses lay scattered everywhere.

A slender girl in a thin white dress stood there, raindrops dripping from her lashes.

As she stood bewildered, she suddenly heard someone mention a name: Ling Xuezhou.

Ling Xuezhou? Was it the Ling Xuezhou she knew? Her husband's younger brother?

The Ling family's second son had been a monster everyone avoided.

The boy had frost-white hair, delicate features, and a vicious temper.

One moment, he shoved the clan leader into a lotus pond. The next, he was locked in the back courtyard and beaten half to death.

That night, she had crept up and pushed open a half-shut door, only to see the fifteen-year-old boy lying in a pool of blood with his eyes open.

The plate of osmanthus cakes she'd sent him out of affection for his brother had been knocked to the ground.

"Who needs your fake kindness?"

Snide and cold, a solitary boy with black eyes as wary as a wolf cub's.

Taken to a military camp, Yin Liuchun sat anxiously in a corner, her skirt caked in mud. She clenched her hands, then loosened them, over and over.

The tent flap lifted, revealing the cold gleam of armor.

A tall, handsome young man stood in the doorway, his frost-white hair like snow after ten years, his sharp eyes like blades.

The generals in the tent knelt to pay their respects.

He saw no one else. He stared at her in a daze, tears falling as he murmured as if in a dream:

"Sister-in-law..."

At twenty-five, Ling Xuezhou's name was enough to send the northern barbarians fleeing through the night. They abandoned their armor at the sight of his banner.

The frost-haired youth wore a Wu hook at his waist and had never lost a battle in ten years.

Twenty-five-year-old Ling Xuezhou knelt before his sixteen-year-old sister-in-law, his eyes suddenly reddening.

Realizing she'd arrived ten years in the future, Yin Liuchun had no choice but to pretend to be married to her brother-in-law to escape her pursuers and return to the Ling family under a new identity.

The day she saw Ling Youzhi again, Yin Liuchun hid behind a folding screen and secretly studied the man she'd once loved, ten years older.

He had indeed become a monk.

He had taken the tonsure and donned monk's robes.

A decade had barely left a mark on his face. He still looked as cool and otherworldly as ever.

But he was much frailer now. He coughed after only a few words, and when he occasionally coughed up blood, he calmly wiped it away with a handkerchief.

He invited her to stay with the Ling family, then personally cooked for her, brewed her tea, and adorned her hair with flowers, his every movement gentle as if soothing a child.

Yin Liuchun clenched the divorce agreement hidden in her sleeve.

She thought: I'll cure his illness and repay his kindness. Then I'll go practice medicine and help the world.

What she didn't know was that...

Every night, this widowed power broker, with authority over life and death and status second only to the emperor, would examine his face in the mirror with the utmost care.

He smoothed the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, brushed back his black hair, then changed into the clothes that best showed off his good looks before going to see his adorable little wife.

-

[Little Scene]

That day, Yin Liuchun left a divorce agreement and quietly slipped away.

Unbeknownst to her, the man behind her slowly took the Buddhist beads from his wrist and tossed them into a brazier.

Firelight danced across his face, a red dot between his brows. He seemed neither demon nor Buddha.

Halfway through her journey, she heard a quarrel between brothers and turned back to listen.

The Buddhist who had always been compassionate and self-controlled lost control of his voice, revealing a bitter and spiteful side she'd never seen:

"When she brought me soup and called me her husband, you were nothing but a brat with no hair on your chin."

And the brother-in-law who had always been respectful and courteous in front of her, so radiant and noble, gave a sinister laugh:

"When you had her, you were worshipping your Buddha. I didn't even dare call her by her pet name... Now that she's back, I can finally desire her openly."

-

An aloof beauty falls from grace + sister-in-law romance

Theme: You don't need to prove your importance to anyone