Shen Tianbai had been blind and lame since childhood, confined to his sickbed.
By the age of nineteen, he was clearly not going to survive. To bring him good luck, his family arranged a marriage for him.
On their wedding night, he handed his bride a letter of divorce and the deeds to his land. "I don't have long to live, and this marriage was never my wish. I've held you back. After I pass, these assets..."
Before he could finish, the girl cupped his face and leaned in to kiss him.
The red curtains swayed in the third watch, and her hairpins were tousled by the fifth. After a night of passionate lovemaking, his whole body was limp.
He had no idea what this girl had been raised on. She was tall and strong, with strength to match.
But, like him, she was disabled. She was mute.
Two imperfect people held each other beneath brocade curtains and red quilts, and managed to build a fairly happy life together.
During their three years of marriage, Shen Tianbai was gravely ill several times, but each time he escaped death. As the saying went, those who survive great calamities are blessed in the end. Gradually, his health improved, and his eyes even began to show faint glimmers of light.
One night, he secretly burned the letter of divorce and had someone prepare a new wedding outfit. Once he could see again, he would give her the proper wedding she'd never had.
On the day his sight returned, everything was ready for the wedding banquet, but the bride was nowhere to be found.
He searched everywhere without success. "Where is my wife, the woman I've spent every day and night with for three years?"
His mother wept bitterly. "My son, when will you recover from this delusion? That young woman died in her bridal sedan on your wedding night three years ago."
He froze. Who had been sharing his bed and whispering by his side for those three years? Could it truly have been nothing but a dream?
Then disaster struck the clan, and his younger uncle, who had been unconventional since his youth and hadn't returned in years, came home in response to a family letter.
He stared at his uncle's waist, lost in thought. He remembered that his wife's waist had been just as wide.
Later, that man pinned him behind the ancestral hall door and caught his hand, guiding it to measure his waist.
"Dear nephew, have you gotten a taste for the pleasures of the flesh?"
Older top: Shen Yishui
Theme: Reunions are the most romantic thing
