When Gu Lianjun woke, she heard that the heir of the Duke's mansion had suffered an accident and lost his memory.
She was overjoyed. Ever since she had been forcibly taken from her cousin's side, Yu Huai'an had kept her imprisoned at his country estate and abused her as he pleased for three years. At last, Heaven had opened its eyes: that scoundrel had suffered the consequences of his evil deeds and lost his memory in the accident.
She packed up the hairpins and silver he had given her, put on a neat dress like any ordinary married woman, and waited for a message from the Duke's mansion. Once it came, she would be free, and she could part ways with the man who had stolen another man's wife, never to meet again.
But she waited from morning until midnight, and the Duke's mansion remained so quiet it seemed to have forgotten her entirely.
Gu Lianjun wondered whether she should send someone to remind the elders of the Yu family.
Unexpectedly, the heir who had lost his memory stayed up in the middle of the night, determined to see just what kind of bewitching beauty had made him willing to sacrifice his good name to keep her captive.
Gu Lianjun stood far from the bed. She saw the heir who no longer recognized her and heard him call to her impatiently.
"Come here! With manners like that, what makes you think you could catch my eye?"
Gu Lianjun bit her lip and hesitated for a long while before lifting one corner of her skirt. A gold chain was plainly tied around her ankle, as pale and smooth as jade.
Under Yu Huai'an's successive looks of surprise, confusion, and disdain, she quietly spoke.
"You personally fastened this chain on me in the past, saying it was to keep me from changing my mind. But the past is gone, and things are different now... Could you let me go, so your good name, praised throughout the capital, can remain intact?"
As if moved by her words, Yu Huai'an really did let her go.
For the first time, Gu Lianjun stood on the bustling streets of the capital with nowhere to go and no money to her name. But she was overjoyed, thinking of all the places she could go now that the world was wide open to her.
She wouldn't have to wait for him to come back in that cramped little courtyard anymore. That alone was worth burning incense and praying to the gods.
After a bit of thought with her not-so-bright little brain, she decided she might as well go find her cousin.
What she didn't know was that Yu Huai'an, who had once despised having a mistress, was becoming increasingly strange. He followed her, watched her, had her kidnapped, and finally went back to his old ways, dragging her back to his estate outside the capital.
Gu Lianjun was on the verge of tears. "Didn't you say indulging in women goes against the Way of the gentleman?"
Yu Huai'an replied, "Passion is the flower of the Way, and love is the bud of human nature. The ancestors of the Way all said so. How could I presume to defy Heaven's will?"
Yu Huai'an woke to two pieces of bad news.
First, he'd had an accident and lost his memory.
Second, before losing his memory, he had kept a beautiful concubine at an estate outside the capital, and everyone in his clan, as well as the whole capital, knew how much he cherished Gu Lianjun.
After hearing both, Yu Huai'an gave a dry laugh. There was no woman who could make him abandon his image as an upright, self-disciplined gentleman.
He wasn't some pleasure-seeking rake, after all...
He was certain that woman had deliberately seduced and framed him. The self-righteous young gentleman threw off his brocade quilt, put on his outer robe, and insisted on seeing what kind of celestial being she was, to have brought him to this state.
But the first time he saw her, he felt a strange sensation stirring inside him. The more often he saw her, the stronger it became.
Could he really have fallen into her hands?
He couldn't believe it, so he let her go. But...
How could he let her go when the first thing she did was look for her cousin!
No matter how you looked at it, how could a man who had cast her aside take her back again? But out of compassion, he couldn't bear to see someone from his past fall into ruin. So Yu Huai'an decided it would be better to bring her back and keep her by his side, personally caring for her.
Theme: Sincere feelings can overcome anything
