Chen Xiu set up a pork stall outside his home to support his family.
Hauling pork had made him strong, and he had a bad temper, too. If anyone dared cause trouble at his stall, he would drive a cleaver into the chopping block. No one dared provoke him.
But Chen Xiu had worries of his own.
He asked a matchmaker to find him someone willing to marry into his family, but even by the time he was twenty-three, no one had turned up. In the end, he had to take matters into his own hands.
In a heap of slaves, one man was so handsome he looked like an immortal. Even in a sackcloth robe, he stood out. On impulse, Chen Xiu bought him and brought him home.
But that very night, the man coughed up blood and took to his bed, unable to rise.
Only after asking around did Chen Xiu learn that the man had been picked up from a mass grave. Because of his good looks, a slave trader had forced him to take potent drugs, damaging his health.
Looking at his bargain husband, pale as paper and more beautiful than an immortal, Chen Xiu reluctantly dug into his savings.
Tsk. He couldn't die. Chen Xiu hadn't even had a taste yet.
*
Wen Shuqing was born into a distinguished family in the capital, a prodigy of the Wen clan, raised with the resources of the entire family behind him. But the imperial court is merciless, and an outstanding young man can become a criminal overnight.
Wen Shuqing had never imagined he would live like an ordinary person, sitting beneath a flowering crabapple tree and watching his husband wield a cleaver with impressive force at the stall outside the gate.
As the sunshine grew warmer, his frail body could no longer endure it, and he slowly drifted into sleep.
His husband, who had been tending the meat stall, hurried over and carefully lifted his beautiful husband into his arms.
Wen Shuqing did not dare move. He only closed his eyes and sighed. "Husband, this isn't proper."
His husband was resolute. "If I say it's proper, then it's proper!"
A laugh drifted from the young master's lips in the courtyard, while customers outside the stall craned their necks, desperate to peek inside.
Everyone knew that Chen Xiu, an older married man, had hidden away a husband more handsome than an immortal, and guarded him so closely that even a glance was hard to come by.
Wen Shuqing had thought he was certain to die, but fate had spared him. To meet his husband, set aside the heavy burden of his family, and live an ordinary life of three meals a day through all four seasons, with nothing more than cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar, was a blessing he had been granted over three lifetimes.
2025.8.22
Theme: The simple, ordinary life is the real treasure
