The Adorably Dark Movie Star Detective

This is a warm, indulgent romance, a masterclass in a man scheming to win his wife, and a mystery-solving detective story all in one. A heartwarming, doting, and devious romance, but definitely not a naive one. One couple, no rivals, both leads are pure in body and mind. Expect comedy, sweetness, and thrills. The heroine is a criminal psychology expert who later becomes a martial arts instructor for the special police. She is highly intelligent and physically gifted, but socially inept and slow to catch on. The hero is a huge star in the entertainment industry, a superstar and award-winning actor known as “The Lord of Ten Thousand Years.” He has been hopelessly in love with her for 22 years without ever falling for anyone else, and he has the complicated, proud-but-loyal-dog personality to prove it. This is a romance with a mystery-solving element. Romance comes first, with the cases as a side dish. Readers who are particular about deduction or mystery, and anyone squeamish about blood, should proceed with caution. Heroine: Duanmu Xiaoxiao (Xiaoxiao is pronounced “Xiao.” The character means bright and clear, like a sky free of clouds.) Personality: cool, aloof, severely fastidious about mental purity, and dislikes crowds. She is a stunning, doll-like beauty at first sight, keeps a retired police dog, and has trained in martial arts since childhood. She is currently a martial arts instructor for the special police. She grew up in America, earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology from an Ivy League university at 18, and a PhD in criminal psychology from the University of Maryland at 20. That same year, she joined the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU. At 21, she also became a criminal consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation, or CBI. At 22, she became the youngest team leader in the history of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, earning a reputation as an expert among experts in criminal psychology. In a nutshell, her intelligence is as high as her social skills are poor. Hero: Kangxi (his name earned him the nickname “The Lord of Ten Thousand Years”) He has Manchu ancestry and keeps his surname, Aisin Gioro, secret. He is a descendant of Prince Chun, Zaifeng. For historical reasons, his family stopped using the surname starting with his grandfather’s generation. His looks are outrageously good. He can leave countless women, and even some men, utterly obsessed, irrational, willing to betray their parents and sell out their sisters. Personality: conniving, a master schemer. He knows how to use anyone or anything to get what he wants, then burns his bridges once they’ve served their purpose. He’s the kind of master manipulator who can sell someone down the river, and have them foolishly count out the money for him. In other words, everyone else sees a Tibetan mastiff, while in front of the heroine he’s a German shepherd. In round one, she shoved him until his head bled. In round two, she threw him so hard that his vision spun. Yet he always knew she was the woman he wanted. Her professional assessment of him, from the perspective of criminal psychology: cunning, skilled at putting on a front, arrogant and conceited, with an overwhelming need to control others. He could be diagnosed as a clinical psychopath. The witnesses dropped to their knees, their dignity shattered. What on earth was with that twisted conversation? ** Criminal psychology is the study of criminals’ intentions, thoughts, motives, and reactions. It is an interdisciplinary field between criminology and psychology. It can be used to analyze behavior in all kinds of difficult cases: crimes with no clear leads, no fingerprints or eyewitnesses, and no way to identify a suspect. By examining the method of operation and deducing the criminal’s mindset, it can narrow down the criminal’s traits as much as possible, compile key points, and build a profile of their age, gender, occupation, upbringing, and patterns of behavior. It can model the criminal’s thought process, reconstruct the crime, and even predict the criminal’s next move, driving them into a corner. In other words, if you want to catch a criminal, you must first put yourself in the criminal’s shoes.