Time-Limited Obsession

[A scion of a powerful Shanghai family × a pure-hearted beauty]

Zhou Lüchen, heir to one of the wealthiest families around, is powerful and influential, dictatorial and self-serving. Yet he has one peculiar passion: renting out entire venues to listen to pipa performances and Suzhou ballads.

His friends are puzzled and ask why he likes it.

With a cigarette between his teeth, Zhou Lüchen answers solemnly, “She's beautiful.”

From then on, the beauty onstage becomes his official girlfriend.

1.

The Zhou family has always been strict, keeping close tabs on their only son's conduct and character. Zhou Lüchen, however, is decisive and ruthless in everything he does. One day he breaks the family rules and makes the headlines; the next, he's working the venture capital market. In a fit of anger, the Zhou family sends him off to copy Buddhist scriptures.

At Cold Dew, ginkgo leaves carpet the ancient temple grounds.

In the Jade Buddha Hall, Zhou Lüchen is anything but a stickler for the rules. The jade precepts scriptures lie scattered across the floor, while every character he writes in bold, carefree strokes is the name “Shen Jing.”

What does a scion like him have to repent for beneath the peonies?

He half-lifts his eyes and glances at the beauty asleep in his arms, a trace of amusement in his gaze. “Are you afraid you'll lose yourself with someone like me?”

She is.

As that beauty, Shen Jing knows it all too well: the young master lives for pleasure and is not the sort to lose himself in love.

The day she asked to break up, everyone in their circle was astonished.

Shen Jing left Shanghai with her suitcase. “He said he wouldn't marry me, so I might as well leave him for someone else.”

2.

Three years after they parted, Shen Jing sees Zhou Lüchen again at an international finance summit. As chairman of the Zhou Association, he presides over the event in a perfectly tailored suit, fine silver-rimmed glasses perched on his high nose. He is so refined and aloof, it's as if he has never known hardship.

They meet at a corner, and Shen Jing flees in panic.

The man stands tall and composed, calmly straightens his cufflinks, then strides after her.