After My Fiancé Passed the Imperial Exams, I Faked My Death

I am Li Yuan’s fiancée. He was brilliant from a young age, gifted with words, while I was slow-witted and knew nothing of literature. The day Li Yuan returned home after placing first in the imperial examinations, everyone waited for a spectacle, sure he would take the opportunity to break off our engagement. But without the slightest hesitation, he took my hand and shielded me behind him. I was overjoyed, thinking he loved me too but had never been good at expressing it. Yet before our wedding, I overheard him confessing his true feelings to a friend: “If Ah Li hadn’t done me a favor, I would never have married her.”

“She may be innocent, but she’s far too foolish.” Later, I fell off a cliff and my body was never found. Li Yuan searched for me frantically in Yongzhou for three years. The first time he saw me again, his eyes were red. No longer rational or restrained as he had been before, he gritted his teeth, yet his words sounded almost like a plea: “Ah Li, come home with me.”