Spring in the Vermilion Gates

[The heroine is sexually experienced, while the hero is not; marriage first, love later] A gentle, fallen noblewoman vs. a cold, dignified powerful official. Ji Hanyi’s family falls into ruin when she is fourteen. At sixteen, she takes her marriage contract and marries into the distinguished Xie family. During their three years of marriage, despite her husband’s coldness, she faithfully fulfills her duties as a wife, striving to be a good, virtuous woman. Her husband is as refined as an orchid or jade, a gentleman of fine character, with a brilliant future ahead of him. Everyone says she ought to be content: her family has no backing left, and marrying into the Xie family is an extraordinary stroke of luck. But one snowy night, when her husband once again abandons her for the woman in his heart, she suddenly realizes the truth: her husband has never loved her. So, at nineteen, despite her husband’s mocking certainty that she will regret it, she stubbornly takes the divorce agreement and leaves alone. Ji Hanyi plans to take her mother south to Jiangnan after the divorce, where she can run a shop and live a quiet, peaceful life. But then the most noble-born and aloof young man of a powerful capital family suddenly says he wants to marry her. Shen Si is like the moon hanging high and untouchable in the cold night: born into nobility, powerful and influential, and renowned for his coldness and mercilessness. Yet he tells her, “Take two days to think about whether you’re willing to marry me.” In his heart, he has already prepared the words that follow: If you’re unwilling, I’ll wait for you again. Ji Hanyi doesn’t know that Shen Si, this iceberg that has stood for ten thousand years, fell for her as a young man when he first discovered love. Beneath his aloof and distant exterior lie only restraint and deep affection; he has even kept his possessiveness toward her well hidden.