The Beguiling Beauty Hides Her Baby Bump, and the Chief Minister Loses His Mind Over Her

Only after her husband dies in battle does Xi Hanzhu realize that marrying into a prominent family isn't necessarily a blessing.

Her mother-in-law resents her for having no children, while the clan elders hope to adopt an heir as soon as possible.

A widow born to a concubine, she has no husband to stand up for her, and even her future is no longer hers to decide.

With nowhere else to turn, she goes to Huan Rui for help.

He is the chief minister of the court, born to a distinguished family and a stickler for propriety. After hearing her request, he replies coldly with a single word: "Absurd."

But he fails to hold to his own principles.

From that day on, Huan Rui keeps running into her.

Sometimes in the corridor, sometimes at a banquet, she smiles sweetly at him from across a crowd.

At first, Huan Rui despises her for not knowing her place. Later, he begins to hope she will come, then resents how she fawns over him only to turn around and smile warmly at someone else.

He warns himself not to let his feelings go any further.

Only after Xi Hanzhu becomes pregnant does he finally stop deceiving himself. He makes plans for her to divorce and hopes to take her away from the Huan family.

But she wants neither his love nor the status he can offer her.

On a day of swirling snow, Huan Rui drags her into the ancestral hall.

Before the ancestral tablets, he forces her to bow to Heaven and Earth and to their elders, intending to keep her by his side against her will, before the eyes of his ancestors.

Furious, Xi Hanzhu raises her hand and slaps him.

Huan Rui only smiles.

"If I were you, I'd know that only by clinging to a towering tree like me can you rise above everyone else."

He resents that she used him and then discarded him, and hates that she never had him in her heart, yet he still can't bear to let her go.

Even if they are bound together by a sea of hatred and a sky of passion until death, he will never let her leave.