Slow Romance

Third Miss Liu did not have a very good reputation.

When she was fourteen, she threw a length of white silk over a roof beam and hanged herself, an act that stripped the primary wife of her power to manage the household.

The entire capital whispered that she was far too calculating for such a young age.

When she was seventeen, she sat atop a wall and tossed her silk pouch into the arms of a complete stranger.

Once again, the capital buzzed with rumors, claiming she was conducting a private affair and lacked any sense of shame.

Her father was so livid he was practically hopping mad, threatening to have her drowned in a pond. As soon as this news broke, General He grew anxious.

He was the capital’s most notorious man fated to kill his wife. And he had just accepted Third Miss Liu’s pouch.

Everyone in the capital knew I was in love with Fifth Young Master Xie.

But to refuse the marriage, he would rather shave his head and enter Buddhist cultivation.

Only then did I learn that all his tender warmth toward me had merely been a way to use me to curry favor with the Wang family.

I became the laughingstock of the entire capital.

Later, when the loyal ministers of the Xie family were falsely accused, I set aside the past and helped clear their name.

On the night the Xie family regained its innocence, Buddhist Heir Xie rushed over through the rain and said he would return to secular life to marry me.

I stared in astonishment at his face, so certain of victory.

From behind the curtain, the young courtesan reached out and hooked an arm around my shoulders. “Sister, you were just saying you were devoted to someone like me. How are you suddenly marrying someone else?”

I hurried to coax him. “Of course I’m not marrying him. He’s just talking nonsense.”

Fifth Young Master Xie, always so cool and composed, stood there blankly, so devastated that he snapped the prayer beads around his wrist.

In the two years since my wedding, my husband had never once come home.

Lonely beyond endurance, I bought a convicted slave to warm my bed.

He was certainly diligent between the sheets, but as a person, he was far too vain.

My purse couldn’t take it, so I simply kept him on a poor man’s budget.

Unable to stomach a life of coarse tea and plain meals, he roared, “I don’t want to be your husband anymore!”

Puzzled, I said, “I’m already married. You’re just my kept man.”

His eyes went bloodshot as he gnashed his teeth. “You’re this broke, and you’re still trying to keep a lover on the side like everyone else?!”

And with that, we went our separate ways.

I packed my things and returned to the capital, where I heard that my long-missing brother-in-law had finally come back.

He was kneeling in the ancestral hall and had been given ten lashes.

My mother-in-law was so furious she cursed, “You actually fell for a married woman! Have you no shame at all?!”

I hurried forward to plead on his behalf.

To my surprise, my brother-in-law turned his head, looked at me, and slowly smiled. “Sister-in-law, have you been well?”

I was stunned.

Wasn’t this my vain, status-obsessed kept man?!

After overwork kills her in modern China, Zhang Yinhe is reborn as an abandoned infant in an ancient dynasty—and learns before she can even speak that freedom will never be given to her.

Sold into slavery, exchanged for profit, and repeatedly treated as someone else’s property, she survives every household, prison convoy, raider camp, and pleasure house with sharp instincts, shameless nerve, and the hard-earned skills of a former office worker.

Her fight for independence entangles her with Gu Zheng, a disgraced young master hiding a general’s true identity, and Anyang Ge, the quiet herdsman who once offered her a gentler life, but neither affection nor safety can tempt her back into a cage.

Armed with a false beard, a belt of pearls, and knowledge from a later age, Zhang Yinhe crosses war-torn borders in search of drought-resistant seeds and a future built on her own terms—even if Gu Zheng must first learn that love begins with an equal choice.

On the very first day I hung up my sign offering a “Protection Charm for a Happy Marriage,” the handsome guy from next door came to make a wish: he wanted to be a normal person.

That night, he collapsed beneath the Torii of my home, drenched in blood that shimmered like liquid gold.

My small shrine, which hadn’t seen a single offering in three months, had suddenly picked up a deity on the verge of being reclaimed by the heavens.

I grew up in the countryside until I was seventeen. Then people from the capital came and told me I was the young lady of a marquis’s household.

But the moment I arrived in the capital, they hurriedly married me off to a spoiled wastrel.

Later, that wastrel caused a disaster and had his family estate confiscated. I was the only one who tossed him a sickle and said,

“Husband, come home with me and farm the fields.”

In the dead of night, a friend called me begging for help.

“Save me! Someone with their bones showing broke into my house!”

I cursed him for being insane and was just about to hang up.

Then he sent me the video.

In the surveillance footage, a stark-white humanoid skeleton was pacing back and forth through his living room.

The fox spirit I’d been tracking for so long had finally shown up.

I sneaked into the dressing room of a top idol, buried my face in his clothes, and said excitedly, “Ah~ this is the scent!”

But the next second, the police arrived.

Wait! I’m not a pervert! I’m here to catch a monster!

My roommate insisted on teaching me how to chase her childhood sweetheart.

Then she turned around and made a post asking for help:

[My good son said he wants to date, so as his dad, I introduced him to my roommate.

[And he got mad.

[How am I supposed to coax him, huh~]

The comments were dying of laughter:

[Brother Pei doesn’t want to date. He wants to date you.]

[He’s mad because you’re so clueless!]

The barrage comments exploded too:

[If the supporting female character tries a little harder, this dense female lead is about to realize her own feelings.]

[With her in the middle, their feelings will heat up and sparks will fly, and then they’ll finally break that last unspoken barrier~]

[She’s seriously using 001 like he’s Unit 001, huh.]

[Pretty durable, then. So when is she going to use him up and toss him in the trash?]

I let out a soft laugh.

Then I deleted the draft I’d been about to post: [Not chasing him anymore.]

You want me to keep pursuing him?

Sure.

It’s just that-

if I really do win him over,

don’t go being unhappy about it again.

I followed an underworld Big Brother for six years.

But on my birthday, he brought home a girl.

He was covered in blood, and the pretty, delicate girl was hiding in his arms.

From then on, the man who had indulged my every whim never looked at me again.

Everyone thought I loved Xu Chang but could never have him, and that I was heartbroken beyond words.

I only smiled and toyed with the watch on my wrist.

I was an undercover police officer planted inside Huaxi’s largest criminal gang.

I’d stayed by his side all these years for one reason: to treat him to a taste of prison food. So how could I possibly… fall in love with him?