Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am the true daughter of Wei Manor, lost and raised far from home.

The fake daughter schemed to make me marry her crippled fiancé in her place.

Her fiancé was Ning Huai, the Young Marquis of Changning Marquis Manor.

He had been made a general at seventeen. Dashing in fine clothes and riding a spirited horse, he had once been the man of countless young women’s dreams.

Now, at twenty-one, he had fallen from glory.

It was said that the enemy once offered ten thousand gold pieces for his head. The battlefield was perilous; he managed to keep his head, but not his leg.

Wei Wan did not want to marry him, so she devised a scheme to make me inherit her engagement.

When I arrived at her courtyard, she was sitting upright on a meditation cushion, arranging flowers.

The fair hand holding the flower was slender and delicate.

The many layers of her skirts were draped beneath her in perfect order.

I rubbed the rough calluses on my fingers and stared at her in a daze for a long time.

With her delicate features and ethereal beauty, her every movement displayed the impeccable bearing of a noble young lady.

She slipped a phalaenopsis orchid into a bamboo vase and said with a faint smile, “Apart from blood, she cannot compare to me in any way. Whether in learning, taste, experience, or social connections, she is inferior to me in all of them. Nearly seventeen years of love and care outweigh mere blood ties by far. I have no need to harm her. The family abandoned her because she couldn’t measure up to me.”

“The phalaenopsis orchid pairs well with bamboo leaves and green lotus. Arranging them in bamboo gives the piece more charm and an air of transcendence. Someone, take these flowers to Father’s study. He is sure to like them.”

I did not know what flowers Lord Wei liked, nor could I manage an elegant pastime like flower arranging.

I was born in the countryside and raised there too.

At the height of my fame, I had merely butchered pigs and sold meat in the county town, earning myself the flattering nickname “Pork Xishi.”

Wei Wan was right. I could not blame her; it was the family that had cast me aside.

From that moment on, I wanted nothing more to do with this family.

I used to be an exceptionally confident and cheerful girl. Earning two taels of silver was enough to leave me giddy with pride all night, too delighted to even fall asleep.

In the year since returning to Wei Manor, I had sampled rare delicacies served on jade platters and enjoyed unimaginable wealth.

But I was compared to Wei Wan at every turn, and I often found myself trapped in a mire of misery, unable to break free.

Only today did I finally awaken from that long dream.

I could not go on like this anymore.

I neither cried nor made a scene. I calmly accepted the marriage.

I would consider it repayment to the Wei Family for giving me life.

Besides, the man I was marrying was a hero who had defended our country. That was not so bad.

My red bridal veil was lifted, revealing a stern, handsome face.

His black hair was tied high with a red silk ribbon. With sharp brows, bright eyes, and vermilion lips, he radiated the bold vigor of youth, yet his gaze was as tranquil as an undisturbed lake.

This was my first time meeting Ning Huai.

If I ignored the wheelchair beneath his wedding robes, he looked exactly like the young general I had imagined.

He was so handsome-far better-looking than his portrait.

As the red candles flickered, my heart could not help fluttering. I shyly called, “Husband.”

Ning Huai’s brow furrowed. Without betraying any emotion, he pushed his wheelchair back and put some distance between us.

He narrowed his eyes and studied me. “I have never heard that Wei Wan had a frail twin sister who was raised in a Daoist temple. Let me guess-who did Wei Manor send to deceive me?”

“Wei Yanqing? Are you a concubine-born daughter of the Wei Family, or a maid from Wei Manor?”

What a rude man!

Still, I could not blame him for thinking that.

To protect Wei Wan’s reputation, Wei Manor had never revealed the truth about the real and fake daughters to outsiders. They merely claimed that she and I were twins, and that I had been sent to a Daoist temple as a child because of my frail health.

In reality, I had spent three years slaughtering pigs in Jinping County on the outskirts of the capital. I looked strong enough to eat an entire ox and bore no resemblance whatsoever to a delicate invalid.

I told him the whole truth, nervously shifting where I sat.

“Wei Manor wanted to break off the engagement with you, but they were afraid of being criticized, so they simply sent me as her substitute. But don’t worry. I’ll treat you very well.”

Propping his head on one hand, Ning Huai regarded me lazily. “I sustained a hidden injury on the battlefield and have long since been incapable of performing as a man. Didn’t you know?”

I had heard about that long ago, and I considered it one of the benefits of this marriage.

I beamed at him. “That’s all right. Childbirth is already a brush with death for women. I think this is for the best.”

Ning Huai fell silent for a moment. “I am a cripple without long to live. I have no wish to hold you back.”

I hurriedly said, “You won’t be holding me back. Husband is a hero, and it is my good fortune to marry Husband. As long as Husband lives, I will care for you with all my heart. If you pass away one day, General, I will mourn you. I’ll burn paper palaces for Husband, and paper ingots too…”

Ning Huai laughed. Then he pointed toward the door, his expression abruptly turning cold. “Get out. I refuse to acknowledge this marriage. We will divorce tomorrow.”

It was as though a basin of icy water had been dumped over my head. In the depths of winter, my heart turned cold as well.

I had not looked down on him, yet he had the nerve to look down on me.

All that talk about not wanting to hold me back was nonsense. He simply did not fancy me.

“If you didn’t want to marry me, you could have said so sooner. Why marry me only to cast me aside and humiliate me like this? I may come from the countryside, but with Wei Manor’s status behind me, I could at least marry a successful examination candidate or an imperial scholar. If you disgrace me this way, how am I supposed to live when I return to Wei Manor? How could I ever marry again?”

With my head bowed, I picked the longans and peanuts out of the bedding, fiddling with them as I stubbornly refused to budge.

When Ning Huai saw that I would not move, he could not be bothered arguing with me. He simply called out the window, “Xuanfeng-”

Before his voice had even faded, a tall, burly guard dressed in black entered the room.

“Get her out of here. I want a divorce.”

The big man looked at Ning Huai, then at me, and scratched his head.