Chapter 1

My name is Gu Qianyu, the chancellor’s eldest legitimate daughter.

In the year of my hairpin ceremony, I was caught in the rain and ran a high fever for three days. When I woke,

I had acquired a unique gift.

Whenever I looked at a man, I saw cucumbers hovering over his head, in varying numbers.

Our steward had four. Father had seven.

My younger brother had none.

At first, I thought the fever had addled my brain and turned every man I saw into a walking vegetable stall.

While I was still puzzling over it,

Father took a new concubine. After their wedding night, another cucumber promptly appeared above his head.

Something struck me. I counted Father’s women on my fingers, including Mother.

Sure enough, with the newly arrived Eighth Concubine, there were exactly eight.

The steward, however, had been married three times. That left one unaccounted for.

As luck would have it, my stomach was upset that very night. I ran to the rear courtyard and heard some decidedly suggestive noises coming from beside the rockery.

Holding my breath, I stole a look.

Our invariably kindly-looking steward had Father’s Fourth Concubine pressed against the rocks.

The pair were utterly lost in passion.

My poor eyes.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

So that was where the steward’s extra cucumber had come from!

I was wide awake now.

I crept back to my room.

Sitting on my bed, I could feel my heart thudding in my chest. It took me a long time to recover.

Good heavens. What a gift to have!

One cucumber for one woman.

Some were large, some small; some fresh, some wilted.

If a man had been with only one woman in his life, a single cucumber stood proudly above his head, green and luscious.

Two women meant two cucumbers.

And so on. No upper limit.

I was positively thrilled by my new ability.

I went to poetry gatherings to inspect the sons of the capital’s great families.

My poor, poor eyes.

Almost every noble young gentleman in the capital had an entire green cucumber patch over his head!

The son of the Vice Minister of Revenue looked so refined, yet he had enough cucumbers to weave a wreath.

I looked through the capital’s powerful families without finding a single clean man—apart from boys under eleven or twelve, of course.

The more I looked, the more numb I became.

But I had already had my hairpin ceremony, and my parents had, one way or another, arranged a match for me.

The groom was Chu Lanzhi, heir to the Marquis of Wuling.

He was coming tomorrow to ask for my hand. Wasn’t this the perfect chance to put my unique gift to use?

Today, Chu Lanzhi came to propose.

My parents had painstakingly selected him from families of suitable standing.

There was nobody in the capital who hadn’t heard of Chu Lanzhi.

Not only was he well born, he was exceptionally diligent and ambitious.

Despite his family’s hereditary privileges, he had sat the imperial examinations on his own merits at twenty-two and placed third. He now served at the Hanlin Academy, with a boundless future ahead of him.

Most crucially, he was one of the capital’s rare virtuous men, impeccable in his private life.

He had neither concubines nor bedchamber maids. He even kept his distance from women he happened to pass in the street. Exemplary manners.

The entire capital held him up as a model of masculine chastity.

Whenever the young noblewomen mentioned him, they blushed and their hearts fluttered. They would fight tooth and nail to marry him.

Mother took my hand, looking deeply satisfied.

“Qianyu, you can rest easy this time. I chose this young Lord Chu for you out of countless candidates. You have no idea how hard this match was to arrange, how much thought and money I spent… Well, the result is satisfactory. He truly is a virtuous man. In this day and age, finding a clean man is harder than ascending to heaven. Young Lord Chu is a lump of gold in a cesspit.”

After that whole speech, only one detail had stuck.

…I could understand Mother putting so much thought into it.

But, Mother.

I know you’re rich and don’t lack money, but was there really any need to spend it on a marquis’s household…?

Besides, did a white lotus that could rise unstained from the mud really exist?

It all smelled a little suspicious.

Yet I couldn’t help feeling a flicker of anticipation.

After seeing so many major cucumber producers,

I wanted to know what a truly “clean” man looked like, too.

How wonderfully clear the air above his head must be.

Nobody knew that beneath my outward appearance as a gentle noble daughter, I was a thoroughly lustful creature.

Born that way. What could I do?

What I loved most was a strong, vigorous, devoted man.

The complete opposite of Father.

But it was hard!

In this world!

So very hard!

The whole household was full of cheer.

The steward solemnly directed the maids and servants as they cleaned and tidied every corner of the residence.

Meanwhile, Fourth Concubine was gazing alluringly in Father’s direction.

I tilted my head for a look. The steward happened to be standing right behind him.

Before, anyone would have thought Fourth Concubine was deeply in love with Father.

Now all I could think was… what a sordid little circle.

I would have to find time to tell Father.

Whatever else, his dignity was at stake.

I sat before my bronze mirror to dress, choosing a plain hairpin at random and slipping it into my hair.

A maid from the outer courtyard arrived just then.

“Miss, young Lord Chu is here!”

I made my way lightly toward the reception hall. Before I reached it, I spotted Chu Lanzhi from afar, tall and graceful in white.

Handsome. A perfect gentleman.

His eyes smiled, his manner was as gentle as polished jade, and every movement as he greeted my parents was a model of aristocratic breeding.

Not bad at all.

Then I looked a little higher and saw the long row of cucumbers above his head.

Alarm bells rang inside me.

Before even entering the hall, I followed the line of cucumbers—and walked straight out of our residence.

One, two, three… countless green, fresh cucumbers of every length, packed close and piled together like a whole line of cucumber stalls.

There were so many of them, such a magnificent mass, starting above his head and trailing backward in a winding procession.

An immense parade stretched through the gates of our residence.

It rounded a bend and looked ready to continue toward the street corner.

Compared with the vegetable stall above Father’s head, this was more than a hundred times as spectacular.

Good heavens. This was the virtuous, chaste man everyone praised?

He was less innocent than the male courtesans in a brothel!

I took to my heels and raced back inside. I had to tell my parents to refuse the match.

He was simply… filthy!

With all due disrespect, he was even filthier than His Majesty!

I ran up to Mother on the verge of tears.

“Mother, this is a very, very dirty cucumber!”

“I won’t marry him!”