On the day Qi Heng ascended the throne, he finally married his long-lost white moonlight—the widow he’d pined for all these years. But the woman who had bled and killed beside him, Sang Yu, he cast into shadow, treating her as a shameful secret. Thus, she asked to be discarded. Dragging her broken body south to Jiangnan, she met Li Shiyan beneath drizzling apricot blossoms. He taught her poetry, coaxed her to sleep, and once, while applying her medicine, his eyes turned red.
What Sang Yu didn’t know was that Li Shiyan had been waiting for her for a very, very long time.
The day after she left, the emperor lost his mind completely. Three years later, the newly appointed governor of Jiangnan knelt in the imperial study, spine straight as a blade: “Your servant wishes to marry her.”
The tyrant’s face remained impassive, but the ring in his hand shattered. He had seen Sang Yu trembling in pain, covered in wounds—but never like this: Alive; wearing apricot-red robes, tiptoeing to brush petals off someone’s shoulder.
Qi Heng tore through half the palace before storming into the bridal chamber, eyes bloodshot: “You’d rather have that useless scholar than me?”
Sang Yu looked at him coldly and corrected: “No. You were the one who didn’t want me first.”
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**【Reader Notes】**
– Female lead is not the male lead’s first love (she ends up with the second male lead)
– She starts off battered and broken, but is healed by the second male lead
– Male lead is obsessive and deranged in his pursuit, the second male lead is gentle and unwavering
– Contains: coercive love, political intrigue, and emotionally intense romance
