Chapter 1
The scent of blooming lotus from the nearby lake usually brought peace to Ling Village, but inside the medium-sized courtyard at the edge of the woods, it was drowned out by the rich, heavy aroma of sweet plum wine.
Shen Lian sighed, rubbing her temples as she leaned against the wooden door frame. She was a Kunze of exceptional grace—tall, elegant, with the sharp, intelligent eyes of a scholar’s daughter. Her hands, meant for calligraphy and holding delicate teacups, were currently dusted with flour. Her parents had educated her well, ensuring she knew poetry, accounting, and the proper management of a household.
But a scholar’s intellect couldn’t erase a curse.
Two years ago, her betrothed—a promising, wealthy Qianyuan—had perished in his sleep the very night before their wedding. The village immediately branded Lian as a jinx, a harbinger of bad luck. No respectable family would let their Qianyuan sons or daughters near her. As her parents fell ill and neared their deathbeds, desperation took over. They couldn’t leave their beautiful Kunze daughter alone and unprotected in the countryside. So, they accepted the only offer they received: an alliance with a dirt-poor, desperate family from the next valley over.
Her parents passed away shortly after, leaving Lian with this courtyard, her remaining dowry securely locked in a chest, and a new wife.
“Mei Ling!” Lian called out, her voice cutting through the humid afternoon air. “I told you to sweep the Eastern walkway, not just stand there!”
A few paces away, Mei Ling blinked, looking up from a patch of dirt she had been staring at for the last twenty minutes. Mei was... not what anyone imagined when they thought of a Qianyuan. Where Qianyuans were supposed to be tall, imposing, and fiercely commanding, Mei was short—barely reaching Lian’s shoulder—and wide, possessing a soft, sturdy stoutness that looked more like a well-fed peasant than an elite qianyan. Worse than her appearance was her utter lack of wit. Mei had no sense of responsibility, no situational awareness, and the intellect of a particularly stubborn mule.
“Sweeping?” Mei grunted, her round face shifting into a pout. “But I already moved the big rocks.”
“Moving rocks is not sweeping, you foolish creature,” Lian said, her tone sharp with the resentment that had been simmering since their wedding day. She truly, deeply disliked her wife. She hated how short she was, how wide she was, and how she had to be ordered around like an ox just to get the simplest tasks done.
“Don’t want to sweep,” Mei muttered, crossing her thick arms. “Wasting time.”
“You will sweep because I am telling you to!” Lian snapped, stepping forward.
Mei puffed out her chest, her stubborn streak flaring up. For a moment, her plum wine pheromones spiked with agitation—a heavy, intoxicating wave that made Lian’s inner Kunze shudder slightly, though Lian masked it with a glare. Mei opened her mouth to argue, ready to fight her wife over a simple chore as she did every single day.
“If you do not sweep,” Lian said coldly, cutting her off, “there will be no pork belly with your rice tonight. Only cabbage.”
Mei’s jaw shut instantly. The stubborn defiance melted into a look of panicked defeat. Without another word, she grabbed the bamboo broom and began violently thwacking the dirt, sending dust flying everywhere.
Lian coughed, covering her nose, and retreated indoors, shaking her head. Heaven help me, she thought bitterly. My parents worked so hard for my dowry, and it bought me a child in an Qianyuan body.
Yet, as much as Lian resented the match, she had to admit the short Qianyuan wasn’t entirely useless. Mei was remarkably strong. When it came to heavy lifting, she excelled without complaint. Mei could carry three massive buckets of wood from the lake at once, her thick legs moving steadily up the hill. She chopped wood with a single, effortless swing of the axe, and she had spent the morning foraging in the dense forest, returning with a basket full of wild mushrooms and edible roots without a single scratch on her. As she also carries three or four baskets of pig grass to feed the pigs.
But that was where Mei’s contributions ended. Lian had to manage everything else. She kept the books, carefully counting their copper cash coins and the occasional silver ingot left from her dowry. She tended the delicate vegetable garden, did the cooking to ensure Mei didn’t accidentally burn the kitchen down, and kept the house spotless.
As evening fell, the temperature in the countryside dropped, and the heavy scent of plum wine softened, becoming warm and oddly comforting. Lian served dinner. True to her word, she gave Mei a generous portion of braised pork belly, watching as the short woman ate happily, her earlier stubbornness completely forgotten.
When it was time for bed, they lay down in the medium-sized master bed. Lian stayed strictly on her side, her back turned to her wife. So far, Mei hadn’t touched her. The pure, simple-minded Qianyuan didn’t seem to have a single lascivious thought in her head; she usually just fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, snoring softly like a contented bear.
Lian stared at the wooden lattice of the window, listening to the crickets outside. Her heat cycle was approaching in a few months. The herbal suppressors her father had left her were running low, and they were expensive to replace.
She glanced over her shoulder at the soft, wide form of Mei Ling sleeping soundly beside her. A sigh escaped Lian’s lips. She hated her situation, and she hated how stupid her wife was. But a Kunze needed a Qianyuan when the heat came, and Mei was the only one she had.
When the time comes, Lian thought, a flush of mixed embarrassment and irritation warming her cheeks, I am going to have to teach this idiot exactly what to do, step by step, or she’ll just think we’re wrestling for the last piece of pork.
Reaching out, Lian roughly pulled the quilt over Mei’s exposed shoulder, murmuring a quiet, “Foolish Qianyuan,” before finally closing her eyes, wrapped in the protective scent of sweet plum wine.
The heavy wooden gate of the courtyard creaked open, followed immediately by a sound that made my chest tighten with a mixture of profound irritation and instant dread.
It was a wet, blubbering sob.
I set down the ledger I was reviewing, pinching the bridge of my nose as the scent of plum wine flooded the room—not sweet and comforting like it usually was in the evenings, but sour, agitated, and thick with distress.
“Mei Ling,” I called out, rising from my chair and stepping out onto the porch. “What have you done now?”
The sight that met me made me halt. Mei was standing in the center of the dirt courtyard, looking smaller than her already short stature allowed. She was caked in mud from her knees to her shoulders, her hair was a tangled nest of twigs and leaves, and her round, wide face was streaked with tears and dirt. Her carrying baskets—the ones she used for foraging—were overturned near the gate, the wild bamboo shoots and mountain ferns she’d spent hours gathering scattered in the dirt.
But it was her hands that caught my eye. She was cradling her left arm, her knuckles scraped raw and bleeding, with a nasty purple bruise already forming along her thick forearm.
“L-Lian...” she blubbered, her lower lip trembling violently. She looked utterly pathetic, a wide, stout Qianyuan crying like a toddler who had scraped her knee. “The... the boys by the lower path. The ones from the blacksmith’s house.”
My jaw tightened. Again.
This wasn’t the first time. Because Mei was short, slow-witted, and utterly lacking the fierce, dominating aura expected of a Qianyuan, the coarser villagers took cruel pleasure in tormenting her. They knew she wouldn’t retaliate unless explicitly ordered to. She would be out doing the heavy lifting—fetching water by the lake, cutting wood, or playfully wandering the mountain trails to dig up the sweet wild potatoes she loved so much—and they would ambush her. They’d trip her, throw stones, hide her tools, and mock her for being a “soft, fat ox” controlled by a jinxed Kunze.
“They took the fat mushrooms,” Mei whimpered, wiping her nose with her uninjured, muddy sleeve, smearing the dirt further. “The big ones I found under the old pine tree. For the soup tonight. They threw rocks at me and said... said a stupid Qianyuan doesn’t deserve nice things.”
A hot, prickly surge of anger flared deep in my chest. I hated her stubbornness, I hated her stupidity, and heaven knew I resented being shackled to her—but she was my wife. She was the one who carried three buckets of wood up the hill without a single complaint just because I told her to. Hearing that those worthless village thugs had laid hands on her made my own Kunze instincts flare with a defensive, territorial bite.
“Stop your blubbering,” I said sharply, though I kept my voice lower than usual as I stepped down from the porch. “Look at you. A Qianyuan covered in mud, crying in the dirt. Have you no shame?”
Mei sniffled, her thick shoulders slumping as she looked down at her feet, her plum wine pheromones turning pitifully submissive and apologetic. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I tried to hide the mushrooms...”
“Come here,” I commanded, crossing the courtyard.
She didn’t move fast enough, so I reached out, grabbed her uninjured arm, and dragged her toward the well. She followed me like a scolded hound, her heavy footsteps dragging in the dirt.
“Sit,” I ordered, pointing to the low wooden stool by the water trough. She dropped onto it immediately, her wide frame nearly swallowing the stool whole.
I drew a fresh bucket of water, the cool liquid splashing against the stone. Grabbing a clean cloth, I knelt in front of her. Up close, the heavy, distressed scent of her pheromones was dizzying, but I forced myself to ignore it. I took her bruised, bleeding arm in my hands. Her skin was rough, calloused from the forge and the axe, so different from my own.
As I pressed the wet cloth to her scraped knuckles to wipe away the grit, she flinched violently, a loud whine escaping her throat.
“Hold still!” I snapped, though my fingers instinctively softened their pressure. “If you can fight me every single morning about sweeping the walkways, you can handle a little cold water.”
“It stings,” she whined, her round, dark eyes glistening with fresh tears as she stared at me.
“Then you should have run faster, or used that thick skull of yours to scare them off,” I muttered, carefully cleaning the dirt from the lacerations. “You have the strength to split a log with one strike, Mei Ling. Why do you let those miserable betas and weaklings push you around?”
“You didn’t tell me to hit them,” Mei said softly, her voice entirely earnest, devoid of any irony. “You said... you said if I get into fights in the village, people will talk, and it brings bad luck to our house. So I just tried to walk away.”
I paused, the cloth hovering over her skin.
I looked up into her dirty, tear-stained face. She was looking back at me with absolute, unwavering obedience. She hadn’t fought back simply because she was trying to follow the rules I had laid out for her months ago. She was too stupid to understand the nuance between a senseless brawl and defending herself; she only knew how to follow my orders to the exact letter.
A strange, uncomfortable weight settled in my stomach. The irritation melted away, leaving behind a bitter taste of guilt.
I looked away, focusing back on her arm, wrapping a clean strip of linen around her wrist with firm, practiced movements. “From now on,” I said quietly, tying the knot, “if anyone throws a stone at you or tries to steal what you’ve gathered, you have my permission to push them into the dirt. Do you understand? Don’t break their bones, but do not let them touch you.”
Mei’s eyes brightened slightly, the tears finally drying up. “Push them?”
“Yes. Push them.” I stood up, wiping my hands on my apron. I looked at the mess she had brought home—the ruined vegetables by the gate. “Now, go inside and strip off those filthy clothes. I will prepare the bath. You smell like a swamp, and I won’t have you ruining the bed sheets.”
“Are we still having pork?” she asked, her voice hopeful as she stood up, completely unbothered by her injuries now that she had a clear directive.
I sighed, turning my back so she wouldn’t see the tiny, reluctant softening of my lips. “Yes, foolish creature. We are still having pork. Now move, before I change my mind and make you eat the dirt you brought in.”
“Going!” Mei barked, practically knocking over the doorframe in her haste to get inside, her plum wine scent finally warming up with a hint of clumsy, childlike joy.
I shook my head, walking over to the gate to salvage whatever wild plants hadn’t been completely crushed. She was a disaster of a Qianyuan, wide, stupid, and a constant chore to manage—but as I picked up a bruised bamboo shoot, I realized with grim certainty that the next time those village boys came near my courtyard, they would have to answer to a scholar’s daughter who knew exactly how to wield a venomous tongue.
