Completed [Pure ancient romance with forced marriage + male lead has no morals but possesses male virtues + wife-chasing trope + heavy-handed, bittersweet romance]

(Controlling! Jealousy drives them crazy! Both are virgins! A seemingly innocent but actually cunning and possessive powerful minister vs. a resilient and scheming delicate flower)

Jiang Yu married the Grand Secretary, a man of gentle and refined character.

He washed his hands and cooked for her, and styled her hair in front of the mirror; because she was frail, he never parted with a string of white jade bodhi beads from then on.

People say he is a holy Buddhist disciple who has fallen into the mortal world.

Until Jiang Yu caught sight of him in the Buddhist hall, where he wrapped a jade bodhi around someone's neck and indifferently strangled that person to death...

Jiang Yu then realized that his feigned gentleness was nothing more than a golden cage he had woven to trap her.

One day, while they were intimately close, Jiang Yu plunged a dagger into his heart and then ran away.

Pushing open the gate of the mansion a thousand miles away, she found her husband, who should have been dead, smiling coldly. He wrapped the blood-stained white jade bodhi around her wrist, kissing it reverently, "Yu'er, running away will be punished..."

*

Pei Xiao is a maggot huddled in a dark corner; marriage and human lives are nothing more than bargaining chips in his struggle for power and profit.

But in the tender moments of each night, he gradually succumbed to the repeated calls of "husband".

Later, all he wanted was her...

He knew it was morally wrong, and he knew she was destroying him, yet he still only wanted her!