(The pic isn't mine)
Description:
Widowed thrice with the three husbands dying on the day of the wedding,Da Fen Ying thought that she actually escaped the fate of being married and serving as others’ tool in this life, only to have that tranquility broken by the strange proposal of General Wu’s eldest son, Wu Juan. Baring all her bad sides and overbearingness to him, he still, unexpectedly agreed to her conditions, not voicing any of his own.
Widowed thrice with the three husbands dying on the day of the wedding,
Thus started the marital life of the female general and her scholar husband.
Genres: Romance, Ancient times
The first time Da Fen Ying wore red, she was fifteen.
It was not for war, though by then she had already ridden in formation and taken down a bandit with her father’s sword. No — the red, that day, was ceremonial. Heavy silk layered over padded cotton, threaded with gold dragons curling toward the heavens. Her mother wept through the combing ceremony. Her handmaids giggled over petals scattered on the bridal path.
She did not cry. Not when they painted her lips. Not when the veil came down.
Her groom was a diplomat’s son, quiet and soft-voiced, with hands too clean to hold anything heavier than a scroll. They had exchanged only three words before the wedding. The marriage was a reward for her victories — a symbol of alliance between sword and pen.
He died before midnight.
Tea, laced with poison. He collapsed before the second bow. The incense was still burning.
The guests panicked. The priest fainted. And Fen Ying, who had not even removed her veil, stood unmoving as her husband turned cold beside her.
They tried to hide it. But the whispers began immediately.
A bad omen. A cursed girl. A warrior who marries death.
She burned the wedding robes herself.
And rode back to the front lines within the week.
The second time she wore red, she was seventeen.
Wiser. Sharper. Her hair now bound in the fashion of generals, her eyes older than they had any right to be. The empire needed peace with the northern clans, and once again, she was the price.
This groom was no scholar. He was a soldier like her — broad-chested and loud, with a laugh that boomed over campfires and calloused hands that held a blade like it was part of his body. She did not love him. But she understood him. And in the stillness between drills and duty, she had even grown to respect him.
On the night of their wedding, the camp was quiet. The fireflies came out early.
He died with a dagger in his back, just before they shared the first cup of wine. The blade had been meant for her — she saw the angle, the precision.
He died shielding her with his body.
She did not weep.
She carried his corpse through the camp, barefoot, dressed in blood-soaked silk, until her men rose in silent salute.
The assassin was never found.
But the rumors grew louder.
No man survives her. The gods have marked her. Her hands bring death to those who touch her.
The court sent her letters. The priests sent warnings. The matchmakers sent bribes.
She sent back silence.
By twenty, Da Fen Ying was the empire’s youngest general — victorious in every campaign, feared on every border, alone in every tent.
She slept on straw, ate only what her soldiers ate, and polished her blade with a devotion others gave to prayer.
She no longer dreamed.
They called her the Crimson Widow.
The name was whispered like a spell, both reverent and afraid.
Children feared her. Poets romanticized her. Commanders envied and resented her.
She had no family left. Her parents were buried beneath flags. Her brother lost to a forgotten skirmish. Her former handmaids long married, far from the scent of steel and blood.
All she had was the sword.
And for a long time, that was enough.
She built a life of control. No softness. No risk. No entanglements.
She turned down every suitor. Dismissed every petition for marriage.
She no longer trusted fate to offer her anything but blood.
She kept her estate small, her servants minimal, her days predictable.
The blade slept beside her pillow. The windows never stayed shut. Her armor remained polished even in peacetime.
And still, the years turned.
Peace grew long. Her presence at court was less frequent. The rumors softened, but did not disappear.
She thought she had finally disappeared into the shadow she had built — untouchable, unreachable, perfectly alone.
Until one spring morning, a letter arrived.
Sealed in black wax. The emblem of the Wu family stamped across the parchment — two crossed banners beneath a rising sun.
She knew the name. Everyone knew General Wu. The old vulture who had survived three emperors and sired four sons.
When the day came, she wore red again.
Not out of hope. Not for ceremony.
But as a dare.
One more battle. One more fool.
Let the gods try again.
Let them send her another lamb to the slaughter.
But when the door opened, it was not a lamb who stepped inside.
It was a man who watched her with eyes full of knowing.
And she would one day learn—
He had died too.
But not here.
Not in this world.
And he had come back with only one plan:
To find her.
1. Female General - The Curse in Red
The third time she wore wedding red, Da Fen Ying didn’t bother fixing her hair.
She stood at the center of the great ceremonial hall, heavy with incense and silent pity, her crimson robe untouched by the trembling hands of servants. Outside, the drums had stopped. The guests had fallen into uneasy whispers.
And her third husband — dead. Just like the last two.
This one had choked on his wedding wine before the ceremonial bow.
They called her cursed. That her presence summoned death. That the gods would not permit her to be wed, for she belonged to the battlefield, not to a man’s home.
She said nothing as the corpse was dragged from the hall, leaving behind shattered porcelain, spilled wine, and a ring he never got to place on her finger.
When the guests dispersed, she stood alone under the moonlight, unspeaking, unreadable, and utterly unbroken.
She walked to the barracks, not the bridal chamber.
She mounted her warhorse before dawn.
And rode back to her real kingdom — the one made of blood, mud, and fire.
***
It wasn’t until three months later, as the plum blossoms bloomed, that a new proposal arrived.
It was the fourth.
The messenger bore a gold-edged scroll sealed in black wax. Fen Ying recognized the crest instantly: a roaring wolf beneath two crossed banners. General Wu.
She broke the seal without ceremony and scanned the letter. Her eyes narrowed at the name.
Wu Juan.
Third son of General Wu.
Proposes marriage.
She dropped the scroll into her teacup.
Wu Juan. She knew the name vaguely — quiet, bookish, a sickly young man with no military record and no political standing. A man who barely spoke and rarely left the estate. What could he possibly want with her?
Political leverage? A quiet assassination?
She drafted a reply, blunt and unkind:
"I wake before dawn, eat with my hands, ride through storms, and smell of steel. I will not kneel, smile, birth heirs, or weep prettily. If your son wishes to wed a ghost in red, let him know: I bury husbands."
She expected silence. Instead, the reply came within a day.
“Agreed. — Wu Juan”
Rumors had it that he was crazy. She didn't expect that crazy.
2. Meeting And Wedding
The morning of the wedding dawned gray and indifferent.
Da Fen Ying had never liked mirrors.
They lied, she always thought. They showed only the surface: a face, a silhouette, an echo of movement. Not the scars beneath the skin, not the ghosts trailing behind every step. And yet here she was, seated before a polished bronze panel, watching her reflection come together piece by piece like a mask being reassembled.
Red silk, layered over hardened shoulders.
Gold-threaded embroidery crawling across the bodice in the shape of a phoenix.
A comb in her hair, inlaid with jade and pearl.
And the veil — that damn veil — draped delicately over her head, crowning her once more with the color of joy, prosperity… and blood.
Outside, the musicians played slowly, their flutes thin and trembling in the breeze. The house was decorated in tasteful restraint — red banners knotted with gold cord, paper lanterns shaped like lotus blossoms, bronze braziers trailing sweet smoke into the air. Guests murmured in low voices, too polite to whisper the truth aloud.
The Crimson Widow marries again.
The third husband won’t survive the night.
She could almost hear them breathing it between sips of tea.
Her handmaids, trained and loyal, fastened the last loop at her collar in silence. They did not speak of luck or beauty. They did not offer congratulations. No one dared to.
Fen Ying stood.
She was tall for a woman. Straight-backed. Broad-shouldered. A soldier’s frame honed by years of campaign, now imprisoned in the silk no blade could cut through. The weight of the dress irritated her. She wanted her armor. She wanted her boots.
But more than anything, she wanted this done.
The ceremony was held in the east courtyard beneath the flowering tallow trees. It was a quiet affair by court standards — no fanfare, no parading ministers, no orchestra drowning out the words. She had insisted on simplicity.
The groom stood at the far end of the aisle, alone.
Fen Ying saw him for the first time when she crossed through the vermilion arch, veil drawn low, her steps steady as a commander entering battle.
He wore gray.
Not red, not gold, not the blue of scholars — but plain ash-gray robes, tied with a simple silk belt. His hair was neatly bound, a single silver pin anchoring the knot. He held no fan, no sword, no scroll.
And when he saw her, he bowed.
Low. Deep. Without hesitation.
Fen Ying stopped two paces away and studied him from beneath the veil.
He was… ordinary. Pale. Slender. The kind of face one might forget in a crowd. And yet his eyes — those were not forgettable. Dark, thoughtful, too calm for someone marrying a woman who had buried two husbands.
The officiant called for the bowing rites.
First to Heaven and Earth.
They bowed.
Then to their ancestors.
They bowed.
Then to each other.
She hesitated, just slightly. But he bowed before she could move.
After the ceremony, the feast began.
It was modest. Dumplings, pork steamed in lotus leaves, sweet buns dyed red with date paste. Fen Ying sat at the head table with her new husband beside her. She did not eat. She drank only tea.
The room buzzed with cautious tension. No one wanted to toast. No one dared to ask for music. The atmosphere was that of a funeral disguised in silk.
However, this time, no one died.
Fen Ying watched him throughout the sparse ceremony, waiting for some sign of falseness. A tremble. A smirk. A trap.
Nothing.
Maybe fate felt that curse, and crazy went well together.
Her husband — Wu Juan, she reminded herself — remained silent throughout, sipping from his cup with graceful, almost deliberate patience. He did not look at her. He did not try to speak. But every so often, she caught him glancing at the room like a scholar cataloguing data points.
When the last guest left and the servants dimmed the lanterns, Fen Ying rose.
Once night fell, he did not enter her room. Instead, he rolled out a thin mat near the window and sat there cross-legged, reading from a strange notebook filled with small, tight script she couldn’t decipher.
She fell asleep fully clothed, sword by her side, watching him from the shadows.
He never turned to look at her.
Not once.
Still, that night, she did not sleep.
She lay awake, fully dressed, sword at her side. The candle guttered low. Somewhere in the house, the wind knocked against a loose shutter. The silence was too complete — no crying handmaids, no giggling cousins, no celebration.
Just as she liked it.
And yet…
She rose before dawn.
Their eyes met, and he looked at her not with awe, nor fear, nor even curiosity.
But recognition.
As if he had known her before.
As if he had come looking.
***
In the days that followed, Wu Juan remained quiet.
But he wasn’t idle.
By the end of the first week, he had reorganized the estate’s kitchen stockpile by weight and spoilage rate.
By the second week, he replaced the estate’s broken pulley well with a new design that could be operated one-handed by a child.
By the third week, the servants whispered about how “Master Wu” had explained to the smith how to improve the forge’s efficiency using clay bricks and airflow redirection.
Fen Ying observed, silently unnerved.
Who was this man?
One evening, she caught him alone in the courtyard, watching the stars.
“Do you always look at the sky like it owes you answers?” she asked.
He didn’t flinch.
“I look because I remember,” he said softly.
“Remember what?”
He turned to her with the saddest smile she had ever seen.
“Something that doesn’t exist anymore.”
3. Scholar Husband
Fen Ying tried to ignore him.
She threw herself back into military affairs. Border patrols. Tactical planning. Training the younger recruits.
But Wu Juan kept appearing.
Not intrusively. Not boastfully.
Just… present.
He stitched a soldier’s arm once after a training accident — using strange knots and boiled wine. The wound healed faster than expected, leaving a fine, tight scar.
He taught a young servant girl how to calculate crop yield. Explained disease prevention to a local healer using a drawing of invisible “worms” — bacteria, she learned later.
She watched, puzzled, wary.
Then one day, she found him in the west garden, trying to build something with wood, wire, and polished glass.
“What in the gods’ name is that?” she asked.
“A light-catcher,” he said. “A primitive… microscope.”
He said the last word too quickly. Like it wasn’t meant for this language. Like it wasn’t meant for this world.
That night, she followed him.
When he left his room for the bathhouse, she slipped in and searched through his possessions.
Inside a small wooden box she found — not coins or letters — but tiny, unfamiliar tools. Needles too thin for sewing. Glass lenses. A paper with ink-drawings of strange machines, tubes, and gears.
And a notebook. Filled with words like “carbon synthesis” and “gene imprint errors.”
She couldn’t understand half of it.
But one sentence chilled her.
“August 7, 21XX — Died in the Osaka collapse. Reactor breach. Brought the child to safety. No regrets.”
The ink stopped there.
The next entry began:
“Woke in the body of Wu Juan. Age 23. No idea why. Possibly reincarnation. Possibly time fracture.”
4. The Language of Falling
She confronted him in the garden.
He was barefoot, tending herbs. A ridiculous image — her scholar husband crouched among mint leaves.
“You died,” she said.
He paused.
“And came back.”
Still, he said nothing.
“You don’t belong here,” she added.
He looked up then, quietly. No panic. No shame.
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.”
“Then why stay?”
He tilted his head, studying her. “Because I’ve never been needed like this before.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” he said. “In my world, I saved lives with science. Here, I fix ropes and mend wounds. It’s smaller, messier… but it feels real. I wake up, and you’re there. Sword in hand. Fire in your eyes.”
She blinked.
He stood. Walked to her. His hand hovered near hers — not touching.
“I didn’t marry you to betray you. I married you because, when I heard your name, something inside me said: She lives.”
She stepped closer, closing the gap between them.
“Even if I don’t believe you,” she murmured, “I see you.”
That night, they kissed under the moon, its cold light silvering the garden stones.
And for the first time, the ghost in red let someone hold her without flinching.
5. The Rules of Living Together
No one ever taught Da Fen Ying how to live with someone. She could break a siege in ten days, disarm five men in under thirty seconds, and ride a horse through a rainstorm blindfolded. But nothing in her legendary campaigns prepared her for Wu Juan quietly rearranging her tea jars.
"You're mixing leaves for liver tonic with those meant for sleep," he said one morning, pulling the lacquered lid off a bamboo container. "You should label them."
She scowled. "I don't need labels. I recognize the scent."
He smiled, that infuriatingly gentle curve of his mouth. "And what if you're exhausted and your sense of smell fails you?"
"Then I deserve whatever happens," she said flatly.
They clashed in quiet, peculiar ways. Wu Juan insisted on boiling all their drinking water, even when it came from the estate's clean spring. She replaced her wine with cold riverwater just to irritate him. He reorganized the guard rotation charts; she moved them back. He left boiled herbs in small pouches by her pillow; she threw them out the window.
The turning point came during a minor outbreak.
Three servants fell ill with fever. Fen Ying barked for more wine and forced them to sweat it out. Wu Juan slipped in with a pot of warm water infused with ginger, mugwort, and what she dismissed as "green twigs."
They recovered in a day.
After that, she stopped throwing out the herb pouches. She even stopped drinking river water.
One late evening, she returned from drills, covered in dust, aching. Her usual bath was a bucket and a cloth. Instead, she found a wooden tub steaming in the garden, built over a pit of warm stones. Lanterns hung from the trees above.
Wu Juan sat nearby, pretending to read.
She looked at the bath, then at him. "What is this?"
He turned a page. "Hot water."
"This is an indulgence."
"No. This is a solution. You keep coming home with bruises and knots in your back."
She hesitated. Then stripped without shame and sank into the water.
He didn’t peek. He didn’t smirk. He just turned another page.
That night, for the first time, she didn't sleep with her sword between them.
6. Guest
The sky was still bruised from dawn when the clatter of hooves echoed through the stone-paved courtyard of the estate. The guards barely had time to rise from their posts when General Meng Yi arrived, all rigid posture and gleaming reins, the deep blue of his military cloak fluttering behind him like a banner of judgment.
He had not written ahead. He never did.
Fen Ying stood by the outer veranda, dressed not in armor, but in plain linen slacks and a black tunic, her hair loosely tied with a leather cord. The contrast to her former glory on the battlefield was intentional. It was a message. She didn’t need to prove anything anymore.
Meng Yi dismounted and gave her a curt nod. "General Da."
"Meng Yi," she returned. "Still pretending your back isn't stiff from riding?"
His mouth twitched, but not into a smile. "It stiffens only when I'm sent to visit ghosts."
She didn't flinch. Instead, she turned and gestured. "Then come, ghost-hunter. Let me show you my tomb."
They walked side by side through the inner courtyard, past rows of plum trees and the faint aroma of drying herbs. He inspected everything, the way a commander inspects foreign terrain: the open gates, the relaxed guards, the half-finished bamboo scaffolding on the east wing.
"You’ve let your defenses go soft," he observed.
"I’ve let them grow roots," she replied. "There is a difference."
They entered the main hall where Wu Juan awaited them, kneeling by a stone basin, his sleeves rolled up as he snipped mint leaves with surgical care. His long hair was tied with a simple cord, and a faint ink stain marked his thumb. He looked up, offering a calm bow.
"Meng Yi," Fen Ying said coolly, "this is my husband. Wu Juan."
Meng Yi’s eyes narrowed. His silence stretched.
"This is your husband?"
Fen Ying nodded.
"And what is he? A gardener?"
Wu Juan straightened slowly, his movements fluid and unbothered. He did not smile. "Today, perhaps. Tomorrow, I might be a cartographer. The day after, a teacher."
The barb missed its mark.
Meng Yi's voice was low. "You left the army. You abandoned your position. And now you live with a... civilian?"
Fen Ying raised an eyebrow. "I exchanged one war for another. This one has fewer bodies."
"And less honor."
That evening, they shared a dinner beneath the hanging lanterns of the east wing. The dishes were simple — steamed trout, rice porridge, pickled greens — but the air was tense. Wu Juan served the tea himself, moving with practiced grace, saying little.
Meng Yi did not hold back.
"You were a legend," he said to Fen Ying. "And now the court believes you have been tamed by a man who quotes poems and boils leaves."
She held her chopsticks loosely, her expression unreadable. "If the court is worried about me being tame, they should send another assassin."
"Assassins are for threats. You’ve made yourself... irrelevant."
Wu Juan stood then, quiet as dusk. He left the table and returned moments later with a stack of scrolls in his arms. He unfurled them across the polished table surface.
There were diagrams. Maps. Supply routes. Resource allocations across the border provinces. Defensive garrison layouts.
"These are her campaigns," he said simply. "Every movement, every weather delay, every successful ruse. I copied them by hand so I could learn them. So I would understand what kind of woman I married."
He placed a final scroll at the center — one she hadn’t seen before. A redesigned fortress with improved ramparts, blind angle coverage, and integrated irrigation to prevent siege droughts.
"I added this," he said. "As a tribute."
Meng Yi didn’t speak.
Wu Juan poured fresh tea. "She is not softer. She is quieter. Her sword is not drawn, but it is not lost. I don’t need her to be a blade. I only need her to come home."
There was no tremor in his voice.
Silence stretched between them. Then, slowly, Meng Yi reached for the scroll. He examined it for a long moment before speaking.
"You studied all this?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Wu Juan gave the smallest smile. "Because if the world ever turns against her again, I want to be ready."
That night, long after their guest had retired to the spare chamber, Fen Ying sat at the edge of their bed, unbinding her hair.
Wu Juan knelt behind her, brushing it out slowly.
"You didn’t have to defend me," she said.
He kissed her shoulder. "I wasn’t defending you. I was telling the truth."
She leaned back into him. "I don’t know what I’ve become."
"You’ve become free. That frightens men like him."
She smiled. "It used to frighten me, too."
They lay together, her head on his chest, his fingers tracing circles on her shoulder.
Outside, the plum blossoms opened beneath the starlight.
Inside, for once, no ghosts remained.
7. A Strange Kind of Husband
The morning began with a crash.
Fen Ying rushed to the garden, half-expecting an ambush, only to find Wu Juan flat on his back in the mud, his hair plastered to his face and one foot still caught in the stirrup of a visibly annoyed mare. The stable boy stood nearby, torn between horror and laughter.
"I told him she doesn’t like sudden movements, General," the boy stammered.
Fen Ying crossed her arms. "You tried to ride her?"
Wu Juan lifted his head, spitting out a leaf. "I needed to learn eventually."
"Eventually is not before breakfast."
She helped him up anyway.
He limped for the rest of the day, but proudly.
***
Living with Wu Juan meant constant surprises. He read while walking. He left strange symbols on scrap wood — formulas, he called them. He measured wind patterns with handmade streamers and spent entire afternoons observing the shadows cast by their roof eaves.
One morning, she found him crouched in the dirt, using a bronze dish with a needle and a suspended thread.
"Trying to divine the future?" she asked.
"Magnetic fields," he said distractedly. "This needle should always point north."
"And what will that change?"
"I won’t get lost walking back from the market," he replied with a grin.
She watched him draw a grid into the soil, labeling directions with characters she didn’t recognize.
She should have felt irritated. Instead, she found herself crouching beside him, correcting the stroke order on the character for "south."
***
He did not wield a sword. But he insisted on learning to hold one.
She taught him slowly, carefully. His grip was awkward. His balance worse. But he asked questions no recruit ever had.
"Why do you pivot your weight when parrying?"
"Because you’re redirecting force."
"So it’s physics, then."
She blinked. "It’s survival."
They practiced under the old cedar tree until sweat soaked his robes and her arms ached from holding back.
"You’ll never need to fight," she said.
"And yet, you teach me."
That night, she found a detailed sketch in his notebook: her stance, her posture, notes on where tension built and how it released. He was not memorizing. He was understanding.
***
A week later, a child snuck into the estate.
They caught him near the pantry with his cheeks full of dried plums and his eyes wide with defiance.
Fen Ying drew her blade.
Wu Juan stepped between them.
"He’s hungry, not dangerous."
"He’s trespassing."
Wu Juan knelt before the boy. "What’s your name?"
The boy didn’t answer.
"Do you want to learn to read?" Wu Juan asked.
The boy blinked. Then nodded once.
That night, the child was fed and given a blanket.
The next morning, he returned.
Fen Ying found him in the garden with Wu Juan, tracing characters in the dirt. She watched for a long time before walking away. The pantry was restocked that afternoon.
***
By the end of the month, the boy — Lin, they learned — had claimed a corner of the estate as his own. He slept on folded robes near the fire pit and followed Wu Juan like a shadow.
Fen Ying took longer to warm to him. But one evening, when Lin was cornered by a snake near the well, she crushed it with a thrown dagger from fifteen paces. He didn’t thank her — just stared in awe.
"Teach me to do that," he said.
She arched an eyebrow. "You’re too scrawny."
"I’ll grow."
She tossed him a wooden practice knife.
"We’ll see."
***
At twilight, when the work was done and the house quieted, Fen Ying and Wu Juan would sit together on the steps, watching the wind stir the lanterns.
"You brought a child home," she said one night.
"He followed me."
"You didn’t send him away."
"Neither did you."
She rested her head on his shoulder.
"You’re a strange kind of husband," she murmured.
"You’re a terrifying kind of wife."
And yet, neither moved.
The sword stayed by the door. The kettle stayed warm.
And the silence between them was no longer heavy — it was home.
8. Letters, Lanterns, and Little Things
It began with a letter.
Not from a soldier or a statesman, but from a child. Lin, their quiet shadow, had scribbled a message onto the back of an old rice paper wrapper and folded it into a crooked square.
“The porridge was too salty but I liked the plum.”
Wu Juan found it tucked under his bowl. Fen Ying read it over his shoulder and snorted. "The critic speaks."
"He has potential," Wu Juan said, penning a reply.
From that day on, they wrote to each other — not just Lin, but all three of them. Notes slipped under pillows, into boots, tucked into sword hilts and herb boxes. Some were practical reminders. Others were silly doodles. Occasionally, they were confessions too quiet for the mouth to speak.
“You mutter in your sleep.”
“You smell like crushed pine in the morning. It’s not unpleasant.”
“Sometimes I still dream of the war.”
They didn’t always respond directly, but the letters kept coming.
One evening, the village announced its annual Lantern Festival.
Wu Juan, delighted, proposed they join.
Fen Ying, skeptical, folded her arms. “You want me to walk among giggling children and paper dragons?”
He shrugged. “You might enjoy it.”
“I’ve marched through snowstorms and blood. I don’t ‘enjoy’ things.”
But that night, she stood beside him anyway, watching Lin chase after ribbons of light. Their lantern floated higher than the rest — a design of Wu Juan’s, held aloft by careful balance and a wax core that burned steady. He had etched her family name into the sides, surrounded by a pattern of flying swords.
Fen Ying watched it drift upward and said nothing. But her hand slipped into his and stayed there.
The letters evolved into something sacred.
Once a week, after the lantern festival, they began a ritual. No matter how busy, no matter how tired — on the seventh night, they sat beneath the blooming cherry tree and read letters to each other.
Sometimes the letters were short:
“You left your boots muddy again.”
“You hummed this morning. I liked it.”
Other times, they carried the weight of memory:
“I was thirteen when I first held a sword. It was too heavy. I held it anyway.”“Before I died, I thought only of numbers. You’ve taught me to measure differently.”
One night, her letter simply read:
“I never thought I’d like waking up next to someone. Now I do.”
He kept that one in his inner robe for days.
***
Life filled with little rituals.
Every morning, Fen Ying would walk the perimeter of the estate, checking gates and lines of sight, while Wu Juan boiled water and ground herbs with Lin.
At midday, they gathered for meals under the veranda. She sliced meat with the precision of a blade. He served tea with exaggerated elegance. Lin crunched pickles and pretended to be a scholar.
They argued, too.
Once, over the placement of a rain gutter.
Once, over how to dry herbs during the rainy season.
And once, most absurdly, over whether or not wolves howled at the moon out of sadness or strategy.
They never stayed angry very long, though.
***
Visitors began to arrive, drawn by whispers.
A widow-general turned peacekeeper. A scholar who spoke like a sage and fixed broken wells. A child who wrote letters in flawless script.
People came for advice. For medicine. For stories.
Wu Juan taught local farmers how to prevent crop mold using charcoal ash. Fen Ying demonstrated sword forms to girls whose brothers laughed at them. Lin, proud as a rooster, watched them both and practiced with a stick he insisted was a blade.
And through it all, they kept writing.
Letters tucked into clay pots. Scribbles on wood chips. Lines carved into the soft earth by the pond.
One afternoon, Fen Ying found a letter pinned to the tree with a hairpin.
“You’ve stopped flinching when I brush your hair.”
She smiled. Wrote a reply on a strip of cloth.
“You’re braver than you think. Not for standing beside me. But for staying.”
She tied it around the branch. Let the wind take it.
That night, beneath the moonlight, their hands found each other again.
And when Lin crept out to join them with a blanket too big for his shoulders, neither sent him away.
Together, beneath the cherry tree and the weight of quiet stars, they read by candlelight.
Not of war. Not of loss.
But of small things. Lasting things.
Little truths that, written over time, became love.
Once, hers simply read:
I never thought I’d like waking up next to someone. Now I do.
9. Winter Comes Quietly
The first frost arrived with little warning.
One morning, Fen Ying opened the shutters and found the world muted in white. The garden, once full of whispering bamboo and rustling plum leaves, had frozen in mid-motion, as if a single breath from the heavens had paused time. Wu Juan stood outside already, a wool shawl wrapped around his shoulders, catching snowflakes on a black-gloved palm as though trying to decode their pattern.
"They all look the same," she muttered from the doorway, hugging her robe tighter.
"They’re not," he replied without looking. "Each one is unique. Structured chaos. Fragile geometry."
She blinked sleep from her eyes. "Still melt the same."
He smiled. "Like people."
***
Snow meant silence. Travel stopped. Guests disappeared. The villagers stocked their cellars and shuttered their windows. The world retreated.
And so did they.
The estate became a haven of flickering candlelight and steaming bowls of soup. Fen Ying grew restless in those early days. She was a creature of movement, of open skies and clang of metal. The snow pressed too close, too soft.
She sharpened her weapons obsessively. She ran drills in the courtyard until Wu Juan pulled her inside by the sleeve, soaked and shivering.
"If frostbite claims your fingers, I’ll have to spoon-feed you," he said, exasperated.
"That might be entertaining," she replied, teeth chattering.
He made her ginger tea and forced her to sit by the brazier while he wrapped her feet in warm cloth.
"You don’t belong to the wind anymore," he murmured.
"I miss it."
"It’s waiting. Winter is just another campaign."
***
To distract her, he taught her games.
He drew a grid of intersecting lines and handed her stones. The rules were simple but deceptive. She lost every match for the first three days. Then she began to win. He claimed she cheated. She claimed he sulked.
They laughed until the fire died.
On the fifth day, he brought out his notebooks again — full of strange sketches and formulas. He explained ideas she only half understood: energy, engines, magnetism.
"In my world, winter was worse," he said once, tracing a map of a city with perfect grids. "Not because of the cold, but because of the loneliness."
She looked at him. "You were alone there?"
"I had people. But not a home."
She reached for his hand.
"You have one now."
***
They cooked together, though she loathed measuring. He tried to follow her mother’s old recipe for dumplings. They tasted like boiled leather.
"You have to feel the dough," she said, guiding his fingers.
He added too much garlic. She added too much chili. Lin refused to eat either version, opting for rice balls and smugness.
In the evenings, Wu Juan told Lin stories from the stars — constellations that no longer existed in this sky. Fen Ying countered with tales of mountain ambushes and horse-thieves. Lin liked hers better. Wu Juan did not protest.
On the seventh night, the snow fell hard, and the roof creaked under its weight.
They lay together under three layers of wool blankets. She was on her side, his back against her chest, his hair spilling over her arm.
"Tell me something true," she whispered.
"I am more afraid of losing this than I ever was of dying."
She kissed the nape of his neck. "Then live."
Outside, the wind howled through the trees. Inside, the fire crackled, and time slowed.
***
By mid-winter, the snow began to soften.
Wu Juan built a small solar heater for the bathhouse roof, using mirrors and copper piping. Fen Ying didn’t question the design. She just enjoyed the hot water.
Lin surprised them by writing his first full sentence on rice paper: Thank you for not sending me away.
She pinned it to the kitchen wall.
***
Winter left quietly, like a guest who had overstayed but never meant harm.
The first buds reappeared on the plum branches.
And one morning, Fen Ying woke to birdsong — sharp and eager, reminding her that spring had not forgotten them.
She found Wu Juan in the garden, brushing snow off his compass. Lin was trying to balance a sword too large for him.
She stood at the doorway for a long time, watching them.
The world had frozen. But their lives had not.
And in the stillness, something stronger than any army had taken root: peace.
They slept pressed together under thick blankets, the silence outside broken only by wind.
10. A Life That Matters
Spring crept into the valley not with fanfare, but with the gentle sigh of melting frost and birdsong threading through morning mists. The plum blossoms, once burdened by snow, now swayed open like small flags of victory. Fen Ying stepped outside barefoot, feeling damp earth under her toes for the first time in weeks. She did not flinch.
Wu Juan stood at the edge of the garden with Lin, pointing up at the sky. "That cloud looks like a crab."
Lin frowned. "It looks like General Da when she’s annoyed."
"Crab it is," Wu Juan said.
Fen Ying snorted and went to fetch her sword for morning practice. The familiar weight grounded her. But when Lin asked to join, she handed him a wooden one instead and moved in slower arcs. For once, the lesson was not about speed.
Their estate, once a place of wary solitude, had grown into something resembling a community. There were now three garden beds, a coop with three hens, and two more orphans taken in — twins who barely spoke but clung to Lin like barnacles.
Wu Juan oversaw the building of a waterwheel-powered grain grinder. The design was primitive compared to the ones he had known, but it made flour faster than hands ever could. The village council sent their thanks in the form of dried fish and admiration.
Fen Ying grumbled that the fish was under-seasoned.
Wu Juan grinned. "You’ve become spoiled."
"You’ve become soft," she replied.
He walked over, kissed her on the forehead, and said, "I’m still sharper than your sword."
She pretended to kick him. Missed on purpose.
That summer, they hosted their first midsummer meal.
Neighbors came with baskets of rice dumplings and early squash. Wu Juan strung up lanterns from the plum trees. Lin recited a poem he’d written about swords and soup and how Fen Ying could slay a bear with a look. She nearly choked on her wine laughing.
A girl from the outer province asked Fen Ying if she could learn to fight like her. The girl’s brothers scoffed. Fen Ying smiled coldly, handed the girl a practice blade, and told her to come back the next morning.
She did.
So did four other girls.
By autumn, Fen Ying had a small cohort of sword-maidens. Wu Juan called them the Crimson Sprouts. She rolled her eyes, but carved the name into the training post all the same.
The ritual of letters continued, even as the days grew longer.
“Your tea was too bitter. I drank it anyway.”
“You held my hand for three seconds longer today.”
“Lin wants a bow. He says swords are too slow.”
They read them aloud every seventh night beneath the lantern tree. Lin sat between them, the twins tucked under either arm, often fast asleep before the last word.
It became more than a ritual. It became memory in motion.
In the cold months that followed, Wu Juan constructed a low observatory behind the estate — a tower no higher than the cedar but aligned with the northern stars. He named it the Watcher’s Post.
When Fen Ying found him sketching constellations late into the night, she brought him salted nuts and threw a blanket over his shoulders.
"You’re charting stars. What for?"
"Because they remind me where I came from. And remind me where I am now."
She leaned beside him and looked up.
"I never needed stars to guide me," she said.
"No," he said. "You always knew the way."
Lin turned twelve the following spring.
They gave him a real blade, dulled and ceremonial, with his name engraved on the hilt.
"You’re not a soldier," Fen Ying told him. "But you are one of us."
He nodded solemnly and promptly tripped on a root. Wu Juan laughed until he cried.
Later that night, Lin tucked a note under their door.
“I’ll protect this family one day. Like you do now.”
Fen Ying kissed the letter before storing it in a carved box beside the others.
One evening, as the cherry tree shed its petals like confetti, Wu Juan rested his head on Fen Ying’s lap. Her fingers absently combed through his hair.
"Do you think," he said, eyes half-lidded, "that we were meant to meet?"
She considered.
"I think the world broke us both. Then gave us a second chance."
"Do you regret it? This life?"
"Only that it started late."
He smiled. "Then we’ll live it slowly."
And they did.
Every day — quietly, fiercely, without apology.
Because sometimes, the greatest lives are not written in legend, but in the slow, steady ink of morning rice, shared warmth, and words whispered under trees.
And in a home where once there had only been ghosts, there was now laughter, steel, and the unshakeable promise of love made real.
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