Blood and Red Silk
By @john1208
Qiao Rulan refused to bow her head, even when forced to take her cowardly stepsister's place in an auspicious marriage to Bai Zongyuan. Once the brilliant heir of the Iron Ink Academy, Zongyuan is now a weak, coughing scholar poisoned and bedridden, given mere months to live. Armed with a prickly pride and a secret, magical healing dimension, Rulan works in the shadows. She synthesizes antidotes and purges the lethal toxins from his veins while fending off the vicious Bai clan members who mock her as a widow-in-waiting. But Rulan doesn't need pity, and she certainly didn't expect the frail scholar to harbor a terrifying, dormant martial power. The moment Zongyuan awakens, he paints the wedding courtyard red, instantly slaughtering the clan elders who dared lay a hand on his prickly bride while he slept. The story alternates between Rulan's medical maneuvers and Zongyuan's bloody vengeance. As assassins close in and Rulan realizes her trusted medical mentor is the true mastermind behind the poisoning, they must fight back-to-back. With the clan in chaos, can they survive the enemy hiding in plain sight?
7
