The Tycoon's Beloved Rose

Shen Jiao is a crippled waste with legs that don’t work, bearing a girl’s name, sporting long hair—even his face grows increasingly androgynously beautiful. He is like a rose blooming past its prime—the longer its petals linger, the heavier the scent of decay. At last, his own younger sister can no longer stomach him, staring at him with disgust as she tells him to get out of *her* house. His mother says, "Shen Jiao, you're twenty-one now. The Shen family has raised you this long—it's time you lived on your own." And so, he is tossed onto the streets—wheelchair and all. --- Lu Ting crawled his way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, rising young as the ruler of the Lu family—an undisputed madman in the eyes of outsiders. On his first day back in the country, he attends his grandmother’s birthday banquet, only for the outwardly kind old woman to chase him out with a face full of venom, his extravagant gift flung into the trash. Amid the pouring rain, he comes across Shen Jiao. The young man sits slumped in his wheelchair, soaked to the bone. Only his face remains breathtakingly beautiful—like some alluring ghost risen from the underworld. A tall man kneels slightly before him, umbrella in hand. "Will you come with me?" Shen Jiao lifts his head and crashes into a pair of gray-blue eyes. Rain cascades, drowning his world—yet only this stranger offers him a hand. Half resigned, half reckless, he places his own in that waiting palm. --- The Shen family’s fortunes plummet. Shen Qiuhe pulls strings, begging for an audience with Lu Ting. Yet the untouchable head of the Lu family now willingly bends low, sinking on one knee in the mud, his expensive trousers sullied, his coldly handsome face bearing a tenderness unlike anything she’s ever seen. "There's soup simmering in the kitchen—Jiaojiao, let me feed you another bite, hmm?" Dazed, she catches sight of the son she once cast out raising his head from Lu Ting’s embrace.