Calculating Cultivation - Chapter 62: Spiders, Spiders Everywhere

Every novel has a slag character, the one who decides to abandon the protagonist at his lowest, most helpless point, either because he can’t stand the poor guy’s circumstances or for other reasons. But after the protagonist wins his way in life again, they’re the ones who beg with broken sobs to be taken back.

Still, water once spilled can’t be recovered again.

Yet the unlucky Shen Jiayan has been bound to a Water Recovery* System to do just that.

*water recovery – comes from an idiom that means “spilled water can’t be recovered” (English equivalent: there’s no use crying over spilt milk).

- Description from Novelupdates

I am reborn as a minor character and the mother of the main character, the deposed ruler Leriana Ashford.My husband's younger brother will stage a rebellion against him, and only my young children will manage to escape. And the unfortunate Queen Leriane faces a bleak end. According to the plot, my heroine will sacrifice her life during the rebellion to save her children.Except she won't! Dying at twenty-seven is too soon for me and I'm going to change the tragic plot of this novella.I was lucky enough to be reborn ten years before the events of the novel began. At a time when the future King Philip and his brother Razor had just fallen in love with me at the Royal Academy, and their fight for me led to a feud. To survive - I decided not to become queen and live a quiet life with my father the Duke. And in order to rid myself of these two, I had to go to extreme measures.I decided to start dating the daughter of the cursed Duke, who is feared and hated by the entire academy.

Tang Qiu was a substitute bride–forced to take her half-sister’s place and marry the young master of the Jiang family, a deformed cripple with less than 6 months left to live.

“Who would have thought that even a sickly whelp like Jiang Shaocheng would find himself a bride?”

“I hear that he’s practically on his deathbed and he’s only marrying the Fengs’ daughter to improve his lifespan.”

Tang Qiu ignored the whispers around her and focused on her husband-to-be, who coughed violently in his wheelchair. At the altar, after they had said their vows, she lifted her veil and knelt in front of Jiang Shaocheng, pressing a hesitant kiss to his lips.

The marriage contract was signed. No matter his physical deformities, he was now her husband.

She wasn’t afraid of the scars that marked his face, nor was she repulsed by him being confined to a wheelchair. Every morning, she made him breakfast, attended to his needs, and thought of little else beyond her duties as a wife.

“Young Master Jiang is a cripple who can’t get it up,” her best friend argued. “When he dies, you’ll still be untouched. You should set your sights higher.”

“A sickly invalid like Jiang Shaocheng can’t give you happiness,” her ex-boyfriend insisted. “I’ll wait for you.”

But Young Master Jiang only scoffed. “I have plenty of time left to be with her.”

Later in their marriage, Jiang Shaocheng wanted to enjoy his little wife in all ways–the press of her lips against his, the brush of skin on skin; the way a husband and wife were supposed to. But Tang Qiu refused him, blushing. “No, we can’t. The doctor says you can’t exert yourself.”

Jiang Shaocheng’s desire was surging through him, a heat in his core that demanded to be satiated. He cursed, I should have gotten rid of that doctor and the wheelchair long ago.

But he yearned to make love to his little wife, and so he revealed his true identity. In the blink of an eye, the deformed cripple transformed into a powerful businessman–tall, dark, and handsome. He quieted Tang Qiu’s protests, his body positioned over hers, his arms caging her as she lay on the bed. His voice was low when he asked, “What about now?”