The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs - Volume 7, SS Reminiscence “Ideal’s Promise”

If you just stay still, you’ll get to the middle.If you try to show off how good you are at work, the tasks will only increase.By the time I realized that the absolute rule of the military also applied to the position of the crown prince, it was already too late.

On their wedding night, she gnashed her teeth, yelling, “Your Highness, that’s shameless!”

Set off by the flickering light of red candles, he curved the corner of his mouth into a wicked grin, “Actually, I can be more shameless…”

…

When they met for the first time, he was the young prince who lived in his day of brilliance, while she was the pampered princess of the adjacent state.

When they met again, he became the crippled underdog suffering from frustration, while she became the lackluster hostage stranded in an alien land.

In his mid-life, he was defeated in the fight and had his legs broken; his wife passed away and he didn’t have anything left except his father’s detestation… After constant blows took the edge off his spirit, all he wanted was nothing but serenity.

In her teen-age, her state perished and her home lost; she lapsed into an awkward situation after being abandoned and having her marriage annulled… As endless hardships isolated her from happiness, everything she wished for was no more than peace.

…

“Lu Zhishan, when I first met you, I didn’t think I’d marry you…too old,” after years passed by, one day, she lay on his laps mumbling, with a kind of hazy beauty on her boozy face, “and lame.”

“Mu Nanzhi, you have the wrong memory. At our first meeting, I’m neither old nor limp.”

“…When was that?”

“When people were celebrating your first birthday,” that man assumed all gentleness and joy crept on his eyes and brows, “On that day, you were ‘drawing lots’ in the rear hall. I also sneaked there to have a look. But, out of my expectation, you directly grabbed my true-love knot.”

…

How vivid the red love pea is embedded in the exquisitely carved dice,

Just as my feelings for you deep in my bones.

- Description from Novelupdates

The six prefectures of Zhongbo were offered to foreign enemies on a silver platter, and Shen Zechuan was taken into custody in the capital, reduced to a drowning dog—loathed and condemned by all.Xiao Chiye followed the scent of the furor and made his way over. But instead of setting others on him, he kicked Shen Zechuan with his very own leg, rendering the latter an invalid. Who would expect this invalid to turn around and bite him in a counterattack until he was all drenched in blood?That was the start of an epic feud between both men who tore at each other every time they come face-to-face with one another.“Fate wants to bind me here for life, but this is not the path I choose. The yellow dust submerged my brothers deep under. I have no wish to bow in submission to an illusory fate. The imperial edict can’t save my troops, and the imperial court can’t fill the stomachs of my mounts. I’m no longer willing to lay down my life for this purpose. I want to surmount that mountain. I am going to fight for myself.”Note: A ‘drowning dog’ is someone who is down and out, having lost favor or power.

Shi Qing Xia is practically an angel.

Kind, sweet-hearted, and good at her studies, she was admitted to the top university in Taipei.

However, the living expenses for the metropolitan city were far greater than she had ever imagined, so she started to work as a private tutor for wealthy families to make ends meet.

On her first day of work, she met Zhao Yi Bo and Zhao Yi Xuan, a pair of neglected 16-year-old genius twins whose prosperous and wealthy parents heartlessly abandoned in Taiwan. Shi Qing Xia found them to be gentle, compassionate, friendly, clever, mysterious, pitiful and attractive.

But appearances can be very deceiving…

Because behind those sweet smiles…

Deeply twisted and cruel demons lurked, waiting to rip apart the wings of this angel, condemning her to an eternity of conflicted bittersweet suffering — a rollercoaster ride of a heart-wrenching, twisted, and tragic romance more extreme than what someone so innocent could possibly imagine.

- Description from Novelupdates