Via Lactea announced they have acquired the English publication rights for Tangstory’s danmei reincarnation duology, Living to Suffer and Till Death Do Us Part. [Source: Twitter/X (1, 2)]
Via Lactea has not yet provided release dates for either series, but danmei fans on Twitter/X expressed much excitement over the English license for the cult favorite duology.
The two novels are sister works, and will be published as two individual single volumes. Together, they tell the tale of a pair of star-crossed lovers over the course of two lifetimes—from their tragic relationship in ancient China (Living to Suffer) to their eventual reunion in the 1930s (Till Death Do Us Part).
A promotional image from the Living to Suffer audio drama.Living to Suffer (活受罪) is a single-volume danmei novel by author Tangstory, first published in 2015 by Mugeng Studio. It inspired an audio drama adaptation, and is a prequel series to Till Death Do Us Part (长相守).
Via Lactea provides the following series synopsis:
In a ruined shrine, a torrential summer rain becomes the canvas for a fateful encounter: Shen Liangsheng, gravely wounded after a mission, lies bleeding until Doctor Ch’in Ching discovers him beneath the umbrella’s painted reeds—fragile as hope, urgent as necessity.
What begins as an act of mercy—a healer rescuing a broken weapon—spirals into a passionate, inevitable entanglement of love and loyalty. A stalk of a nocturnal herb. A brush dipped in vermilion. A bowl of noodles on a chilly night. An alley carpeted in red… Each step they take together is a step closer to destiny.
Yet their love, fierce and fleeting, blooms amidst the pain of impending doom. It’s a devotion drenched in unknown longing, a luminous moment in lives bound by sacrifice: the doctor tempting fate, and the warrior discovering the stirrings of emotion too late.
Living to Suffer is a tragic, incandescent story of two souls colliding in anguish and aching beauty.
A promotional image from the Till Death Do Us Part audio drama.Till Death Do Us Part (长相守) is a single-volume danmei novel by author Tangstory, first published in 2015 by Mugeng Studio. It inspired an audio drama adaptation that is available on the Manbo app, and is a sequel series to Living to Suffer (活受罪).
Via Lactea provides the following series synopsis:
In 1930s Tientsin, a city caught between a fading dynasty and encroaching empires, two lives cross like ink strokes on fragile rice paper. Ch’in Ching, a schoolteacher and crosstalker whose patriotism smoulders beneath his calm exterior, moves through the world with a scholar’s grace and a loyal heart. Shen Liangsheng, a cunning playboy and heir to a powerful warlord-turned-capitalist, wears his elegance like a mask, hiding wounds that wealth and privilege cannot mend.
Their meeting is like a half-remembered melody, distant yet familiar. What begins as curiosity sharpens into something more—an intimacy both tender and perilous, at once a refuge and a battlefield. Their bond grows quietly, like ivy scaling old walls, steadfast even as the world shakes beneath them.
Yet differences cast long shadows. Loyalties clash, choices divide, and years of silence settle where closeness once lived. And when the waters rise to swallow the city, so too do emotions once thought buried surge back with undeniable force. In a world ruled by power and peril, desire and duty, wealth and conscience, they must decide what remains when everything else is swept away.
Till Death Us Do Part is a story of devotion sustained through war and peace—beautifully inevitable, poignantly eternal.
