Comedy

At sixteen, a food-loving girl enters the imperial harem as lowly Attendant Yun, determined to survive its suffocating rules and earn enough favor for a decent meal.

Her accidental bond with the formidable Empress Dowager and the neglected Princess Ruyi lifts her through the palace ranks, but every kindness hides a calculation and every pregnancy can redraw the balance of the throne.

When rebellion, poisoned bloodlines, and a stolen son force her to choose between motherhood and survival, Yun must bury her heart behind palace walls—until the child she surrendered returns as Emperor and asks her to become his mother at last.

My rich-girl deskmate introduced me to a summer part-time job: tutoring her younger male cousin.

She said he had masochistic tendencies.

The harsher I was with him, the better he listened.

So I raised my Meow Combo Punch.

“Dharma Cultivation Sanda!”

I disciplined that cousin straight into the advanced class.

The rich girl stared at the school bully in shock.

“Which cousin of mine have you been tutoring?!”

I had no idea my boss was a famous fanfic author, one with excellent prose, thrilling plots, and a perfectly balanced diet of content.

And I was one of his top-paying readers.

His new story was a complete departure from his usual style: an utterly squeaky-clean original novel.

I happily topped up my account to buy the chapters, but the more I read, the more I realized the dense, romance-impaired heroine was a lot like me.

The only difference was that the male lead was a shy, innocent, introverted herbivore-type boss whose little inner commentary was ridiculously cute.

He was nothing like my real-life boss, who barely spoke, had a severe case of germophobia, and was an absolute menace.

Later…

The author posted in the comments: “≧◇≦ Thank you all for your support. I-I-I’ve decided to be brave and confess!!! >_<”

Magnanimously, I sent the author a huge gift. “Go for it! Be brave, author! Fear no hardship!”

The very next second, my cold-faced, frowning boss walked out of his office and stopped in front of me, his face bright red.

Me: “?”

Everyone in my family was a villain.

In my last life, my father was impeached by Xie Linyuan, the emperor’s brother-in-law.

So Father drugged him and hired several men to ruin his chastity.

After Xie Linyuan rose to power, he had my entire family arrested and our estate confiscated.

In this life, I was determined to be a good person.

I reached Xie Linyuan in time to save him after he was drugged.

He reclined against the bed, his face flushed, but his tongue remained as sharp as ever.

“What shameless temptress is this?

How dare you resort to such vile tricks to harm me?”

My fault.

I had been in such a hurry to save him that I had not even dressed properly.

I said awkwardly, “Well, Lord Xie… should I fetch a girl from next door to cure you?”

“A virgin courtesan would do too?”

On my first night inside the novel, the villain barged into my practice room.

Then he found himself staring at the male lead and the second male lead, already seated on meditation cushions.

After a long silence, he said, “Move over.

Make room for me.”

“There’s no room,” the male lead said.

“There really isn’t.”

I surveyed the cushions packed across the floor.

“I think we can squeeze in one more.”

On the day Ran Ling returned to the capital in triumph, his long-lost first love was brought back to him.

She had once cast aside reputation and status to elope with him, and he had once taken a sword for her.

Everyone said the star-crossed lovers of their youth would finally get the happy ending they had been denied.

But I wasn’t worried, because my mother had transmigrated into this novel—and I was a devoted mama’s girl.

It didn’t matter what anyone schemed against me; I was the hollow rose my mother had raised.

I spent ten years loving my childhood friend, and he spent the same ten years finding me unbearable.

Then one day, I finally had my way with him—and left two hundred yuan behind.

Humiliated beyond measure, my childhood friend hunted for me everywhere.

But I made sure he never found me.

I hid from him for three years, until my father died and left me with no family.

His parents told me, “From now on, our home is your home, and that boy is your big brother.”

I looked at the face that went mad with shame and fury the moment he saw me, and called out brightly, “Hello, Big Brother!”

For three years, I washed the backside of the bedridden, paralyzed heir to the Marquis of Zhenbei.

He mocked me for it all the time.

“Chunxi, if you’re willing to wash even my most private parts, is there anything you wouldn’t do?”

“Do you think that just because the Chancellor’s daughter broke off our engagement, you’ll get to become my proper wife?”

“A lowborn woman like you, willing to stoop to anything to get ahead, isn’t even fit to be my concubine.

The best you could hope for is to warm my bed!”

Later, he learned to walk again, and I left with my silver.

Three years after that, he distinguished himself on the battlefield and asked for my hand as his reward.

But by then, I was already washing backsides at the Prince Regent’s estate.

“Heir Xie, aren’t you misunderstanding something?

I only agreed to serve you back then because the job paid three taels of silver a month.”

“Now I serve the Prince Regent’s heir for thirty taels a month.

Please don’t ruin this for me!”

After wandering the mortal world for more than six hundred years, I hear that a once-in-a-century sword prodigy has appeared.

The young man has also found a dragon that sounds remarkably like the one I lost long ago.

Cultivators from across the realm flock to the mountain, some to seek the dragon and the Dao, others to kill and seize treasure.

I am different.

After a long, dusty journey to the Sword Sect, all I want is to set up a little stall at the foot of the mountain and sell wontons.

In the twelfth year of her political marriage, Lu Zhuohua’s husband slaps her for the sake of his newest concubine—and the formidable marchioness answers by smashing a bench over his head.

What first looks like another petty battle in a crowded noble household soon exposes a plot involving a staged miscarriage, a powerful young heiress, and a poison meant for Zhuohua and her little daughter.

With her family, her fighters, and twelve years of household authority behind her, Zhuohua decides that if her husband wants her dead, she will simply strike first.