Drama

Gu Xinlan always calls her maid Huaixia a sister, yet every claim of equality leaves Huaixia poorer, punished, or robbed of a future.

After dying of consumption when Gu Xinlan casts her out, Huaixia awakens years earlier with every betrayal still fresh in her mind.

This time, she turns her mistress’s hollow ideals against her, escapes the courtyard, and fights for the security her sick mother and young sister desperately need.

But Gu Xinlan refuses to release the servant she considers beneath her, dragging Huaixia into the Prince of Cheng’en’s residence and destroying another chance at freedom.

When Huaixia rises from maid to concubine, their supposed sisterhood becomes a deadly contest of envy, greed, and survival.

One woman believes equality is a favor she can grant and revoke; the other is determined to build a life no mistress can take away.

As old cruelties return in new disguises, a handful of silver and one act of kindness may decide who lives to see spring.

My elder sister disappeared when she was little, but fortune favored her: the Yong’an Marquis household took her in and raised her with every comfort.

By the time she returned to us, our mother had already arranged one marriage for her, while the marquis household had promised her to someone else.

One man was the adoptive brother who had grown up beside her; the other, her childhood betrothed.

Unable to let either go, she proposed a compromise: she would marry whichever man found the jade hairpin she hid.

The day she hid hers, however, she hid mine as well.

In my last life, Wei Heng found a hairpin first, but the one in his hand belonged to me.

The smile had barely touched his lips when her adoptive brother said coldly, “You cannot even recognize Ah Zhi’s hairpin. I suppose that leaves you no choice but to marry Ranran.”

After we married, every quarrel between my sister and her husband sent her running to Wei Heng in tears.

His heart ached for her, and his old regret never faded.

“If you had married me,” he would murmur, “I would never have made you cry. Not even once.”

I found them together beneath the moon, composing poems, and side by side among the spring blossoms.

Whenever I showed the slightest displeasure, Wei Heng called me jealous and narrow-minded, saying I could never match my sister’s poetry or painting.

Now I had returned to the day Wei Heng picked up my hairpin.

I held out my hand.

“Young Master Wei, Mother is already considering matches for me. Please return my hairpin.”

My mother was the ubiquitous housekeeper Mrs. Wang from domineering-CEO romance novels.

After graduating from college, I inherited the family profession and became Mrs. Wang 2.0.

When the CEO’s first love faked a fall, I slid a cushion under her to keep her safe.

When Madam was too depressed to eat, I cheered her up with warm words and good food.

When the CEO scolded his first love, I comforted her too.

I lived by the housekeeper’s creed my mother had taught me: every visitor is a guest, and a good worker always sees what needs doing.

In the end, Madam and the first love came to blows over me.

“You can have my man—we can negotiate; try taking my housekeeper, and you’re dead!”

I am the vicious supporting character in a novel.

Yet I have been forced to watch one transmigrator after another take over my body, throw away all dignity, and grovel before a little beast already rotten to the core, all because they dreamed of saving him.

They called it redeeming the villain—showing him the warmth and beauty of the world.

Without exception, every one of them was betrayed once the little beast rose to power, and every one died without an intact corpse.

Now the cycle has begun again.

I expected another laughable attempt at redemption, but this time, before the villain could grow into his power, the new transmigrator drove a blade straight through his heart.

Blood flecked her face, making her smile look dark and uncanny.

“I’d already made a mortal enemy of him, so why not kill him and end the threat for good?”

“This redemption game is painfully dull.”

When the marquis’s household finally brought me home, I was already twenty years old—old enough that women my age had children, while I remained unwed.

Only after entering the estate did I learn that I had been promised in marriage before I was born, but the false heiress raised in my place had already married my betrothed.

She and the ducal heir were deeply in love, with both a son and a daughter, and theirs was celebrated throughout the capital as a perfect match.

When she faced me, guilt overwhelmed her so completely that she could not speak through her tears.

Mother held her close and comforted her, while the ducal heir vowed that she would be the only woman in his life.

I stood straight and composed, pretending none of it mattered.

Hidden inside my sleeve, however, my fingers clutched my skirt so tightly that they ached to the bone.

That night, Mother took my hand and sighed, urging me to accept that everything was already settled and let it go.

She promised to find me a better marriage and said she had already considered several fine young gentlemen.

I stared at the osmanthus tree perfuming the courtyard and found myself thinking instead of the pigs back home, with no one left to tend them.

“Mother,” I said, “I don’t want a marriage. Please let me go home.”

On my birthday, the Fourth Princess and I both set our hearts on the same pomegranate-blossom crown.

At a loss, Father told each of us to choose a young man from the imperial clan to ride and shoot on our behalf.

Whoever struck the kite first after it was released would win.

I chose Qin Yan, my dearest childhood friend.

I knew he could hit the mark with his eyes closed, and I was certain he would make my wish come true.

But all three of his arrows missed by a hair.

I hid in the attic and wept after losing, until Qin Yan came to find me and finally snapped in exasperation, “That enormous gold crown would never have suited you. Jade is better. Plain, pure, and far easier on the eyes.”

“Stop competing with the Fourth Princess over everything.”

Then, with the solemn patience of someone offering hard-won wisdom, he said, “Jiajia, you need to understand that sometimes being right for something matters more than winning it.”

I took his lesson to heart.

So years later, when Father held trials to choose my prince consort, Qin Yan placed first in both the civil and martial examinations.

And I still did not choose him.

After being lost for fifteen years, the prime minister’s true daughter, Song Weilan, finally returns home and comes face-to-face with the false heiress who took her place. Beneath Song Jinyu’s tears and feigned innocence lies a vicious campaign to ruin Weilan, but this time Weilan refuses to remain a helpless victim. Armed with a sharp tongue, an unyielding will, and memories of suffering, Weilan fights for her family, exposes every scheme against her, and claims the freedom to live on her own terms.

That morning, I was still a filthy beggar.

By nightfall, I had been scrubbed clean and smelled sweet.

I had sold myself to a brothel.

The madam looked me up and down, a smile spreading through the creases of her forehead.

“The Mid-Autumn Festival is in five days.

You’ll start taking clients then.”

I didn’t look at her.

The money was in my pocket.

Did she really think she still had a say?

All I wanted now was a good night’s sleep.

The room was lovely in every way, except that the fragrance made my head swim.

I shut the door and pushed open a small, carved window.

A streak of white light squeezed through the gap.

It widened until it filled my vision.

Why was there a luxurious room outside my window?

A man sat straight-backed at a writing desk, his head bent over the bow he was polishing.

He looked up and saw me too.

He wasn’t surprised, but he was very angry.

“I asked for nothing in return.

Who brought you into my residence?

This is absurd!”

Only then did I see his face clearly.

He was extraordinarily handsome.

It was Song Shan.

Wait.

Song Shan?

Hadn’t he been put to death by slow slicing at the third quarter of the noon watch that very day?

I had watched it myself.

My childhood friend Jiang Yan thought I was too clingy, so he hypnotized me and deliberately made me pursue someone else.

He had no idea the hypnosis was fake—or that chasing Song Yaozhou would lead me to the person willing to be my knight and teach me to become my own.

After my older sister was assaulted, she fell for her attacker.

He was handsome, she said, and she wanted to marry him.

The news landed our parents in the hospital.

She still refused to come to her senses.

She clung to that man shamelessly and even transferred our family’s money to him behind our parents’ backs.

Everyone thought she had lost her mind.

Only I did everything I could to grant her wish and help her marry him.