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My younger sister and I were twins—the legendary Yin-Yang twins.

The uglier I became, the prettier she grew.

The worse my grades were, the better hers became.

The weaker my body was, the healthier she grew.

One waned as the other waxed, like two ends of a scale.

So our parents decided to sacrifice me and pour everything they had into raising one perfect daughter.

Before my grandmother passed away, she left me three brocade pouches.

“On the seventh day after my death, give these to the seventh person who offers incense.”

On the day of the funeral, I followed her instructions to the letter. When the man who received them opened the brocade pouch, his face turned pale with terror, and he fled in a panic.

It wasn’t until later that I learned the man was a rapist and a murderer.

He had intended to target me that very night.

The first brocade pouch was filled with his criminal record.

She told me to open the second brocade pouch before I got married and consummated the union.

This time, the brocade pouch felt very thin.

Inside, there was only one word.

“RUN!!!”

A top-tier Green Tea found herself in a horror game.

Watching the Bloody Senior Sister crawl in the dark toilet,

I screamed:

“Damn it! How could you let the Bloody Senior Sister crawl on such a filthy floor?”

Facing the Murderous Little Lolita with her split personality, I tied her hair into cute twin ponytails:

“While everyone else worries about whether the Murderous Little Lolita’s axe is sharp, I only worry if she gets tired from all that chopping.”

The Anomalies exchanged glances:

“Why do the corpses feel kind of warm?”

Four years ago, Gu Jinzhi, the Crown Prince of the Beijing Circle, fell in love with me at first sight.

After three years of relentless pursuit, I finally gave in.

In the first year of our relationship, he started pestering me to get married.

I was hesitant, but I couldn’t withstand his endless coaxing.

In the end, I brought him home to meet my parents.

But that day, outside the private room, I heard one of his buddies ask him, “You’ve met her parents now. When’s the wedding?”

Gu Jinzhi clicked his tongue and said unhurriedly, “All of a sudden, I don’t want to get married that much anymore.”

Someone beside him jeered, “Oh, stop pretending. You spent three years chasing that untouchable ice queen. You’d really give her up?”

“Ice queen?”

I heard him let out a scoff.

“If you saw how her parents treat her, you’d feel the same way I do.”

“The same how?”

“That she’s nothing special after all.”

Criminal investigations, soul-ferrying powers, a formidable partnership, and a slow-burn romance.

Everyone knew that Ren Fengjue, the Young Marquis of Renxuan Marquis Manor, was an exceptionally capable man. At a young age, he was already a high-ranking court official and one of the Emperor’s most trusted favorites.

With an illustrious background, striking looks, and both brains and brawn, he seemed to move through life without ever meeting an obstacle he could not overcome.

That changed the day a woman claiming to be his fiancée appeared at his door and opened with a sentence that left him stunned.

Xia Ximo: “Write me a letter of annulment.”

Ren Fengjue: “???”

At first, Lord Ren was buried in official duties and had no interest in romance. If she wanted out of the engagement, so be it. He had never intended to marry in the first place.

Later, after one twist after another, the way he looked at his fiancée changed completely.

Ren Fengjue: “I have already petitioned the Emperor for a marriage decree. If we annul the engagement now, it would count as defying an imperial edict, a crime punishable by the execution of nine generations.”

Xia Ximo: “???”

Every day, Noble Lady Zhao Wan forgets one more memory of the emperor who once promised never to fail her.

When she remembers only the gentle husband of her youth, the white-haired ruler who betrayed her must watch her defend the man he used to be.

But as a palace purge restores the truth, love, ambition, and wounds too deep to forgive drive their reunion toward a final tragedy.

While everyone else was fighting for the Emperor’s favor, I built an intelligence station in the cold palace.

Until the day he died, the Emperor never knew that the woman stirring up the hidden currents of his harem was someone whose name he could not even remember.

I died in Yongxiang Alley during my third winter there.

Not truly died-only the kind of death where your name is crossed out in vermilion ink on the registry.

They said Noble Lady Li, who had once worked in the imperial garden and was later favored by His Majesty for her beauty, had gone mad.

Because on the late Empress’s memorial day, I let my hair hang loose, went barefoot, and sang a rousing rendition of “Liangzhou Ci.”

In truth, I was not mad. I had simply calculated that the Chief Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial would pass through the imperial garden that day.

Madness was the best pass in the cold palace, and the best armor.

On the day I moved into the West Third Institute, only one lame old eunuch came to lead the way.

The weeds in the courtyard rose past my knees, and the moss on the well curb was as thick as a velvet blanket.

My roommate, Attendant Li, had been thrown in here three years ago after offending the Imperial Consort.

When she saw me arrive, she did not even lift her eyelids. She only kept rubbing a length of hemp rope in her hands, its edges worn fuzzy.

I set my only bundle down on the crumbling earthen kang.

Inside were two sets of worn palace clothes, a bald writing brush, and half a ream of yellow paper.

The paper pasted over the window lattice had a hole in it the size of a fist. The north wind poured in with a howl, carrying the faint sound of pipes and flutes from far away.

I stared at that hole, but in my heart, a sliver of light slipped through.

In a madwoman’s world, there were the fewest rules.

Here, perhaps, I could live.

Only on my wedding night did I discover that I had not married the second son of the marquis’s residence—the man I had been introduced to before the match.

I had married the sickly eldest son, who had spent most of his life confined to bed.

The idea had come from Miss Liu, who entered the household on the same day as I did and was now the Second Young Madam.

Smiling sweetly, she asked, “I heard you and Eldest Brother fell in love at first sight, Sister-in-law. Are you happy now that you are married?”

Everyone expected me to cry, make a scene, and expose how the grooms had been switched.

Instead, I lowered my eyes and calmly served tea to my new parents-in-law before I spoke.

“A maiden treasures her reputation above all else. I did not dare look closely at my future husband that day. Only today have I learned what a true gentleman looks like.”

My parents-in-law’s worry turned to delight, and they praised me as virtuous and noble—the finest of wives.

What none of them knew was that I came from a merchant family.

I believed in fair trades, and I never forgot a debt.

For the little matter of deceiving me, I judged that a few lives would be payment enough.

Crown Prince Bai Xiuzhu had been afflicted with the Southern Border Love-Forgetting Gu.

Every time he clawed his way back from the brink of death, he would forget the person he loved most. The first time, he forgot his mother.

The second time, he forgot the marriage vows we had exchanged before Heaven and Earth at the border.

The third time-after I had slit my wrists to feed him my blood and save his life-he sat high atop his throne in the Hall of Golden Chimes and personally marked my death warrant with a stroke of vermilion ink.

After refusing to enter the imperial harem in her elder sister’s place, Shen Wanning awakens in the past with every memory of the life that destroyed her.

Emperor Qin Zheng remembers that life too, and his determination to reclaim her draws Shen Wanning back into the palace she tried to escape.

Surrounded by a resentful sister, ambitious consorts, and powerful men who mistake her compliance for dependence, she turns their desires against them and plots a ruthless path to freedom.