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I was an emperor.

Now I have become another emperor.

But this one has made a miserable job of it.

The crown princess is sleeping with the imperial tutor in the Eastern Palace.

My daughter is imprisoned and humiliated in her own residence by her husband.

Even my favorite niece has been judged by the country-bred heir to the Marquis of Xuanyang: “Fit only for a concubine, never a wife.”

Well.

You are all remarkably brave.

How about we find out how sharp my executioner’s blade is?

I was an abandoned child, and a blessed girl revered in every village for miles around.

Whenever a woman became pregnant, all I had to do was touch her belly, and she would have a son.

People were overjoyed.

But little by little, they stopped rejoicing…

After they discovered I was not their real daughter, they began withholding everything—my food, my clothes, even the charcoal for my fire.

My betrothal to the Pei family became the only thing I could rely on.

But Pei Xuan’s moods were impossible to predict.

A single word from me would often anger him enough to send a letter breaking off our engagement.

I spent my days in fear and my nights in worry.

At last, I fell gravely ill.

When I woke, the lady of the household stood before me.

“A captain serving under my uncle commands a hundred men.”

“His birth is humble, but he is young and brave.

He has distinguished himself in battle again and again.”

Holding the letter of repudiation, she looked pained.

“The Peis may be an excellent family, but your present standing makes you an unsuitable match.

You live in constant fear.”

“What are wealth and glory worth beside your life?”

“We were mother and daughter once.

I truly want to find you a good husband.”

I pressed a hand to my chest and nodded through my tears.

“I understand, my lady.”

“I will marry him.”

Princess Chu Yuan has always taken whatever catches her eye, including the chaste young monk Yujingzi.

When his endless refusals finally wear her down, she casts him aside for a bold hostage prince—only to be haunted by dreams of a possessive snake-tailed god.

The truth is worse: Yujingzi is the divine serpent who has protected Great Sheng for years, and his coy resistance was never rejection at all.

Now the princess who loved and left him must survive his wounded devotion, win his forgiveness, and decide whether she can spend her life with the one creature she fears most.

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.

When I was twenty-five, I had a child with one of the most powerful heirs in Beijing’s elite circle.

There was no future for two people as unequal as us, so I took the money and opportunities the He family offered and broke up with him.

Then, five years later, during a break on set.

A little boy who looked strikingly like He Jinnan came looking for me.

He pursed his lips, aggrieved yet stubbornly proud.

“My dad is He Jinnan,” he said.

“And you’re my mom.”

I looked at him and gave a faint hum of acknowledgment.

He hurriedly pulled a thick wad of cash from his backpack.

His eyes were full of pleading.

“Can I hire you for one day to come to my parent-teacher meeting?”

Xie Chengze transmigrates into a novel about a powerful minister, becoming its vicious villain – the Second Prince, a man who murders his own brothers, treats human life as worthless, and ultimately dies when the powerful minister Shen Yuan drives a sword through his heart.

To escape that fate, Xie Chengze resolves to keep his head down and stay far away from the struggle for the throne. Whenever matters of state come up, he has only three answers: “Dunno. Ask the Crown Prince!” “Dunno. Ask Shen Yuan!” and “Dunno. Ask the Eldest Prince!”

Yet the looks Shen Yuan and the princes give him only grow more dangerous – and in every possible sense of the word.

–

After killing Xie Chengze with a single thrust of his sword, Shen Yuan opens his eyes to find himself ten years in the past.

In his previous life, the Second Prince flouted the law, brought ruin upon the country and misery upon its people, and threw the imperial court into chaos for nearly a decade. This time, Shen Yuan intends to uproot his faction as early as possible and restore peace and order to the realm.

Instead, he watches the once-vicious man devote himself to the common people, transform a wilderness into a land of abundance with his own hands, and usher in an age of peace and prosperity.

He has endless tenderness for the world – yet before Shen Yuan alone, he refuses to bow his head or bend his back.

While my brother discussed the most elegant way to sever an artery, I tended my vegetables.

While my sister sharpened her fangs for the coming feast, I tended my vegetables.

While the whole family prepared to revel beneath the blood moon, I was still tending my vegetables.

I cared so much about growing them well that I converted the cellar into a climate-controlled greenhouse and trained our familiar bats to serve as pollinators.

Mom and Dad took one look at the sea of green filling our grounds.

Exasperated but helpless to change me, they took the rest of the family on vacation so they would not have to see it.

For a long while after that, I enjoyed the idyllic peace of country life.

Then one day, as I was picking pests off my cucumbers, a luxury car screeched to a halt outside the gates.

A wealthy young lady in a lace dress pointed at my castle and shrieked coquettishly to her eight brothers, “Baby wants it turned into a Barbie dream castle!

This is where a princess belongs!”

Sold at sixteen to the Zhao family of Taoshui Village, Pan Xi’er expects a life of hardship among three unmarried brothers with terrible reputations.

Instead, she finds warmth, loyalty, and a family ready to work for a better tomorrow.

With tofu, new recipes, and stubborn kindness, Xi’er helps the Zhaos turn hardship into prosperity—until old wounds and new ambitions put their hard-won happiness to the test.

On his deathbed, the late emperor entrusted me with his heir—and had me bound and dragged back overnight to assist the new emperor.

Isolated and alone, the new emperor glared through bloodshot eyes, snapping at anyone who came near like a wolf cub.

“Better that I betray the world than let the world betray me!”

My eyes lit up.

The new emperor, later: “On second thought, the world hasn’t wronged me quite that badly.”