Historical

My best friend and I transmigrated together.

She became a princess consort, while I became… a lynx.

“Save me, save me, save me…” I begged.

“Hang in there!” my best friend said. “I’ll fight for custody!”

Then I demonstrated that I could use a toilet all by myself, and Her Majesty the Empress chose me instead.

Later, when my best friend’s husband rebelled and nearly got her killed, it was her turn to beg, “Save me, save me, save me…”

So I-I sprang up and sank my teeth into the villain’s thigh.

To please his mistress, my father secretly switched Mother’s newborn daughter with hers.

He meant for his mistress’s daughter to take my place as the legitimate young lady of the family and grow up surrounded by wealth and privilege.

Behind Mother’s back, the mistress mocked her.

“A country woman like her will spend her whole life laboring only to hand the fruits to someone else.”

Even Father thought Mother ignorant and easy to deceive.

But Mother was merely uneducated, not witless.

Neither of them knew that a fire broke out in the rear courtyard on the day Mother gave birth—and that she switched me straight back.

Even as he faced death, Father could not understand how a country woman like Mother had brought about his ruin.

On our wedding night, the prince was summoned away to the side courtyard by his cousin.

I had already taken off my bridal robes and slept soundly until morning.

After all, neither of us was the heroine.

Why should one supporting villainess make life difficult for another?

My sister-in-law is the famed Rouge Tiger of Linan.

With a powdered face and thunderous methods, she keeps my brother so obedient he doesn’t dare take a concubine.

All the men of Linan laugh at him for being henpecked.

One day, my brother brought home a shy young woman named Yaoniang.

With a trembling voice, he stood protectively in front of her and said to my sister-in-law:

“Yaoniang and I have already been intimate. Whether you approve or not, I will make her my concubine today.”

My sister-in-law did not pick up the rolling pin again.

She only smiled and said, “Very well – I’ll let you have her.”

Pei Ling’an said he wanted to break off our engagement again.

This time, it was because I refused to give the golden hairpin I had won for my poetry to my younger cousin.

“The Shen Family has fallen. No matter which daughter I choose to marry, Shen Tongzhi wouldn’t dare say a single word against it.”

He rested his chin on his hand, looking at me with a faint, mocking smile. “Break the engagement, or give the hairpin to Yuchi. Shen Yusu, the choice is yours.”

Everyone was waiting for me to bow my head.

Just as I had done countless times before.

But this time, I only tightened my grip on the golden hairpin and said softly,

“Then let’s break the engagement.”

On the day of the grand wedding, every guest in the hall witnessed Ah Ying take a sword strike intended for Gu Yanzhi.

No one knew that the blades, arrows, and poisons she had endured for him throughout her life were already enough to have killed her many times over.

All she had ever waited for was to die in his arms and hear him call her name just once.

I stayed by his side from his impoverished youth until he held the world in his palm.

Yet, I was forced to watch as he elevated my half-sister to the status of equal wife and executed my entire family.

I met a miserable end. Given a second chance at life, I watch as his back bows in defeat, his body trembling with regret.

I burn our marriage contract. I wish him a meteoric rise and a boundless future.

A boundless future, without me.

I paint faces for the dead and open The Door for the living.

After the Prime Minister’s Daughter met a sudden, violent end, I painted the last thing she ever saw.

Three months later, that very face smiled at me from a crowded street.

Later, when the Grand Princess lay within her coffin, she reached out and gripped my brush. “Don’t paint me,” she whispered. “Paint yourself.”

I waited bitterly for Qu Huang for three years, only to receive a letter of divorce.

When the message arrived, I was still wiping down his bedridden mother.

It was March, and the late spring cold had returned, yet I was drenched in sweat from exhaustion.

My hands shook so badly I could barely take the thin silk letter the attendant handed me.

“Where is my husband?”

“The young master has already arrived in the front hall.”

I sighed, set down the damp towel in my hand, and smoothed back the stray hair at my temples.

“Very well. I’ll go with you.”

By the time I transmigrated into this world, the story was already nearing its end.

The realm had been united, and the New Emperor had ascended the throne.

The woman who had shared his hardships and stayed by his side through everything had been granted a cup of poisoned wine.

And I was the Empress he was about to marry: the legitimate daughter of the Wang Clan, born of an illustrious house.

I looked at the woman who had just drunk the poisoned wine. “Do you know why I came?”

She let out a cold laugh, sweat beading across her brow. “Afraid I won’t die?”

“No.” I took a pill from my sleeve and pushed it into her mouth. “Afraid you will.”