Historical

Fu Huaijin gave up a free and prosperous modern life to save Xie Shi’an, the orphaned slave who rose to become the empire’s chief minister.

Seven years into their marriage, the man who once swore to love only her begins longing for the temptations his power can buy—and for a dazzling young transmigrator who reminds him of the woman Huaijin used to be.

When Huaijin agrees to let him take a concubine, Xie Shi’an believes she has finally yielded, never suspecting that she has also asked the empress to dissolve their marriage.

But a possessive man at the pinnacle of power has no intention of releasing the moonlight that once saved him, even after she chooses freedom over everything he can offer.

And when Huaijin finds her way home, Xie Shi’an learns too late that love without equality, respect, and acceptance was never the devotion he imagined.

In my previous life, I married the Sixth Prince and helped him win the throne.

For eighteen years, I mistook his gestures for love.

Only as he lay dying did I discover that he had always wanted my twin sister, and blamed me for his unhappy life.

Now I am back at the banquet where we chose our husbands.

This time, my silk flower will fall on another prince’s painting.

But my former husband remembers everything too, and refuses to believe I no longer want him.

Three months after marrying into the Marquis Manor, I became pregnant.

A maid brought me a bowl of medicinal soup, claiming it was a gift from the Empress Dowager to help stabilize my pregnancy.

I took the bowl but didn’t dare to drink it.

In my previous life, not long after I drank it, I fell into a coma.

When I finally woke, I was trapped in a sea of flames, and both mother and child perished.

At that moment, the maid urged me, “Please drink it quickly, Madam. Refusing a gift from the Empress Dowager is a punishable offense.”

I found an unconscious noblewoman by the river.

One bowl of lard rice a day, and she slowly nursed back to health.

Then one day, a great contingent of Tiger Guards came sweeping in full force to my butcher shop and knelt before the noblewoman: "We humbly request that our mistress return to the marquis's residence!"

The man leading them noticed me standing off to the side, trembling: "And who are you?"

I blurted out in a panic: "This commoner is the third butcher shop south of the city, pig slaugh-"

Before I could finish, the noblewoman clapped her hand over my mouth.

"This is my only daughter, the one I had fostered with my maiden family."

I have slaughtered pigs in the palace for four years; wherever my axe struck, none survived.

With every pig I killed, I recited “Amitabha.”

My skilled butchering caught the attention of the Prince, who took me as his trusted aide.

I became the deadly butcher’s knife; he became the executioner who wielded it.

Killing and beheading – “Amitabha”; burying them on the spot – “well done, well done.”

My older brother was eighteen when he was married off as a live-in son-in-law to my sister-in-law.

My sister-in-law said that if he gave her a child, she’d reward him by letting him continue his studies.

Later, the day my brother passed the imperial exam, Father still refused to give up and asked,

“Son, now can my grandson change his surname back to mine?”

Everyone in Shengjing knows that Young Marquis Shen despises his wife, Meng Suichao.

He spends his days in brothels while she tends to him with unfailing devotion—until a scar destroys the one resemblance that kept her at his side.

When Suichao finally asks for a divorce, an old love believed dead returns through the snow, forcing every buried truth into the light.

My father successfully overthrew the throne, and he didn’t know how best to gloat:

“The Deposed Emperor still has his charms, and the Former Crown Prince is quite the beauty. I bestow them both upon my daughter!”

The father and son were so enraged they spat blood.

I was even more agitated: “Why give them to me? Give them a death sentence!”

When my elder brother returned to the capital after investigating a case, he brought back two Liuxian Skirts, one blue-green and one pink.

He first asked my eldest sister which one she liked.

When it was my turn, my brother smiled gently.

“Pink is delicate, and it suits your complexion too. Do you like it?”

If I didn’t, there would be nothing left for me.

I nodded and took it.

Later, when choosing tutors and selecting study companions, it was always the same.

It was no different on the day we were to choose our husbands.

The Crown Prince won my eldest sister’s hand, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

The Third Prince was crushed. He pointed at me at random.

“Then the Second Miss it is.”

After we married, the Third Prince regretted it a little.

But he was a good man.

He was willing to hand over management of the household to me, and he took no concubines.

Even when my eldest sister and I fell from our horses on the same day, he was the one who risked his life to save me.

At the very end, he touched my brow bone and let out a long sigh.

“Even if all I can ask for is a resemblance, so be it. In this life, I sought the highest, and in the end got only what was second-best.”

And so, when I was given a second chance at life, at the banquet where husbands were chosen,

I covered my brows and eyes and answered the Third Prince in a muffled voice.

“Yinyin already has someone she loves.”

At a palace banquet, my elder sister accidentally inhaled an aphrodisiac and ended up alone in a room with the heir of the Xie family.

But she was already the Crown Princess, and if the secret got out, the consequences would be catastrophic.

To protect her reputation, the young lord publicly took responsibility and claimed that I had been the woman who spent that night with him.

After I married into the marquis’s household, he remained unfailingly polite but distant, as cold as frost behind a screen.

So determined was he to sleep in separate rooms that he even ruined his own reputation, pretending to be drunk and lamenting before others that he suffered from an unspeakable condition and could not perform as a man.

To preserve the family’s dignity, my mother-in-law simply announced that I was the infertile one.

My sister tormented herself day and night, convinced that she had ruined my life.

I alone breathed a secret sigh of relief, stroked my steadily rounding belly, and made an announcement at the family banquet.

“A miracle from heaven! My husband is going to have an heir!”