Historical

In the twelfth year after my rebirth, the first thing I did upon leaving the Xie estate was visit my grave from my former life.

It lay alone in the wilderness, with Qingming as cold as winter and weeds growing ten feet high.

I added a shovelful of fresh earth and told myself, “Ah Lan, don’t look back. Keep walking.”

I am the unlucky princess who got thrown into the Cold Palace.

The people above gave me two choices: either become a eunuch’s palace wife, or marry a fool.

Without the slightest hesitation, I chose to marry the fool.

After all, he comes with an extra part. I’d be getting the better deal~

When my beloved childhood friend publicly humiliated me, my own sister called it harmless fun.

I answered by turning his joke into a scandal that swept the capital.

After years in exile, I returned unwilling to bend—to my scheming sister, her five doting brothers, or the prince who treated my marriage as a bargaining chip.

They expected a disgraced noblewoman they could sacrifice.

Instead, I used every plot against them, exposed every betrayal, and chose to break before I bowed.

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.

The night I married Pei Guanli, I cried so hard I soaked half my bridal veil.

Not because I didn’t want to marry him, but because everyone in the capital knew that Pei Guanli was more upright and proper than the ancestral tablets in a shrine.

He oversaw ceremonial protocols at the Ministry of Rites and revised the dynasty’s statutes and rites.

If a family used the wrong ritual vessels at a wedding, he could remember it for three years.

If someone wailed one time too many at a funeral, he could submit a memorial impeaching them straight to the emperor.

As the daughter of a merchant family from Jiangnan, this was exactly the sort of man I feared most.

Before my mother sent me into the bridal sedan, she clutched my hands and cried even harder than I did.

“Ah Ning, once you reach the Pei Family, speak less, smile less, and eat less.”

I asked, “Why eat less?”

Choking back sobs, my mother said, “Noble young ladies in the capital eat as delicately as if they’re painting flowers. You eat three bowls in one sitting. You’ll give yourself away too easily.”

I paused, suddenly feeling that before this marriage had even reached the bridal chamber, I had already lost on appetite alone.

I was the quietest, shyest girl in the village.

And yet, every night, I went to the ruined temple to seduce the village’s only scholar.

The scholar never took the bait. Disheartened, I decided to steal all the money from home and run away.

He stopped me. “We agreed. When I make something of myself one day, you have to leave on your own.”

I nodded as fast as I could.

Later, he really did pass the imperial examinations with honors, and I finally gained the ability to support myself. So I asked him to sign the divorce papers.

His eyes were bloodshot. “You want to leave me?”

Born in a brothel and raised as its future commodity, Liu Yuan’er watches her mother work herself raw to buy them both a life of freedom.

The day before they can leave, the daughter of Grand Tutor Song has her mother beaten to death—and Yuan’er learns that the powerful man behind the murder is her own father.

With no law willing to touch the Song clan, Yuan’er enters the imperial palace under a borrowed identity.

Every favor, poison, pregnancy, and betrayal becomes a move in her revenge, while Prince Su watches from the shadows and offers the one blade sharp enough to cut down the empire’s most untouchable family.

Yuan’er was named for a kite meant to fly free.

To avenge her mother, she may have to trade that freedom for a cage of gold.

I had been the most pampered princess since childhood, yet everyone called me brutal, cold, inhuman.

Even my younger brother, now emperor, had slowly begun to distance himself from me.

He said he had found his real elder sister.

I smiled at Princess Ronghua.

She did bear a certain resemblance to my imperial brother.

Indeed.

A pair of bastards passing themselves off as imperial blood.

Everyone in the capital knows that every beauty who disappears into Minister Luo’s rear courtyard carries him one step higher in office.

Born mute—or so the household believes—his ninth daughter survives by making herself small and useful to the family’s favored eldest daughter.

As sisters are sold, married, and sacrificed for the ambitions of men, Ah Jiu realizes that obedience will never buy her freedom.

To escape the Luo estate alive, she must wager the one thing society says determines a woman’s future: her face.

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.