Historical

Mother ascended to heaven.

She left me two things: an old yellow dog and a manual for cultivating immortality.

Oh, and one promise.

“Whenever someone beats you, shout your mother’s name three times, and I will come save you.”

I never shouted.

Father had seldom used his fists lately; he had heard that girls in our area had suddenly become valuable, and a wounded one would fetch a poor price.

Not long after I married the crown prince, he was deposed.

We spent ten years imprisoned together in a derelict garden.

I tilled the soil and planted vegetables, doing everything I could to stay alive.

Half out of his mind, he kicked my vegetables to pieces, muttering, “Thank goodness it isn’t Qianyi locked up in here.”

Qianyi was the cousin who had come to live with my family.

She was now Prince Cheng’s consort.

I had never known the deposed crown prince had feelings for her.

His ravings made a mockery of the ten years I had spent at his side.

Later, Prince Cheng ascended the throne and issued two decrees.

One sentenced the deposed crown prince to death by poisoned wine.

The other sent me to cultivate the Way in a Taoist temple.

I became Master Taihui of Purple Cloud Temple.

Less than two years later, I became the new emperor’s Consort Yu.

People sneered at my wiles, saying I had bewitched the emperor so thoroughly that he neglected even his lawful wife.

My cousin demanded bitterly to know why I had stolen her husband, why I had not followed the deposed crown prince to the grave.

The new emperor hated me too.

He hated me because, years before, I had seen him wounded and left him there to attend the consort selection.

His grave injuries had failed to heal.

He had lost his chance and spent years scheming before he finally won the throne.

Yet later, when a deadly poison left me confined to my sickbed, he cast aside his entire harem and used blood drawn from his own heart to save me.

As I lay dying, he held me and wept in anguish.

“As long as you live, I’ll agree to anything.”

“I’ll make you empress.”

“I’ll let your parents come back to the capital.”

“Your brother, your sister-in-law, your nephew—all of them.”

“Only live.”

Tears blurred my sight.

I did not even have the strength to cry.

Too late.

Why couldn’t he have granted my wish sooner?

Why had he made my whole life so miserable?

Then I was given another life.

Mother told me joyfully that the empress had specifically summoned me to the consort-selection banquet.

I looked at my cousin, who could hardly contain her eagerness, then lowered my eyes and said softly, “I don’t want to go.”

My husband brought home his “true love” and insisted on taking her as a concubine.

Tears of emotion filled my eyes as I clasped his true love’s hand and refused to let go.

“How could I possibly let you settle for being a concubine?

You can have my place as his lawful wife!

“Why don’t we make it a one-stop affair today—divorce for me, wedding for you!”

There was no time to waste.

The imperial decree ordering the confiscation of the family estate was already on its way!

My sister-in-law and the youngest daughter of General Zhao were carried to the wrong bridal sedans.

By the time everyone realized it and wanted to switch them back, the woman who should have been my sister-in-law had already completed the wedding night elsewhere.

And just like that, my rough-and-tumble brother somehow ended up with a refined young lady from a noble household as his wife.

But later, when I saw him in the courtyard using a broadsword to cut a thread for her, I suddenly felt the two of them were actually a perfect match.

Born into wealth but sold into a brothel by her opium-addicted father, Zhao Xiaochan remakes herself as Tang Xiaowan and refuses to let a violent age decide her worth.

Beside a rough warlord and later a principled reporter, she survives betrayal, occupation, and impossible love while risking everything to shelter other women from the same fate.

Across decades of war and upheaval, the jade cicada at her throat becomes the last witness to a life lived fiercely, proudly, and on her own terms.

I have a secret.

From the moment I was born, I carried memories of my previous life.

I buried that secret deep in my heart and never dared reveal the slightest trace of it.

Until the year I entered the palace as a maid.

The other maids warned me never to provoke Shen Ruyun, Imperial Consort Shen.

They said she was a vicious, ruthless woman, and that countless eunuchs and palace maids had died by her hand.

I did not believe it.

Because I had once seen Shen Ruyun’s portrait.

And I recognized her.

She was my daughter from my previous life.

When I died, she was only ten years old.

I wanted to understand why that sweet, sensible child had become such a wicked ghost now…

At twenty-five, the eldest son of the Cui family lived a life of such restraint and purity that he still had no intention of taking a wife.

Madam Cui could wait no longer.

With tears, tantrums, and threats to hang herself, she forced Cui Lanzhang to choose a bride.

At his wits’ end, Cui Lanzhang pointed at me at random.

And just like that, I landed myself one very eligible catch.

Later, I asked Cui Lanzhang why he had chosen me.

After thinking for a moment, he said, “That day, when you saw me, your cheeks were flushed and your eyes were hazy.

I assumed you must have liked me.”

I spent the entire night debating whether to tell him the truth.

My cheeks had been red because I had put on too much rouge, and my eyes had been hazy because I had stayed up reading storybooks the night before and was exhausted the next day.

I was a condemned slave, due to be beheaded in the autumn.

To buy myself a little more time, I decided to get pregnant.

I set my sights on the cold, aloof jailer.

With my slender waist and full hips, I tried every trick I knew to seduce him.

At first he scorned me.

Once he’d had a taste, he came back night after night, unwilling to let me go.

The day a physician confirmed my pregnancy, a curtained sedan chair was carried into the dungeon.

As they helped me inside, I still had no idea what was happening.

“What is this for?”

The warden beamed at me.

“Miss Liu, you’re carrying His Grace’s child.

They’ve come to take you home to a life of comfort.”

I had been able to see the floating comments since I was very small.

They told me I would spend seven bitter years beside a fallen prince, only to be cast aside when he became emperor.

He would regret it when I was dying, turn back time, and treasure me in another life.

The comments told me to hold on.

But if happiness was certain, why couldn’t I have it in this life?

When the Fifth Prince fell from favor, I was the first maid to pay for a transfer.

The comments went wild.

Without me, how was their story supposed to continue?

My mother was a farm girl who couldn’t read a single character, yet she still supported my father all the way until he passed the provincial examination.

On the day my father married the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter, my mother obediently became his equal wife.

My father thought my mother loved him, which made her easy to control.

My father’s principal wife thought my mother, born and raised in the countryside, could never be a match for her.

And so, beneath their contempt, my mother played the fool while hiding her claws, raising me into someone whose worth was beyond measure.