Historical

A girl came to Drunken Fragrance Pavilion and insisted on becoming a prostitute.

She went on about the romance and glamour of Shanghai’s ten-mile foreign concession, saying this was such a romantic era.

Then let her have a good look at what romance meant in this man-eating age.

The Chang’e in Yu Hebai’s painting came to life.

She descended gracefully into the mortal world, and Yu Hebai worshipped her as a Goddess.

So completely that he forgot all about his engagement to me.

Clutching the marriage contract, I went to the Yu family estate to demand an explanation from Yu Hebai.

But the moment I stepped through the gates of the Yu family courtyard, I couldn’t help shaking my head.

My first thought was: What kind of Chang’e is this supposed to be?

My second thought was: She was nowhere near the woman who had stayed at my house last night.

Second Young Master Xie was a notorious wastrel.

I lived under the Xie Family’s roof and bent over backward to please him, yet he looked down on me all the same.

He thought I was trying to climb my way up by clinging to him, and sneered at me.

“With looks like hers, I wouldn’t take her even as a concubine.”

Then his mother took him by the arm and told him to call me sister-in-law.

“This son of mine is the only one I still worry about. Thank goodness I have you to help me look after him.”

That night, he climbed over the wall and pinned me into a corner, asking in a coaxing voice, “If I become your concubine instead… will you take me?”

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.”

“Madam, I’m planning to take a concubine.”

When Duan Qing said that, I was ironing the ceremonial robes he would wear to the palace tomorrow.

At his words, I nearly knocked over the iron brazier full of burning charcoal.

He sat there with one leg crossed over the other and went on as if it had nothing to do with me. “I’m bringing Miss Zhou into the household. A noblewoman from the former dynasty. You’ve met her.”

“Back when I followed the Emperor to fight for this empire, I lived with my head tied to my belt. Now that I’ve been made a duke, what’s wrong with taking the legitimate daughter of a marquis’s household as a concubine?”

“Old Han’s family are illiterate peasants, and even he married a girl from an earl’s household as his second wife!”

I looked at the utter entitlement on his face.

Then I took a deep breath. What was meant to come had come at last.

At thirty-eight, after spending half my life enduring hardship with him, it was time I enjoyed some peace and comfort.

And so, in the year I turned thirty-nine,

I decided to become a happy widow and savor the good life.

My older sister was about to be married when a serial rapist attacked her.

In a single night, her reputation was destroyed and her engagement broken off.

Father fell ill with rage; Mother cried herself blind.

And the rapist?

He became the personal guard of a princess from a marquis’s household.

The gentle, kindhearted princess said, “Ah Qing isn’t bad at heart.

He only made a mistake because he briefly lost his way.”

Later, I killed the child she had struggled so hard to conceive.

My sister, now a prince’s wife, took her hand and said gently, “My little sister isn’t bad at heart.

It was only an accident that led her to do something wrong.”

But the princess’s face twisted with hatred, her eyes venomous.

All her former gentleness and kindness were gone.

I am Gu Qianyu, the chancellor’s daughter, and I have unexpectedly acquired a unique gift.

I can see whether a man has been faithful.

If he has been with only one woman, a cucumber floats above his head.

The number of cucumbers increases with the number of women he has had.

The man I am supposed to marry is the heir to the Marquis of Wuling.

A rare specimen of male virtue, scrupulously chaste.

Famous for it throughout the capital.

On the day he came to ask for my hand, he stood tall and elegant, every inch the gentleman.

But when I looked up, the cucumbers above his head stretched all the way out of our residence.

With a woebegone face, I told Mother, “Mother, this is a very, very dirty cucumber!”

“I won’t marry him!”

After the Qin Family was confiscated, Qin Shuyu’s place as Crown Princess fell to me.

The Crown Prince could not bear to see his childhood sweetheart reduced to an official courtesan. After much maneuvering on his part, Qin Shuyu transformed overnight into a maid in the Crown Prince’s study, serving him with sleeves of red and the scent of ink.

As his lawful wife, I naturally had the magnanimity to tolerate others. I had no intention of making things difficult for her.

But on the night of our wedding, just as the Crown Prince was about to consummate the marriage with me, a bleak, mournful flute melody suddenly sounded outside the hall.

When the song ended, Qin Shuyu’s shattered voice drifted in after it:

“The past is a heartbroken poem; I pine for you, my lord, yet you never know.”

Because I was beautiful, my foster father adopted me.

Because I was strong, he gave me to the Ninth Prince.

Unfortunately, the very next day, the Ninth Prince was thrown into the Imperial Prison for treason.

I asked the Ninth Prince if he wanted to break out.

The Ninth Prince looked utterly despondent. “The iron prison has layer upon layer of bars. Even with wings, there would be no escape.”

That very night, the Imperial Prison was razed to the ground. The Ninth Prince vanished without wings, disappearing from the capital.

In the twelfth year of her political marriage, Lu Zhuohua’s husband slaps her for the sake of his newest concubine—and the formidable marchioness answers by smashing a bench over his head.

What first looks like another petty battle in a crowded noble household soon exposes a plot involving a staged miscarriage, a powerful young heiress, and a poison meant for Zhuohua and her little daughter.

With her family, her fighters, and twelve years of household authority behind her, Zhuohua decides that if her husband wants her dead, she will simply strike first.