Historical

My funeral was held with the highest honors.

After all, I was Zhao Xun’s first wife. For four years I had reigned as empress, mother to the nation, carrying out every duty without a single misstep.

Even after he began doting on Consort Chen and fell out with the Empress Dowager over her, I was the one who mediated between them.

When Consort Chen fell ill, he stayed at her bedside for three days without changing his clothes or taking so much as a sip of water.

When my turn came, there was no grief on his face. He merely held my slowly cooling hand and sat there for a long while.

“If there is another life, I will make you my empress again.”

Another life truly came.

Zhao Xun had not yet met the love of his life. He had agreed to let the Empress choose a virtuous young noblewoman to be his princess consort.

The Empress pointed to me.

Then, just as he looked my way, her fingertip shifted an inch and settled on someone else.

“On second thought, let us choose Second Miss Li.”

Shen Zhuozhuo is the hidden second beauty of a merchant family. After a depraved young marquis abducts and brutalizes her elder sister, then wipes out the Shen household for daring to demand justice, Zhuozhuo survives with one purpose: revenge. Assuming the identity of a scholar’s dead sister, she enters the imperial palace and draws the emperor close, turning her beauty, patience, and even her own body into weapons. To destroy the Marquis of Cheng’en and the Empress Dowager who shields him, she baits each enemy into a trap more dangerous than the last. But when calculated affection meets the emperor’s unexpected sincerity, Zhuozhuo must decide whether vengeance has left any room for a future.

After I accidentally fell into the water at six, I became the silliest girl in all Jiangnan.

And yet, I was also the luckiest, for I had a husband who was wonderful in every way.

From what I wore to what I ate, he personally took care of everything for me.

Then one day, I wanted a second bowl of iced cream at dinner.

When he refused, my cousin, who had never liked my husband, questioned me.

“A-Fu, don’t you think your husband bosses you around too much?”

My husband answered coldly on my behalf.

“She doesn’t.”

My cousin tried again.

“Your cousin never bosses you around like that, so doesn’t that mean I’m still the better one?”

My husband frowned, then calmly wiped the corner of my mouth.

“Good A-Fu, did you hear that?”

“Your cousin is trying to drive a wedge between us.”

“He’s absolutely rotten.”

Mother always said that if a woman wanted to stay radiant, she had to know how to nourish herself.

Ginseng and deer antler were useless.

What truly nourished a woman was a young, vigorous man.

Following that regimen, she still looked sixteen well into her forties.

Having grown up under her influence, I understood the secret by the time I turned eighteen.

Scholars were lean, generals solid, actors charming.

I had sampled them all.

The one I found most intoxicating was Shen Zhaoye.

I lavished mountains of gold and silver on him, yet never so much as put an arm around his waist.

Then he came to take his leave, claiming he had found a more powerful patron.

Furious, I followed him by lantern light into Springwater Lane.

When I kicked open the door, he was kneeling beside a couch, offering tea to someone.

The beauty reclining there lifted her eyes lazily.

My lantern went out, and my soul nearly fled with the flame.

“Mother?! You’re sleeping with my man?”

I had profaned the divine after all.

The aloof, ascetic monk from the altar now stood inside my red-draped bedchamber, tearing off his prayer beads as he clasped my ankle, his Adam’s apple shifting.

“Little Highness, this humble monk has broken his vows.”

Bad news: I was sold into the Wu household, worked myself to the bone for three or four years, and just when life finally started looking up, the whole family had its property confiscated.

Good news: the Wus were pardoned, the family was released, and even the master escaped execution.

Bad news: they were exiled to Ningguta.

Good news: Ningguta was where I came from.

Madam Lin is choosing a bedchamber maid for her son.

All the pretty maids are eager to be picked.

Holding my fire poker, I ask Granny Shi, “Can I roast a potato?”

Granny Shi says, “Can you please show a little sense?”

Artifact-conservation student Lin Fu wakes in the body of the lowest-ranking maid in the imperial harem, where saving a priceless cup brings her to the attention of Emperor Qin Zhi.

Protected by the kind Empress Shen Chenxiang, she finds purpose restoring paintings, porcelain, and other damaged treasures inside a palace that destroys people far more easily than objects.

After tragedy takes her benefactor, Lin Fu is pulled into a dangerous struggle among the Emperor, the Shen clan, and the Yan clan.

To avenge the dead and protect the children entrusted to her, she must survive as the Emperor’s favored consort without allowing the harem to turn her into another weapon.

From shattered porcelain to broken friendships, every relic she repairs reveals a history of love, betrayal, and the things no pair of clever hands can ever restore.

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.

Both the Crown Prince and the Grand General wished to marry me.

I hated the intrigue of the Eastern Palace, so I chose the Grand General who had sworn that I would be the only woman in his life.

Yet on our wedding night, his female deputy lured him out of the bridal chamber with a single flask of wine.

Still dressed in my wedding robes, I listened to their moans through the wall for half the night.

When the rain became a downpour, I threw on a cloak and knocked on the Eastern Palace gate under cover of darkness.

At the Crown Prince’s astonished expression, I gave a bitter smile.

“Your Highness.”

“Tell me—if a woman suddenly thinks of another man on her own wedding night…”

“Isn’t that ridiculous?”