Mature

I was a virtuous woman, particularly skilled at repaying malice with kindness.

After years of marriage, I had little to complain of.

Except for one thing.

Whenever my husband and I retired a little early, my mother-in-law would bring her maids and serving women to pound on our courtyard gate.

Sometimes it was, “My boy, it’s cold tonight.

Be careful you don’t catch a chill in bed.”

Other times, “Son, you ate rather well at supper.

Your food hasn’t settled yet.

Don’t let it sit in your stomach and make you ill.”

After a while, I understood.

We were both women.

It wouldn’t do for me to be the only one getting her fill.

The thought was keeping Mother awake, tossing and turning all night.

So while my husband was away on business, I took three husbands for her in one go.

My cousin got drunk and raped my little sister.

“I’ll take her as a concubine, then,” he said, as though it hardly mattered.

Grandmother said, “With that ugly face of hers, my precious grandson is the one being wronged.”

Mother murmured, “Amitabha.

Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.”

I took a willow switch and whipped my cousin without mercy.

Then I told them all, “Under the laws of this dynasty, the punishment for raping a girl under twelve is death.”

The day they took my mother away, I clung to her and wouldn’t let go.

My little brother blocked the car too, demanding fifty thousand yuan.

That was about the going rate for a wife in our village.

But she was my mother.

You couldn’t sell your mother.

No dutiful daughter would do that.

Sure enough, someone in the car shoved me aside and roared, “To hell with your dad!

We can’t stay here!”

Then they drove off.

I’d never been to school.

I didn’t understand things.

But one sentence stuck in my head: “He can’t stay here.”

In my last life, I sold myself and sacrificed my dignity to keep my mother and younger sister alive.

Once my sister grew up, she despised me for it.

“If you hadn’t been involved with Master Su, how could such a wonderful marriage have fallen through?

Young Master Su liked me so much.

He was going to marry me.”

She had forgotten that Master Su was my first patron.

That night, I had swallowed my shame and gone to him only to pay for a doctor when she was burning with fever.

I, too, had a childhood sweetheart who had promised to marry me.

Later, Mother helped my sister poison me.

I died in agony in our own home.

Their tears fell on my face.

“The rest of us have to live.

We had no choice.”

When I was given another life, I woke on the very day of my sister’s fever.

The princess had set a trap for me.

I had been drugged.

The man on the bed had a face as flawless as jade, his eyes clouded by the drug.

I recognized him as one of her favorite male companions.

Clearly, she was determined to ruin me.

But what did she know?

I had worked on a pleasure boat and slept with countless men.

This was hardly enough to frighten me.

I leaned close and murmured in his ear, “The princess has never treated you as a person.

Don’t you want revenge?”

The man’s eyes turned abruptly cold.

In my third year trapped inside a novel, the emperor learned to watch livestreams—and struck up an online flirtation with a thirst-trap streamer.

He even promised her: “Come over to this world, and you can be my empress!”

“Remember, bring your body.

No possessing someone else’s.”

I took one look at her username, “Will Fly Anywhere in the Country,” and spent the night packing my escape bag.

People from the modern world were crawling with viruses.

One sneeze could wipe out the whole palace.

And this woman was a prostitute!

I was an emperor.

Now I have become another emperor.

But this one has made a miserable job of it.

The crown princess is sleeping with the imperial tutor in the Eastern Palace.

My daughter is imprisoned and humiliated in her own residence by her husband.

Even my favorite niece has been judged by the country-bred heir to the Marquis of Xuanyang: “Fit only for a concubine, never a wife.”

Well.

You are all remarkably brave.

How about we find out how sharp my executioner’s blade is?

The prince’s heir acquired a famous sword.

A fine sword deserved a beautiful woman.

My looks earned me the position of his sword-bearing maid.

Later, he took me to Taicang for the Sword Trials.

Someone saw me and remarked, “Baseborn to the bone.”

Everyone roared with laughter.

Only years later did they understand.

What the man had actually said was, “Blade-born to the bone.”

Father said I had an affinity with the immortals and sent me up the mountain to become a nun when I was little.

Only as I grew older did I learn that the place where I lived was Mount Tai.

And the nuns of Mount Tai were no proper nuns.

Just as the “slender horses” of Yangzhou were not horses, and the boatwomen of West Lake did more than row boats.

Men came for the thrill of doing the most profane things in a sacred place.

Then the emperor himself climbed the mountain to pray for an heir.

And I became pregnant with his only child.

On the night of the empress’s funeral, His Majesty and I spent the entire night together in a side hall.

Everyone in the capital called me shameless.

After all, the empress was my own aunt, and His Majesty was her husband—my uncle by marriage.

Before that, I had been meant to marry the crown prince.

But Yuan Xiujin did not like me.

He despised my coarse origins, sneered at the Meng family’s rustic ways, and thought us unworthy of the Eastern Palace.

As if I thought any better of him.

Father and son, yet so different.

Yuan Xiujin let a woman lead him by the nose.

Yuan Zhaoyu already held the empire in his hand.

Since he would not let me become his crown princess, I would simply have to become his father’s consort instead.