Psychological

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.

Chapter 0

I am the most low-maintenance Canary in the Shanghai Circle’s elite social scene.

On the surface, I have no interest in causing trouble; in reality, I am single-mindedly focused on making money.

Everything the Big Boss gives me, I liquidate.

Stocks, bonds, and physical investments-I let the money breed more money, compounding the interest.

I secretly invested in his rival’s company and even took the opportunity to acquire shares in the Big Boss’s own firm.

On the day the truth finally came out, the Big Boss looked at my thick stack of asset reports and let out a cold laugh.

“Other Canaries want to climb the social ladder and take a seat at the table,” he said. “You, on the other hand, want to usurp the throne.”

I had been married to the heir of the Jiang Group for two years, and during that entire time, he had treated me with nothing but cold indifference.

Then, in the middle of the night, I got out of bed to use the bathroom when he suddenly grabbed my hand.

I turned around to find the man before me with the corners of his eyes flushed a faint red, his voice trembling.

“Shen Tingwan, are you trying to leave me behind again?”

The Han army captured Luoyang. My husband, His Majesty himself, knelt at the rebels’ feet, trembling like a lamb waiting for slaughter.

“The Empress is in Jiaofang Hall. Please, don’t kill me…”

I had been married to him for five years and had given birth to our daughter, Princess Heqing.

Yet at the moment of crisis, he offered me up without the slightest hesitation.

When bandits swept through our village, every man in the family vanished without a trace.

The women, hobbled by their tiny bound feet, could not keep up and were abandoned to die.

Before he left, Father handed Mother a knife.

“If they violate your chastity, use this to kill yourself.”

“When I return, I’ll see you enshrined in the Chaste Women’s Hall.”

After Father left, Mother smashed the memorial tablets in that hall and used the wood to build several beds.

Then she and my sisters-in-law went into business with the bandits.

That night, every woman suffered worse than death.

But every one of us survived.

When Father finally came home, he asked Mother how she wanted to die.

Mother set down the knife, raised a pistol, and aimed it at his head.

Years ago, I saved the crown prince from a falling beam.

It broke my leg, and I became the capital’s notorious young lady with a limp.

Later, when he ascended the throne, he sat high in the imperial hall and asked what reward I desired.

Everyone thought I loved him deeply and would surely ask to enter his palace as a consort and remain at his side.

After all, no official family in the capital would take a woman with a limp as its mistress.

What they did not expect was that I would ask for a title of my own and the revenues of a thousand households.

As they whispered among themselves, no one noticed the faint tension in his brow vanish.

“Then let it be as you wish.”

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.”

My mother taught me never to trust a man’s affection.

When a marquis’s family chose me to marry their reckless third son, I saw my chance to rise.

He already kept a pregnant mistress, but I had no intention of fighting her for his love.

I would save her, secure my place, and make myself indispensable.

In a house full of secrets, every crisis could become a rung on my ladder.

Sent into a prince’s estate at nine as a future concubine, Lu Sui’an is raised instead as a beloved daughter by the kindhearted Shen Ning.

When a rival consort uses Sui’an’s own hands to murder her guardian, innocence gives way to a patient hunger for justice.

Years later, inside the emperor’s harem, Sui’an turns beauty, loyalty, and palace intrigue against the woman who destroyed them both—but revenge cannot restore the life she loved most.

The Noble Consort was the most clearheaded woman I had ever met.

Even though His Majesty showered her with endless, singular favor, she always guarded her heart and refused to give it away.

I thought that if things went on like this, she would eventually be moved by His Majesty and meet him with sincerity in return.

Unfortunately, I never got to see that day.

Because His Majesty found someone else to cherish. He came to the Noble Consort for advice, asking her to help him win over the young woman he adored.

He said, “I have never liked a girl this much before. What do you think of me marrying her and making her Empress?”