Romance

At a palace banquet, my elder sister accidentally inhaled an aphrodisiac and ended up alone in a room with the heir of the Xie family.

But she was already the Crown Princess, and if the secret got out, the consequences would be catastrophic.

To protect her reputation, the young lord publicly took responsibility and claimed that I had been the woman who spent that night with him.

After I married into the marquis’s household, he remained unfailingly polite but distant, as cold as frost behind a screen.

So determined was he to sleep in separate rooms that he even ruined his own reputation, pretending to be drunk and lamenting before others that he suffered from an unspeakable condition and could not perform as a man.

To preserve the family’s dignity, my mother-in-law simply announced that I was the infertile one.

My sister tormented herself day and night, convinced that she had ruined my life.

I alone breathed a secret sigh of relief, stroked my steadily rounding belly, and made an announcement at the family banquet.

“A miracle from heaven! My husband is going to have an heir!”

The year I came of age, Father gave me three marriage choices.

I could become the lawful wife of a penniless scholar, the honored concubine of the Marquis of Pingnan’s heir, or the second wife of a wealthy merchant.

I wanted none of them.

Marriage negotiations always came down to the woman’s family, and my father held a modest post while I was merely a concubine-born daughter, so no truly eminent house would consider me.

Still, low birth had never cured me of high ambition.

If I could not marry up, I would sooner hang myself.

Every night, Qin Shen comes home at seven and treats his wife, Jiang Li, as though she matters more than life itself.

When one tiny change in his flawless routine leads Jiang Li to a secret villa, a mistress, and a hidden child, the perfect marriage she trusted collapses in an instant.

Even divorce cannot free her from a husband whose devotion is as obsessive as his betrayal is cruel.

To reclaim her life, Jiang Li must survive confinement, treachery, and one final act of violence without becoming as ruthless as the people who destroyed her faith in love.

In the third year of Jiang Yan’s affair, I met a fresh-faced college boy.

He wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans.

His brows held a rebellious slant, his thin lips were pressed together, and his fringe fell a little too long over his eyes.

He bore more than a passing resemblance to Jiang Yan when he was young.

My car had broken down halfway to my destination.

He haggled me up to five hundred yuan and promised he could fix it.

Halfway through the repair, he took a call.

It seemed to be the hospital chasing him for payment.

He held the phone in silence for a long time before pleading in a low voice, “I’m doing everything I can to raise the money.”

“I promise I’ll have it all by the day of the surgery.”

“Please.”

“Just give me a little more time, okay?”

Standing beside him, I suddenly remembered the day I first learned Jiang Yan had been unfaithful.

He had sat slumped on the sofa with his face in his hands.

“Xiuxiu, I swear I never meant for this to happen,” he rasped.

“But she looks so much like you did when you were young.”

“Do you understand?”

“Whenever I look at her, I remember how much you suffered back then—and how powerless I was to help you.”

“I have the means now.”

“I want to help her.”

“I want to give the younger you the care I couldn’t give you the first time.”

“Please don’t blame me.”

At that moment, I suddenly stopped blaming Jiang Yan.

Because at last, I understood him.

Disfigured by Zhao Ruo and abandoned by every adult who should have protected her, Shen Ting spends years remaking herself as the irresistible Shen Man.

With the bully’s childhood sweetheart falling into her carefully laid trap, she strips the Zhao family of its power one secret at a time—and reserves her cruelest punishment for last.

Born to a forgotten palace dancer, A-Xiu survives the Great Qi harem by keeping her head down and leaning on her kindhearted elder sister, Princess Ninghui.

When two arranged marriages promise both sisters a gentler future, A-Xiu slowly opens her heart to young general Bai Li while Ninghui prepares to wed her childhood love, Ning Ruyan.

But a coup on Ninghui’s wedding day exposes the price of loyalty and power, forcing A-Xiu to carry her sister’s final gift out of a fallen dynasty and build a life beyond the ruins of an old dream.

Gu Yuqing is the daughter of a fallen general and the most unlikely court historian in Great Chu: a woman who can fight an army but can barely read.

When a modern woman awakens in the body of Empress Pei Lingyi, the two of them turn Yuqing’s brutally honest records into a weapon against corrupt ministers, unfaithful men, and a kingdom built to erase women.

As reforms spread and the Chancellor moves to seize the throne, Yuqing must return to the battlefield while Lingyi risks being erased from history altogether.

Between broken brushes, unfinished chronicles, and birthday cakes from another world, two women fight to write their names—and their love—into the future.

I was the greatest beauty in the capital—and the demon consort cursed by all as the ruin of the realm.

While the emperor was away at war, the empress poisoned me to death.

She believed that once I was gone, the emperor would become her wise and mighty husband again.

What she did not know was that I was the last chain holding his bloodlust and murderous rage in check.

I died.

And he went utterly mad.

I told Jin Ran I was breaking up with him because I liked old men—rich, independent, quick to die, and generous with their estates—and asked whether he could offer me that.

Years later, I went on a third-rate prank show and was told to call my first love in front of a live audience.

I called Jin Ran. “Let’s get back together.”

After a long silence, his deep voice came through the phone.

“I’m twenty-seven. I’m not dying anytime soon.”

My mother taught me that a concubine could only live well by pleasing her husband until he cast aside his wife for her.

But I discovered that the lawful wife was beautiful, kind, and—most importantly—rich.

So I switched sides without hesitation and asked, “Madam, may I work for you instead?”