Romance

The general saved a woman.

Then he asked me to surrender my place as his lawful wife.

I held the divorce paper and laughed coldly.

“Gu Nianwu, success has gone to your head.”

You may command a thousand troops, but I command ten thousand ghosts.

Without me, where would all your glorious victories have come from?

On the second day of the tenth lunar month, the great warlord Lu Zhi took a second concubine: Song Anran, the youngest daughter of the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce.

Lu Zhi had made a name for himself in recent years.

He had won battle after battle, commanded a formidable army, and wielded immense power—but surely not so much that the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce would deliver his own daughter to him as a concubine.

Oh, but it was.

My father did exactly that.

His Majesty handpicked three women to enter the palace and help secure the phoenix throne for the woman he loved.

The first was the Grand Tutor’s daughter, steeped in the classics and celebrated throughout the capital for her brilliance.

The second was the general’s legitimate younger sister, peerless with bow and horse and proud to the bone.

The third was me, a woman without powerful kin or scholarly fame, armed only with hands that could manage a household and turn simple ingredients into exquisite food.

On the night before I entered the palace, Grandfather reminded me again and again to keep my head down and stay safe.

I smiled and agreed, yet as soon as I turned away, I wondered why I should.

The learned woman had no respect for her sovereign.

The horsewoman let her mount trample the palace steps.

As for the woman raised to the phoenix throne, she could not recognize a written character if it were as large as a grain measure.

Now that I had entered this game, I did not want safety.

I wanted to win.

Now that I had caught the emperor’s eye, I would not settle for a share of his favor; I would take it all.

For three whole years, I took contraceptive medicine because I was terrified of having children.

Sob, sob—we koi lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.

No matter how rich that dog emperor was, I feared even he could not afford to raise them all.

My family was on the verge of bankruptcy, so to stage a comeback, my father cheerfully decided to marry off his daughter.

There was just one problem: I was a lesbian, and my prospective husband was gay—a forced match in every sense of the word.

Before our first dinner at the Liu estate, Dad reminded me again and again, “The Liu family is run by their eldest daughter now that she’s back from abroad. Be on your best behavior and make a good impression on your future sister-in-law.”

I nodded without paying much attention—then caught sight of the woman coming down the stairs, and my vision went black.

Wasn’t she the little canary I had kept overseas five years ago?

I was my birth parents’ third child.

While my birth mother was pregnant with me, the village fortune-teller swore I would be a boy.

They could hardly wait.

They hid from place to place throughout the pregnancy and finally brought me into the world in the bitter cold of the twelfth lunar month—

a girl.

I could hear the Noble Consort’s thoughts.

Inside her head, she cursed the emperor: “That decrepit bastard!”

“He’s much better at lecturing me than he ever is in bed!”

I looked up in shock.

She was nestled sweetly in the emperor’s arms, feeding him a slice of pear.

Inside her head, she was still raging: “Would someone please poison him already?”

“I’m so damn tired of serving him…”

Bai Qiqi once saved a woman from another time, only to watch that woman claim the achievements, husband, and son Qiqi had spent years protecting.

When her husband and six-year-old son dismiss her medicinal cooking and household work as worthless, Qiqi walks away from the Prince of Qi’s estate without looking back.

Inside the palace, her healing soups win the trust of the Empress Dowager and the imperial women, while the brilliant younger official Jiang Pu insists that the warmth he feels around her is love, not gratitude.

As Liu Yan’s reckless schemes endanger Qiqi’s child and shake the court, Qiqi must expose the men who steal women’s work—and decide whether she is ready to accept a gentler life of her own.

Zhang Cheng only pretends to adore the aloof heir Xiao Yanyu so she can keep living at his family’s residence while saving to bring her mother and siblings to the capital.

When a passion parasite forces them into intimacy and a Heart-Severing Pill erases her memories, Xiao Yanyu must cast aside his pride and seduce the oblivious constable all over again.

Before love can triumph, Zhang Cheng must decide whether the man she thought despised her is worth risking the independent future she built for her family.

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.