Romance

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.

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?”

Mama had entered the household as the Princess’s dowry maid, only to be raped by the heir apparent.

When the Princess rushed back, she caught him in the act.

Yet the moment he had pulled up his trousers, he denied everything and insisted that Mama had deliberately seduced him.

The Princess slapped him across the face. “Too much of a coward to own what you did, and you still dare play games with this princess?”

That very night, the heir was secretly castrated.

The Princess decided he still had a passable face and sent him into the palace.

Mama, meanwhile, became the second lady of the residence.

My elder sister disappeared when she was little, but fortune favored her: the Yong’an Marquis household took her in and raised her with every comfort.

By the time she returned to us, our mother had already arranged one marriage for her, while the marquis household had promised her to someone else.

One man was the adoptive brother who had grown up beside her; the other, her childhood betrothed.

Unable to let either go, she proposed a compromise: she would marry whichever man found the jade hairpin she hid.

The day she hid hers, however, she hid mine as well.

In my last life, Wei Heng found a hairpin first, but the one in his hand belonged to me.

The smile had barely touched his lips when her adoptive brother said coldly, “You cannot even recognize Ah Zhi’s hairpin. I suppose that leaves you no choice but to marry Ranran.”

After we married, every quarrel between my sister and her husband sent her running to Wei Heng in tears.

His heart ached for her, and his old regret never faded.

“If you had married me,” he would murmur, “I would never have made you cry. Not even once.”

I found them together beneath the moon, composing poems, and side by side among the spring blossoms.

Whenever I showed the slightest displeasure, Wei Heng called me jealous and narrow-minded, saying I could never match my sister’s poetry or painting.

Now I had returned to the day Wei Heng picked up my hairpin.

I held out my hand.

“Young Master Wei, Mother is already considering matches for me. Please return my hairpin.”

I ran a wonton stall and raised a young master who had fallen on hard times.

But young masters do not stay fallen forever.

He was a wealthy family’s son, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Sooner or later, he would return to the heavens and become a star.

I had grown up begging for scraps from swill buckets. No matter how you looked at it, I was mud beneath his feet.

When newly crowned Qin Bai casts Yun Qing aside for his first love, her formidable family stops holding his empire together.

As the frontier falters, the capital descends into chaos, and the treasury runs dry, the emperor discovers too late that the people he betrayed were the ones propping up his throne.

While the Yun family watches his favorites fail spectacularly, a battle-hardened prince with an old debt to Yun Qing quietly begins rewriting her future.

I was the widow everyone despised.

One summer night, I went out intending to seduce Censor Zhang, only to be stopped by the Crown Prince.

He bent to my ear and murmured, ‘Aunt, am I not good enough for you?’

Oh, he was good.

Just rather exhausting.

I had transmigrated over a decade ago, and my face-slapping counterattack System finally arrived, late as ever.

By then, I was already the Empress.

“Host,” the System said, “first mission: the maidservant slaps the young miss.”

I gazed at the young miss’s grave and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

I have never been able to stand idle people.

The moment I married into the Li family, I found my new husband surrounded by a flock of talented beauties—and not a single one of them doing a day’s work.

So I lined everyone up and put them all to work: the pipa player to the music house, the dancer to the embroidery shop, and my useless heir of a husband off to perform for Prince Qi.

What started as a scheme to pay off the manor’s debts snowballed into a commercial empire—until the court, the temples, and a rebellion turned my money-making machine into something far more dangerous.

My mother was a woman from another world.

Right beneath my imperial father’s nose, she taught me that all people are equal and that women hold up half the sky.

Because the emperor doted on her, he made an exception and let me, a princess, attend the imperial school.

Once I learned to read, everything became clear.

I understood exactly why my brothers fought for the throne.