Tragedy

My mother was a general.

A powerful prince humiliated her, then spread vicious rumors to avenge his wounded pride.

When my brother sought justice, the prince’s sister accused him of rebellion.

The emperor condemned our entire household, and she was crowned empress.

They thought we were all dead.

They were wrong.

I survived—and entered the palace as the emperor’s favorite Go player.

Now I would become his favorite consort, and make every move count.

I was the late emperor’s younger sister, the reigning emperor’s own aunt, and the only Grand Princess of Great Jin.

On my sixtieth birthday, my husband’s supposedly dead first wife appeared at my door with the daughter she had borne late in life.

“The first wife is the lawful wife; her successor must take a concubine’s place.

But Your Highness is far too exalted for me to ask that of you.

I am willing to become a concubine myself.

I ask only that you show mercy and allow Mian to be entered in her father’s clan register, so that father and daughter may be reunited.”

Only then did I learn that the husband who had shown me such love and devotion had been keeping her in another household for forty years.

Three months after marrying into the Marquis Manor, I became pregnant.

A maid brought me a bowl of medicinal soup, claiming it was a gift from the Empress Dowager to help stabilize my pregnancy.

I took the bowl but didn’t dare to drink it.

In my previous life, not long after I drank it, I fell into a coma.

When I finally woke, I was trapped in a sea of flames, and both mother and child perished.

At that moment, the maid urged me, “Please drink it quickly, Madam. Refusing a gift from the Empress Dowager is a punishable offense.”

Every day, Noble Lady Zhao Wan forgets one more memory of the emperor who once promised never to fail her.

When she remembers only the gentle husband of her youth, the white-haired ruler who betrayed her must watch her defend the man he used to be.

But as a palace purge restores the truth, love, ambition, and wounds too deep to forgive drive their reunion toward a final tragedy.

On the third day after being diagnosed with Stomach Cancer, I chose a grave for myself.

They say the feng shui is especially good.

It’s supposed to bless me so that in my next life, I won’t be the real daughter everyone despises.

No one will steal my parents, my brother, or everything else from me.

No longer… unloved.

I burned my photos and clothes, erased every trace of my existence.

Then I slit my wrists, lay down in the bathtub, and waited peacefully for death.

But then the Cemetery Center suddenly called me:

“Miss Lu, we’re terribly sorry.”

“Two Agents accidentally sold the same plot.”

“This grave was also sold to another gentleman.”

“Would you… mind moving your grave?”

I was meant to marry the Emperor of Great Liang, but a decree for a political marriage sent me to Northern Yan instead.

On our wedding night, I mixed blood from the tip of my tongue into the wedding wine, intending to poison the tyrannical prince.

Yet, he drained the poisoned cup for me and said with a smile, “Don’t be in such a hurry. The heads of every official in this court-I will cut them off for you, one by one.”

It was the eighth year of my unrequited love for Shen Sui, and he still refused to acknowledge me as his fiancée.

He had me pulled from the red carpet just to please his Little Canary.

In front of the media, the same mouth that had kissed me a thousand times claimed that we were nothing more than ordinary friends.

Later, I looked him in the eye and said seriously:

“Don’t pull away. Otherwise, we won’t look like ordinary friends.”

His eyes rimmed with red, and his voice trembled as he spoke:

“I’m just an ‘ordinary friend’ to you?”

During the poorest year of my life, I sold myself to Zhou Jinyan for three hundred thousand yuan to serve as a substitute for his White Moonlight.

His friends once egged me on to drink until I suffered a gastric hemorrhage.

They asked him, “Don’t you feel bad for her?”

He looked down, his tone indifferent. “She’s just a substitute.”

Later, to save his White Moonlight, Zhou Jinyan stood by and watched as I fell from a cliff into the sea.

The search and rescue team never found my body.

He suddenly went mad, searching the entire world for me.

Five years later, I was invited back to the country and ran into him at an event.

He stared at me intently, his eyes rimmed with red. “I knew you weren’t dead. I’ve been looking for you-”

I took a step back, offering a polite yet distant smile. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

Four years ago, Gu Jinzhi, the Crown Prince of the Beijing Circle, fell in love with me at first sight.

After three years of relentless pursuit, I finally gave in.

In the first year of our relationship, he started pestering me to get married.

I was hesitant, but I couldn’t withstand his endless coaxing.

In the end, I brought him home to meet my parents.

But that day, outside the private room, I heard one of his buddies ask him, “You’ve met her parents now. When’s the wedding?”

Gu Jinzhi clicked his tongue and said unhurriedly, “All of a sudden, I don’t want to get married that much anymore.”

Someone beside him jeered, “Oh, stop pretending. You spent three years chasing that untouchable ice queen. You’d really give her up?”

“Ice queen?”

I heard him let out a scoff.

“If you saw how her parents treat her, you’d feel the same way I do.”

“The same how?”

“That she’s nothing special after all.”

My husband was upright and restrained, a gentleman praised by court and commoners alike.

He took no concubines and kept no maidservants in his chamber, so everyone believed he cherished me.

Only I knew the woman he loved was the Empress.

I had resigned myself to it, until the year rebels stormed the capital, seized our only daughter, and forced him to surrender the Empress and the Crown Prince.

Before the two armies, he shot our daughter dead with an arrow and said, “Since ancient times, loyalty to the realm and love for family cannot both be preserved.”

My hair turned white overnight. In despair, I dragged the Empress down with me.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to our wedding night.

Facing his still, emotionless face, I smiled sweetly.

“Since you love each other so much, I will make sure your love story is sung throughout the world.”