2026

The first thing I did after being reborn was hurry back from the country estate to my father’s residence.

A young woman was kneeling inside.

Gloom shadowed her eyes; she was small and frail, her clothes patched over patches.

She was the daughter my father had conceived in a single night’s dalliance years ago.

In my previous life, she had married the tyrant in my place.

After winning his favor, she poisoned our entire family.

I spent twelve years as a ghost.

At first, I hated her bitterly.

Once I pieced together the truth, I could only pity her.

“Father, Mother.

I’ll marry him.”

I helped my younger half sister to her feet.

“His Majesty asked for me by name.

There’s no reason someone else should suffer in my place.

I’ll go.”

Huang Hongyu learned young that survival meant becoming whatever powerful men wanted to see.

When the ruthless Cheng Hao takes her as his mistress, she turns dependence into an education in money, power, and human weakness.

As her businesses grow and her past closes in, Hongyu must decide whether love can exist inside a bargain built on violence.

Years later, the secret Cheng leaves behind reveals that the woman he could never keep had become the legend he always knew she would be.

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.

My mother was a farm girl who couldn’t read a single character, yet she still supported my father all the way until he passed the provincial examination.

On the day my father married the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter, my mother obediently became his equal wife.

My father thought my mother loved him, which made her easy to control.

My father’s principal wife thought my mother, born and raised in the countryside, could never be a match for her.

And so, beneath their contempt, my mother played the fool while hiding her claws, raising me into someone whose worth was beyond measure.

I was reborn on the very night Liang Zhiyan and Zhao Lingyi had arranged to elope.

As his fiancée, I gave him money for the journey.

Grateful to me, he slipped out of the city with her under cover of darkness.

What awaited them was a life of sleeping rough and grinding poverty.

He would never again have the chance to wield the power he had held in my previous life.

I was once my young mistress’s senior maid.

Simply because the heir cast one extra glance my way, she gave me away and I became his bedchamber maid.

Later, the heir became engaged.

His future wife disliked me, so he gave me to another man.

Later still, he begged me to return.

But by then, I was already the lawful wife of the Chief Grand Secretary.

Sold into a marquis’s estate during a famine, Zhaozhao—renamed Yunzhu—spends her youth believing loyalty and patience will one day buy her freedom.

Every mistress promises to release her after one more sacrifice, yet each great household uses her body, devotion, and silence to preserve its women and heirs.

When survival hardens the obedient maid into a ruthless mother, she must decide how far she will go to seize the fortunate life everyone insists she already has.

“Oh, very well.

I will marry him.”

My sisters’ eyes went round.

Everyone knew how hopelessly I adored Ninth Young Master Cui: his literary gifts, his youthful grace.

I had led his horse, ground his ink, and made an utter fool of myself over him.

Why would I now agree to help our aunt the empress build her faction by marrying Pei Yao, that Turkic bastard neither of his parents cared for?

“Quick, tell Father!

Sanniang has agreed!”

My eldest sister reacted at once.

Afraid I might change my mind, she loudly applauded my decision and sent a servant off with the news.

The others recovered, hastily put on smiles, and clasped my hands from either side.

Such a sensible girl, they told me.

I was bound to go far.

I knew none of them would accept this splendid opportunity if it were offered to her.

But for me, it was already the best future I could hope for.

After all, in that dream, I had fought against it.

Ever since I was little, I had been a little slower than everyone else to speak and act.

People had always laughed at me for it when I was a child.

Gradually, I stopped wanting to speak.

Until the emperor asked me, in front of everyone, whom I wanted to marry.

When he named the gracious Prince Rui, my eyes lit up.

But by the time I nodded, the emperor had already asked, “Surely you don’t mean Prince Yan?”

Across the hall, the prince everyone called cruel and ruthless lurched in his seat and dropped his wine cup.

My husband found my long-lost cousin in a brothel, dying of a venereal disease.

She took one look at my happy life and decided I had stolen it from her.

I was never an impostor: my mother had given me to my grieving aunt in adoption when I was five.

For nine years, I had been made to soothe a woman who resented my happiness.

Now my husband expected me to sacrifice myself for my cousin too.

I was done paying for everyone else’s guilt.

This time, I would take what they owed me—and leave with my daughter.