Ancient China

When my elder sister was preparing to marry Marquis Ding’an,

she caught the eye of the Crown Prince.

Our entire family was overjoyed.

To give the marquis’s household an explanation, they pushed me out in her place on the day of the wedding.

After we were married, Marquis Ding’an despised me.

Again and again, he mocked me to my face:

“Crude and vulgar. You don’t compare to your sister in the slightest.”

“You can’t even read an account book. Astonishingly stupid.”

I felt wronged too. I smashed my rouge and powder at him and cursed,

“My sister is the Crown Princess now. If you’re so capable, go steal her back, you coward!”

And so we spent our entire lives at each other’s throats.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to when I was sixteen and not yet married.

My elder sister looked at me with smiling eyes and coaxed,

“Little sister, would you like to marry into the marquis’s household and become the Marchioness?”

In the twelfth year after my rebirth, the first thing I did upon leaving the Xie estate was visit my grave from my former life.

It lay alone in the wilderness, with Qingming as cold as winter and weeds growing ten feet high.

I added a shovelful of fresh earth and told myself, “Ah Lan, don’t look back. Keep walking.”

When my beloved childhood friend publicly humiliated me, my own sister called it harmless fun.

I answered by turning his joke into a scandal that swept the capital.

After years in exile, I returned unwilling to bend—to my scheming sister, her five doting brothers, or the prince who treated my marriage as a bargaining chip.

They expected a disgraced noblewoman they could sacrifice.

Instead, I used every plot against them, exposed every betrayal, and chose to break before I bowed.

Fu Huaijin gave up a free and prosperous modern life to save Xie Shi’an, the orphaned slave who rose to become the empire’s chief minister.

Seven years into their marriage, the man who once swore to love only her begins longing for the temptations his power can buy—and for a dazzling young transmigrator who reminds him of the woman Huaijin used to be.

When Huaijin agrees to let him take a concubine, Xie Shi’an believes she has finally yielded, never suspecting that she has also asked the empress to dissolve their marriage.

But a possessive man at the pinnacle of power has no intention of releasing the moonlight that once saved him, even after she chooses freedom over everything he can offer.

And when Huaijin finds her way home, Xie Shi’an learns too late that love without equality, respect, and acceptance was never the devotion he imagined.

The night I married Pei Guanli, I cried so hard I soaked half my bridal veil.

Not because I didn’t want to marry him, but because everyone in the capital knew that Pei Guanli was more upright and proper than the ancestral tablets in a shrine.

He oversaw ceremonial protocols at the Ministry of Rites and revised the dynasty’s statutes and rites.

If a family used the wrong ritual vessels at a wedding, he could remember it for three years.

If someone wailed one time too many at a funeral, he could submit a memorial impeaching them straight to the emperor.

As the daughter of a merchant family from Jiangnan, this was exactly the sort of man I feared most.

Before my mother sent me into the bridal sedan, she clutched my hands and cried even harder than I did.

“Ah Ning, once you reach the Pei Family, speak less, smile less, and eat less.”

I asked, “Why eat less?”

Choking back sobs, my mother said, “Noble young ladies in the capital eat as delicately as if they’re painting flowers. You eat three bowls in one sitting. You’ll give yourself away too easily.”

I paused, suddenly feeling that before this marriage had even reached the bridal chamber, I had already lost on appetite alone.

Everyone in the capital knows that every beauty who disappears into Minister Luo’s rear courtyard carries him one step higher in office.

Born mute—or so the household believes—his ninth daughter survives by making herself small and useful to the family’s favored eldest daughter.

As sisters are sold, married, and sacrificed for the ambitions of men, Ah Jiu realizes that obedience will never buy her freedom.

To escape the Luo estate alive, she must wager the one thing society says determines a woman’s future: her face.

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.

When Jiang Zhiqing begs a feared commander to save her imprisoned fiancé, mysterious scrolling comments reveal the betrayal and brutal death awaiting her.

Her dwindling Fortune score is binding her to a story that was never written for her to win.

Lu Hemian, the man she has always avoided, can keep that score from falling—and once gave his life to save hers.

To escape the plot for good, Zhiqing must reclaim her family’s military legacy and become the heroine of her own life.

The man I secretly loved was the legitimate princess’s fiancé.

I was the unfavored Seventh Princess, and the fiancé bestowed upon me was a drunken libertine who gambled, kept concubines, and maintained a mistress outside his estate.

But that was all right.

My best friend had the ultimate cheat code.

As a child, Li Sujun saved an immortal lord who promised to answer whenever she lit the Heaven-Seeking Incense.

She called for him three times.

He never came.

Years later, Sujun has become a healer—and the same immortal lord lies powerless at her door after failing his tribulation.

He insists she is the trial of love he must overcome.

She thinks he should look closer at his own mistakes.

But the dog, cat, and little snake in her home are not what they seem, and the path Sujun abandoned is already winding back toward her.

To understand what Zhao Yunzhi truly lost for her, she must face the family that discarded her, the sect that used him, and the difference between love as possession and love as freedom.