Ancient China

In Jiangnan, the Shen Family possessed a secret technique passed down through generations: the ability to embroider a person’s final appearance before they died.

For thirty years, my father embroidered for the powerful and elite, never once making a mistake.

That was until he died in his embroidery room, and on the Death Portrait before him-depicting a face bleeding from every orifice-was me.

The Emperor brought a beauty back from Jiangnan and declared his intention to make her his Empress.

I adamantly refused.

“Empress Dowager, why? She and I share such a striking resemblance; it’s a sign we’re meant to be!”

You have the nerve to say that? You’ve gone and dug up the illegitimate daughter I hid so far away!

The day she died, a heavy snowfall blanketed the capital, sealing the city gates.

When the eunuch came to report the news, I was drinking in Noble Consort Liu’s palace.

I simply said, “Understood.”

It wasn’t until that cup of plum blossom wine-the one meant for our reconciliation-seared through my chest that I finally understood.

She had waited ten years, but she was never waiting for me to have a change of heart. She was waiting for me to die with her.

I am the Empress.

The Emperor wished to take my maid as a concubine, claiming that any child she bore would be recorded under my name.

Later, the imperial physician informed me that I had been pregnant for a month.

I said to the Emperor, “In consideration of your many years without an heir, I shall have this child recorded under your name.”

Two years after my daughter’s death, I traveled to the capital.

The people there asked me, “Who are you looking for?”

I replied, “I am looking for my child’s father. His name is Shen Zhao.”

Everyone laughed. They said Shen Zhao was the capital’s premier noble scion.

“He is Princess Xunyang’s Prince Consort now,” they said. “How could someone like you harbor such delusions?”

I laughed, too.

Good. Because the one I intend to kill is precisely the Prince Consort.

Chapter 0

I was the most beautiful woman in the capital, but because I was a little slow by nature, no one dared to marry me.

The Fifth Prince pined after my legitimate elder sister to no avail, then gave up on himself and married me as her stand-in.

He mocked himself, saying, “A fool and a cripple. I suppose we really are a perfect match.”

Very generously, I comforted him. “From now on, I’ll be my elder sister’s stand-in, and you’ll be the Crown Prince’s stand-in. We can still live our lives just fine.”

At the homecoming banquet, I watched the Crown Prince and my elder sister exchange tender looks.

The Fifth Prince’s expression was terrible, and my heart ached bitterly too.

Everyone else laughed at us, calling us a lovesick man and a resentful woman.

After we returned home, the Fifth Prince wrapped his robes tightly around himself and sneered, “Don’t even think about touching a single finger of mine tonight!”

I obediently lay down beside him and repented.

Sigh. It was my fault. I had stared at the Crown Prince for too long.

I was half-asleep when the Fifth Prince suddenly shoved me.

Furious, he snapped, “Shen Yufu! Are you really that honest?! I told you not to touch me, so you actually didn’t touch me?”

I said honestly, “All right, then you pretend to be the Crown Prince, and I’ll pretend to be my elder sister.”

The Fifth Prince bit my lip, forcing me to shut up.

I thought to myself, Didn’t we agree to be each other’s stand-ins? Why is he angry again?

The Fifth Prince’s heart is truly hard to figure out.

Madam Lin is choosing a bedchamber maid for her son.

All the pretty maids are eager to be picked.

Holding my fire poker, I ask Granny Shi, “Can I roast a potato?”

Granny Shi says, “Can you please show a little sense?”

Born a princess yet treated as the sacrificial “flower” for her twin brother, Lou Guanqi grows up with her health, fortune, and future quietly drained away.

After enemy soldiers carry the twins beyond the border, she survives humiliation and abandonment before finding a real family in Yunhuai Village, where Lou Sibao becomes the devoted elder sister she never had.

When the court drags Guanqi back into imperial power, every betrayal pushes her closer to vengeance—and every victory costs another piece of the love that once saved her.

As an ancient gu curse begins to reverse, Guanqi must decide whether a stolen throne can heal a life built on sacrifice, or whether power will devour everyone who still calls her family.

In the Fifth Year of Taiyuan, at the Start of Summer, a princess died in the Beiliang Royal Palace.

And a toad.

Anping was that unfortunate princess.

And I was that unfortunate toad.

Fortunately, since her death, I have become her.

The newly crowned top scholar accidentally swallowed the love gu I had meant for my absent husband.

To keep him alive, I had to share his bed every seven days until the antidote arrived.

What began as mutual resentment slowly turned dangerously tender—just as my husband, General Zhou Hanchuan, returned and recognized me as the woman he had never forgotten.

Now one man refuses to let me go, the other refuses to grant me a divorce, and I am trapped between two rivals who would sooner kill each other than give me up.