Ancient China

Chapter 0

The Princess believed in living for pleasure.

During a palace banquet, I spared a single extra glance at the Crown Prince, and she had him delivered straight to my bed.

“So what if he’s the Crown Prince? As women, we must rise to the challenge!”

Afterward, the Crown Prince demanded that I take responsibility for him.

The Princess blocked me, refusing to allow it. She declared with righteous indignation, “If you give him an official status, how are you supposed to keep having fun in the future?”

Later, when enemy troops surrounded the imperial palace, I rushed to tell her to flee for her life. Instead, I found her in her tent, favoring dozens of male consorts.

“Princess, look at the time! It’s too late!”

She finally realized the gravity of the situation. “You’re right. Here, I’ll share half of them with you.”

And so, I was delayed as well.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the Hostage Prince from the enemy nation would be among those male consorts.

Just before he was about to be rescued, I ruined his virtue. He was so furious he ground his teeth in rage.

The Princess and I were captured together. Tied behind horses and dragged along the ground, we were sent to the Great Yan Palace.

To scratch out a living, I confessed my love to the Hostage Prince, claiming I only took his body because I loved him, and begged for his protection.

Unexpectedly, the Princess stepped forward and said, “You fool, you actually believe that? To her, you’re just one of-”

The Hostage Prince drew his sword on the spot, demanding an answer: “Exactly how many men have you had before me?”

“I’m truly done with you! Princess, you’re my living ancestor! Aren’t we unlucky enough already?”

I was so enraged that I coughed up blood and died.

The Princess, however, was so notoriously debauched in her speech and conduct that the enemy soldiers wanted to humiliate her, yet they feared she might actually enjoy it. Left with no other choice, they allowed her to live out her final years in peace.

Carrying my corpse on her back, the Princess declared that since she could no longer seek pleasure in the days to come, she would rather die. She threw herself onto a sword and ended her life immediately.

Reborn into a new life, I have returned to the day I entered the palace to save her.

There is a palace rule in the Great Sheng Dynasty: regardless of rank or status, whoever gives birth to a child must raise that child.

Mother was the most insignificant Cairen in the harem.

Ever since I was born, I lived with her in the neglected Chengze Hall.

When I was eight, the Imperial Physician diagnosed Mother with a severe illness and said she did not have long to live.

That day, Mother jumped into the Taiye Pond and saved the drowning Third Prince.

She saved the Third Prince’s life, but lost her own in the waters of Taiye Pond.

Rumors spread throughout the palace. Everyone said, “The Third Prince stepped on Cui Cairen’s head, pushing her underwater so he could climb ashore.”

They fanned the flames, but I knew in my heart that Mother did it on purpose.

She used her own life to ensure that, after her death, I could be taken in by the Third Prince’s birth mother, Consort Qi.

Mother was so foolish.

She thought she had paved a path for me.

She forgot.

A child without a mother leads a bitter life.

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.

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.

Father Emperor is a transmigrator, and I have been able to hear his inner thoughts since the moment I was born.

[Huh, so this is the future villainess? She’s so soft and adorable; how did she end up turning out so wrong? No, I have to protect her. My daughter can only be the lead heroine.]

In the beginning, that was exactly what he did. He taught me self-respect and self-love, told me not to depend on men, and said that girls could hold up half the sky.

But later, things changed. He looked at me with eyes full of loathing, claiming I didn’t have a shred of the decorum expected of a young lady, and forced me to kneel in the Buddhist hall to copy Buddhist scriptures. And I could no longer hear his inner thoughts.

The Prince Consort’s carriage plummeted over the cliff. Even in his unconscious state, he still gripped his childhood sweetheart’s hand tightly, refusing to let go.

I replaced the doctor meant to save him with a Taoist priest who could bind souls, sealing his spirit within a jade pendant. I want him to see it with his own eyes.

I want him to see that the childhood sweetheart he yearns for is nothing but a fickle, unfaithful woman.

That the sister he protected with all his heart is a cold-blooded, ungrateful soul.

That the mother he respects and loves is a person who would abandon all honor for the sake of profit. Only this is the punishment he truly deserves.

My cousin’s parents passed away, so my Imperial Mother brought her into the palace to live with us.

From then on, she enjoyed the favor of my parents, the protection of my elder brother, and the devotion of my younger brother.

Even my fiancé praised her for being exceptionally gifted and refined.

There was only one exception. His heart and eyes were filled only with me, never swayed by any outsider.

I married beneath my station to become his wife, and for a time, we lived a life of joy and freedom.

But later, he died-stabbed countless times before being hurled off a cliff.

I lost my mother at seven and my father at ten, leaving me with only Grandma to depend on.

Grandma made a living sewing and doing laundry for others, while I spent my summers farming and my winters heading into the mountains.

We managed to scrape by.

When I was fourteen, I had a dream.

In that dream, I was a princess.

After being brought into the palace, I engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the Impostor Princess.

In the end, we were both killed by the transmigrator, becoming nothing more than stepping stones on her path to power.

I am the sole Earth Master successor. While leading a group of elderly wealthy businessmen to Xiangxi to treat their corpse poison, we were kidnapped and dragged deep into the mountains.

The villagers forced us to work the fields, but they had no idea that after the sun went down, the things that came for us weren’t human at all.

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.