Ancient China

My husband, Xiao Ji, is the realm’s celebrated Grand Chancellor.

My elder sister, the Empress Dowager, commands the inner palace.

For years, they have put each other—and the empire—before me.

When they cancel the birthday fireworks I have long awaited, I finally stop asking to be chosen.

I leave the capital with a divorce agreement and build the life I always wanted as a physician in Jiangnan.

Only after I am gone do they realize that devotion cannot excuse neglect.

But regret may have come too late, because I have no intention of returning to the game that broke me.

After being stolen from her husband and caged in the palace, Jiang Yunshu dies branded as the stain on an emperor’s perfect reign.

Reborn before her disastrous marriage, she breaks her engagement, evades Prince Jing’s search, and chooses the sickly Crown Prince Xie Zhao as her unlikely ally.

Armed with memories of betrayal and rebellion, Yunshu pursues revenge against everyone who destroyed her first life.

Yet the partner she meant to use may become the one man willing to share both his throne and his years with her.

Just before the bridal sedan entered our gates, my elder sister suddenly changed her mind.

She ripped the hairpins and ornaments from her head and hurled them at me along with her round silk fan.

Before the assembled guests, she accused me in a shrill voice.

“Shen Zhi, stop putting on those seductive airs!”

“You needn’t waste any more effort trying to seduce His Highness the Crown Prince.

I’m giving this marriage to you!”

With those few sentences, I became a shameless woman who had tried to seduce her own brother-in-law.

The looks in the ladies’ and young misses’ eyes gradually turned knowing.

I staggered back in disbelief, tears spilling down my cheeks.

Choking on a sob, I asked, “Has your heart perhaps been captured by another man, Sister?”

“If so, our entire household ought to enter the palace and plead guilty, begging His Majesty’s forgiveness.”

“How could we play at swapping sisters for their marriages and commit the crime of deceiving the emperor?”

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.

My mother was the discarded wife of a marquis, and everyone was waiting to laugh at her.

Yet she refused to give them the satisfaction.

She neither made my father regret casting her out nor won the heart of some handsome man.

She left the capital in disgrace, looking like a homeless cur.

Years later, I was betrothed to the son of an earl’s household.

Noble though his birth was, his endless visits to brothels had left him riddled with disease.

On my wedding day, I sat in the bridal sedan, about to take my own life.

Then horses reared and people shouted outside, throwing the procession into chaos.

The marquis’s discarded wife had returned—to steal the bride.

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.

When General Lin Zhao returns from the northern frontier with a beautiful, unconventional young woman, Cheng Qingqing fears she is about to lose the husband she has loved since childhood.

Then Xu Liuzhao tells her an impossible truth: their world is a book, and Qingqing is its doomed heroine—a treasured canary destined to be abused, blamed, and caged by three powerful men.

Xu Liuzhao came to save her.

To survive, Qingqing must unlearn everything she was taught about love, obedience, and a woman’s place—and discover how far she is willing to go to claim her freedom.

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.

At the age when palace maids are meant to leave, Ah Li asks the imperial guard she loves to marry her—only to discover that he is the emperor, and that she is merely a substitute for his cherished Consort Rong.

After he keeps her trapped in the palace and sacrifices her to protect his favorite, Ah Li quietly accepts a marriage arranged as an act of spite.

Her new husband, General Wei Yuan, can see the floating comments that have distorted everyone’s story, and he offers her something the emperor never did: honesty and protection.

When the emperor tries to steal her back, Wei Yuan defies the throne, forcing every supposed lead in this romance to face the truth.

At seven, Jinxi is sold to the Marquis of Martial Valor’s household and trained to become a dowry concubine for its formidable legitimate daughter.

Knowing that one wrong move could cost her life, the transmigrated girl hides her intelligence and searches for a way out.

Her chance comes in the innocent Ninth Prince, but every kindness in the marquis’s household carries a price.

As Jinxi rises from purchased pawn to legitimate daughter and princess consort, she discovers that the ruthless women around her are neither as simple nor as heartless as they first appeared.