Complex Family Relationships

On my first day in the Duke of Liang’s household, my stepdaughter threw her ceremonial tea onto the floor, and my stepson threatened to have me cast out.

I drenched her with a teapot and took a ruler to his hand.

When their father asked what had happened, I told him I was merely teaching the children our household’s rules.

Everyone says a stepmother’s lot is hard.

But this household would recognize only one mistress: me.

At twenty-five, I arranged for Bighead Xiao to take his first concubine.

Her dowry was an entire city.

At twenty-six, I arranged the second.

Her dowry was ten li of granaries.

At forty-two, he took his eighteenth.

There were so many women that I could no longer remember their names.

And I had gone from a farmer’s wife to the founding empress of Great Zhao.

When I was twenty-five, I had a child with one of the most powerful heirs in Beijing’s elite circle.

There was no future for two people as unequal as us, so I took the money and opportunities the He family offered and broke up with him.

Then, five years later, during a break on set.

A little boy who looked strikingly like He Jinnan came looking for me.

He pursed his lips, aggrieved yet stubbornly proud.

“My dad is He Jinnan,” he said.

“And you’re my mom.”

I looked at him and gave a faint hum of acknowledgment.

He hurriedly pulled a thick wad of cash from his backpack.

His eyes were full of pleading.

“Can I hire you for one day to come to my parent-teacher meeting?”

At ten, Li Shuquan’s family brings home her frail elder sister and renames her Xiaoman, ordering her to yield everything—from her name to her future.

Years later, when both sisters fall into a lake during a matchmaking meeting, Xiaoman wakes to a physician’s diagnosis of memory loss.

The Grand Princess takes her hand and declares herself Xiaoman’s mother.

With one quiet word—Mama—Xiaoman chooses the family that chooses her and begins to reclaim a life long sacrificed to someone else’s happiness.

[A Long-Planned Scheme + Forceful Possession + A Powerful Man Bows His Head for Love + Both Leads Chaste + Two Strong Leads Join Forces]

Pei Xianjing, the eldest legitimate son of the Duke’s household, enjoyed the Emperor’s deep favor. Accomplished in both civil and military affairs, fair-minded and incorruptible, he was hailed by all as an upright gentleman and a capable minister who could save the realm-an aloof, unattainable flower blooming upon a frozen peak.

A savior delivered all beneath heaven.

And so, when Xing Shuwei came to him four years ago with nowhere else to turn, he had shown her generous compassion and allowed her to stay. “From now on, you belong to me.”

Overwhelmed with gratitude, Xing Shuwei regarded him as the lifeline that had saved both her and her younger brother. She obeyed his every word.

Then, on the day after her eighteenth birthday, Pei Xianjing pinned her against his desk.

The courteous gentleman had become a ravenous wolf. “Weiwei, do you like the birthday gift I gave you?”

“You are the rose I planted with my own hands. Even if every inch of you is covered in thorns, I am the only one you may prick.”

On the third day after being diagnosed with Stomach Cancer, I chose a grave for myself.

They say the feng shui is especially good.

It’s supposed to bless me so that in my next life, I won’t be the real daughter everyone despises.

No one will steal my parents, my brother, or everything else from me.

No longer… unloved.

I burned my photos and clothes, erased every trace of my existence.

Then I slit my wrists, lay down in the bathtub, and waited peacefully for death.

But then the Cemetery Center suddenly called me:

“Miss Lu, we’re terribly sorry.”

“Two Agents accidentally sold the same plot.”

“This grave was also sold to another gentleman.”

“Would you… mind moving your grave?”

My father’s favored concubine trained my younger sister in all the arts of the pleasure quarters, convinced it would help her secure a man’s heart.

When I came of age, she proposed that Yuniang marry alongside me as an accompanying concubine.

There was only one flaw in her plan.

As the Qiao family’s legitimate eldest daughter and future head, I was never marrying out—I would take a husband into my own household.

“Fine.

I’ll marry him.”

Everyone around me breathed a sigh of relief when I said it.

My elder sister most of all.

She didn’t want to marry him.

I didn’t mind.

Mostly because the Crown Prince was offering far too much to refuse.

Besides, he’d treated me rather well in my previous life.

Now that I’d been reborn, of course I would clear the thorns from his path.

I wanted to make his journey to my side a little easier.

The day I found out I had cancer.

He Wei frowned and said coldly to me, “Do you think anyone would be sad if you died? No one would feel bad about it.”

I said, “Whatever.”

Then I sincerely wished him, “I hope you’ll do as you say.”

After all, the year my brother died saving me, everyone looked at me and said:

“Why wasn’t it you who died?”

Later, I stood on the rooftop of the abandoned building where my brother passed away and jumped off.

But He Wei, why were you crying?

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.