Female Protagonist

Born into wealth but sold into a brothel by her opium-addicted father, Zhao Xiaochan remakes herself as Tang Xiaowan and refuses to let a violent age decide her worth.

Beside a rough warlord and later a principled reporter, she survives betrayal, occupation, and impossible love while risking everything to shelter other women from the same fate.

Across decades of war and upheaval, the jade cicada at her throat becomes the last witness to a life lived fiercely, proudly, and on her own terms.

The world says I have been blessed with a charmed life.

My father is a first-rank official, and my mother hails from a prestigious, noble clan.

Both of my elder brothers serve in the imperial court, and all three of my elder sisters have married into high-ranking families.

Since childhood, I have been draped in the finest silks and fed the rarest delicacies from jade platters.

Even the trifles I play with on a whim are worth enough to sustain an ordinary family for half a lifetime.

Yet, outsiders see only the surface of my tapestry-like life.

They do not understand that greatness brings its own burdens. Within these embroidered curtains and silken screens, schemes lie hidden at every turn.

Between the golden chalices and jade chopsticks, murderous intent flashes when least expected.

A single misstep is all it takes to fall into the bottomless abyss.

Both the Crown Prince and the Grand General wished to marry me.

I hated the intrigue of the Eastern Palace, so I chose the Grand General who had sworn that I would be the only woman in his life.

Yet on our wedding night, his female deputy lured him out of the bridal chamber with a single flask of wine.

Still dressed in my wedding robes, I listened to their moans through the wall for half the night.

When the rain became a downpour, I threw on a cloak and knocked on the Eastern Palace gate under cover of darkness.

At the Crown Prince’s astonished expression, I gave a bitter smile.

“Your Highness.”

“Tell me—if a woman suddenly thinks of another man on her own wedding night…”

“Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Sold at sixteen to the Zhao family of Taoshui Village, Pan Xi’er expects a life of hardship among three unmarried brothers with terrible reputations.

Instead, she finds warmth, loyalty, and a family ready to work for a better tomorrow.

With tofu, new recipes, and stubborn kindness, Xi’er helps the Zhaos turn hardship into prosperity—until old wounds and new ambitions put their hard-won happiness to the test.

Chapter 0 My financial backer said I was the only pure white Jasmine Flower in the entertainment industry.

Because I never fought or schemed, because I was obedient and sensible, and because I was utterly devoted to him.

Lately, though, he had developed a particular fondness for a vulgar, gaudy peony.

So the two endorsements and the film role he had originally promised me all went to his new favorite instead.

Plenty of people in the industry were waiting to laugh at me.

I was the only one who let out a long sigh of relief.

At last, I had a reason to change backers.

And my new financial backer had already grown impatient waiting.

I was my birth parents’ third child.

While my birth mother was pregnant with me, the village fortune-teller swore I would be a boy.

They could hardly wait.

They hid from place to place throughout the pregnancy and finally brought me into the world in the bitter cold of the twelfth lunar month—

a girl.

My father was a libertine, with a particular taste for women with slender waists.

To curry favor with him, the officials beneath him scoured the land for willowy courtesans from Yangzhou.

In the end, they presented my mother to him.

Her waist was as slim as a willow, narrow enough to circle with one hand.

My father was infatuated with her.

The very day she entered his estate, he rewarded her with a bowl of medicine meant to make her barren.

The year I came of age, Father gave me three marriage choices.

I could become the lawful wife of a penniless scholar, the honored concubine of the Marquis of Pingnan’s heir, or the second wife of a wealthy merchant.

I wanted none of them.

Marriage negotiations always came down to the woman’s family, and my father held a modest post while I was merely a concubine-born daughter, so no truly eminent house would consider me.

Still, low birth had never cured me of high ambition.

If I could not marry up, I would sooner hang myself.

My mother was a farm girl who couldn’t read a single character, yet she still supported my father all the way until he passed the provincial examination.

On the day my father married the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter, my mother obediently became his equal wife.

My father thought my mother loved him, which made her easy to control.

My father’s principal wife thought my mother, born and raised in the countryside, could never be a match for her.

And so, beneath their contempt, my mother played the fool while hiding her claws, raising me into someone whose worth was beyond measure.

I was once my young mistress’s senior maid.

Simply because the heir cast one extra glance my way, she gave me away and I became his bedchamber maid.

Later, the heir became engaged.

His future wife disliked me, so he gave me to another man.

Later still, he begged me to return.

But by then, I was already the lawful wife of the Chief Grand Secretary.