Female Protagonist

At fourteen, naive Ah Yuan enters the imperial palace beside her fearless friend Xiaochun, believing the two of them can survive anything together.

But as Xiaochun rises through the emperor’s favor, the women around them are drawn into a harem where affection is political currency and every child can become a weapon.

Ah Yuan survives by holding fast to kindness, even as loyalty turns into leverage, ambition demands blood, and the people she loves make choices she cannot undo.

Across a lifetime shaped by palace secrets, she bears witness to the cost of clinging to power—and to the quiet courage it takes to walk away.

For a thousand-year-old black snake demon, humans are dangerously clever creatures best avoided.

But curiosity draws Yun Chongyu into the mortal world, where she becomes entangled with the ruthless monk Yuanzhen and befriends the kindhearted scholar Su Kan.

Through desire, grief, vengeance, sacrifice, and reincarnation, she slowly learns that love takes many forms—and that even a monster can find a home, a family, and a heart of her own.

Dad brought home a golden retriever especially to keep Mom from getting lonely.

I turned around and sold it to a dog dealer to be bred for twelve litters in a row, until giving birth left it paralyzed.

Because in my last life, Mom had given that dog everything.

She took it everywhere and even held it while she slept.

In just two months, she seemed to age fifty years.

Then she died right in front of me.

The doctor called it sudden-onset premature aging.

Less than a month after we buried Mom, Dad moved her best friend into our house.

The woman who should have been lying in intensive care waiting to die had suddenly recovered.

Wearing Mom’s necklace and sleeping in Mom’s bed, she stroked my head and said, “Niannian, I’m your mommy now.”

Only later did I learn the truth.

Her soul was living inside the golden retriever Dad had brought home.

She was bound to a Life-Swapping System.

All she had to do was stay close to Mom in that dog’s body for forty-nine days straight, and she could steal Mom’s health and lifespan little by little.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the golden retriever arrived.

I looked down at it and smiled sweetly.

Send them to prison?

I didn’t have enough evidence.

But it was only a female dog in heat.

Sending it off to have eight or ten litters was perfectly reasonable, wasn’t it?

Prince Xiang’s heir was every noble young lady’s dream—and the emperor’s favorite candidate for the throne.

I slipped a little something into his soup to secure my future.

Unfortunately, my sister and three other ladies had the same idea.

One bowl later, he dropped dead at the imperial banquet, and all five of us became suspects.

I swore on my father’s life that I hadn’t killed him.

The trouble was, every suspect had a secret—and I wanted far more than a handsome husband.

When Sovereign Cangxuan returned from his mortal trial, he brought a mortal woman with him.

They said she was Princess Yuyao of the mortal realm, a beauty without equal.

The Old Man of the Moon declared that she was the true reincarnation of the Azure Empress—the woman the sovereign loved.

And so the empress and the sovereign threw me, the impostor who had deceived him, straight into the Well of Gods and Demons.

Jiang Yue was the stand-in my family had chosen to bear my misfortunes.

She ate and slept beside me, raised as though she were the marquis’s second legitimate daughter.

She won Grandmother’s favor and Father’s affection, and she and my fiancé fell in love.

Only when she urged Pei Yu to push me into the fire did I learn that she was the cherished daughter of Father’s mistress.

I had been the one bearing her misfortunes all along.

She took my place, inherited my mother’s dowry, and married into the Duke of Yan’s household.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day she was first brought to our estate.

She took my hand and promised to protect me.

I’ve always been absurdly confident.

When the system told me to win over the male lead, I said it would be a piece of cake.

He rejected me, begged me to torment someone else, and claimed he wasn’t good enough for me.

Clearly, he needed a guiding partner he couldn’t chase away.

I succeeded—until the system returned and announced his affection score was zero.

Apparently, I’d fallen for an extra with the male lead’s exact same name.

I was the queen, confined to the ancestral temple for a grave crime.

The king despised me, and for fifteen years he never came to see me.

The world said I had lost my mind.

Then the diviners foretold that my child would bring the four corners of the realm to submission and become sovereign of all under Heaven.

Taken from me on the day he was born and raised by the king’s favorite consort, he had never even seen his mother’s face.

Day and night I prayed, waiting for him.

At last, he came.

The boy was grown now, his brow bearing all the cold majesty of an heir to the throne.

Calmly, he laid a dagger before me.

“Your son asks only one thing.

Grant it to me.”

I was the heroine of an erotic novel.

Right in the middle of a passionate encounter, I suddenly landed in a chaste historical romance.

At that very moment, its male leads had lured me—the expendable supporting character—out to avenge their beloved.

They wanted to teach me a lesson.

Someone shoved me to the ground, and I couldn’t help letting out a little moan.

The man who’d been snarling at me a second earlier abruptly turned red at the tips of his ears.

“Ning Wan, what was that noise?!”

My mother was the finest embroiderer in the capital.

Even the emperor praised the wedding gown she made for the Princess Royal.

The princess rewarded her lavishly.

That very night, she severed Mother’s hands with golden scissors.

“One gown like this in the world, for me alone, is quite enough.”

Mother’s blood covered the floor.

The princess found it filthy, so she burned our entire residence to the ground, saying the blaze was festive enough to suit her.

On her wedding day, the princess became the most beautiful bride in the capital.

That same year, she became pregnant.

I entered her residence carrying the golden scissors that had killed my mother.

“Your servant has come to offer Your Highness the most beautiful garment of all.”