Female Protagonist

In the third year of my relationship with Tan Zongmin, I caught him meeting the woman his family had arranged for him to marry.

The moment he saw me, he froze.

Noticing his distraction, she followed his gaze and asked curiously, “What are you looking at?”

Tan Zongmin looked away and replied flatly, “Nothing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and played along with our unspoken understanding, pretending not to know him.

That morning, I’d received an email confirming that my resignation had been approved.

I’d been wondering how to break up with Tan Zongmin gracefully.

I went on a celebrity dating reality show, and the host asked me which male guest I would pick.

Smiling, I looked toward the acclaimed Best Actor, the veteran singer, and the current young idol heartthrob.

“Among these guests is a serial killer. Three years ago, you dismembered my little sister.

You left no remains of her behind and turned her into a target for the internet’s scorn.

“Now, it’s my turn to hunt you down.”

By the time I transmigrated into this world, the story was already nearing its end.

The realm had been united, and the New Emperor had ascended the throne.

The woman who had shared his hardships and stayed by his side through everything had been granted a cup of poisoned wine.

And I was the Empress he was about to marry: the legitimate daughter of the Wang Clan, born of an illustrious house.

I looked at the woman who had just drunk the poisoned wine. “Do you know why I came?”

She let out a cold laugh, sweat beading across her brow. “Afraid I won’t die?”

“No.” I took a pill from my sleeve and pushed it into her mouth. “Afraid you will.”

Twenty years have passed since I entered the palace.

I accompanied my mistress as she rose from a deposed consort to the exalted position of Empress Dowager.

I, too, rose from an unnoticed little palace maid to Auntie Lian, a woman even His Majesty addressed with respect.

I have done many wicked things.

When Lady Wang became pregnant, I caused her to fall into the water and lose her child.

When the Noble Consort refused to follow the late emperor into death, I strangled her with my own hands.

Only as I lay dying did I let out a quiet sigh.

“In the end, good is rewarded with good, and evil with evil.”

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.

Her eldest son was devoted to a two-faced woman he thought was his one true love.

In a fit of rage, my future mother-in-law conceived a second child—and promised me to him instead.

I stared miserably at my still-unborn new fiancé and tactfully suggested that this might, possibly, perhaps be a little inappropriate.

She slapped the golden, glowing egg so hard it rang, and declared with absolute conviction that if her second son let me down too, she would simply have a third.

Me: Excuse me?

Before we married, I already knew my husband had a concubine he doted on.

It did not matter.

I was marrying into a great house to become its mistress.

Naturally, I could afford to be generous.

After the wedding, I put the marquis’s household in perfect order, and my reputation as a virtuous wife spread throughout the capital.

Whether that concubine had a brain in her head, I could not say.

She actually let people know that the marquis and I had never consummated our marriage.

She meant to humiliate me, to make me a laughingstock.

What she never imagined was that her little stunt would force my mother-in-law to send the marquis knocking on my door late one night.

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.”

In my third year of disguising myself as a man and sneaking into the Prince’s Mansion to work as a guard, I got involved with the prince’s male favorite.

I had meant to cut things off with him and sever all ties for good.

But whenever he took my hand during our secret meetings, my resolve would crumble.

And just like that, spineless and useless as I was, I committed a capital offense.

After I was brought back to the household as its true-born daughter, my parents were full of guilt, and my brother doted on me.

Even the girl who had taken my place was truly kind and virtuous.

Tears on her lovely face, she knelt and bowed her head to me.

“I took your place and left you to suffer all those years.”

I smiled and said it was all right.

Then, before long, I ended up in the pond with her impeccably virtuous fiancé.