Female Protagonist

By imperial decree, I was forced to marry into the Xiaoshan Earl’s Estate as the heir’s second wife.

I had heard that my future mother-in-law was cruel, my sisters-in-law were impossible, and my husband kept a pampered concubine so vicious and overbearing that she had driven his first wife to her death.

Every respectable family in the capital avoided the place like the plague.

Before I climbed into the bridal sedan, Mother clasped my hands with tears in her eyes.

“My daughter, you must be careful.”

“Don’t kill anyone in your husband’s family. Your father will have a hard time explaining it to His Majesty.”

On the second day of the tenth lunar month, the great warlord Lu Zhi took a second concubine: Song Anran, the youngest daughter of the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce.

Lu Zhi had made a name for himself in recent years.

He had won battle after battle, commanded a formidable army, and wielded immense power—but surely not so much that the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce would deliver his own daughter to him as a concubine.

Oh, but it was.

My father did exactly that.

Every night, Chen Youlan’s grandmother kowtows backward before a red-draped Buddha, cursing the family whose prosperity was bought with her blood.

When Grandma dies smiling and Youlan is chosen to inherit the ritual, the old house begins exposing every bargain, every stolen life, and the true firstborn hidden behind the family’s lies.

To survive until dawn, Youlan must decide whether the weeping statue is a god, a demon, or merely the patient judge of a debt generations in the making.

While staying at my brother’s place, I discovered he was keeping a man prisoner.

Terrified, I fed the man every day.

Then he licked my hand, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I called my brother on video to demand an explanation.

“Can’t you let your prisoner go?

This is a crime!

You’ve driven him mad!”

My brother, away on business, shrieked.

“Wait.

I moved ages ago.

Didn’t I tell you?”

“Sis, I think you’ve broken into someone else’s home.”

My mother had come from another world, and she believed firmly in monogamy.

When she discovered that my husband was keeping a mistress, she stormed into his princely residence, demanding that I divorce him and come home with her.

I stared at her.

“Mother, your daughter already has power and wealth.

Why should I care if he keeps another woman?”

The Crown Prince’s White Moonlight, the woman he’d pined after for ten years, had finally returned.

She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “You. Go back to where you came from.”

I lifted my skirts and stepped into the carriage, then turned back to smile at her. “Sorry,” I said lightly, “but this seat? You’re never getting it back.”

I am the most indolent concubine in the Imperial Harem.

The Emperor is currently reading my Annual Slacker Report.

“This year, your name tag was flipped nineteen times. Of those, you were intercepted thirteen times. You actually served in the bedchamber six times, during three of which the Emperor couldn’t perform.”

“This year, you knelt over a thousand times. You called the Noble Consort a ‘bitch’ over ten thousand times, but the number of times you actually said it to her face was zero.”

“Do you remember the Mid-Autumn Banquet?”

“The talent you performed was balancing a pot of wine on your upturned backside, which resulted in half a month’s stipend being docked.”

“This year, your rank and salary have seen no change from last year. In fact, this situation has persisted for three years now.”

“Your keyword for this year is ‘Trash.’ Please keep it up next year.”

Oh no. Am I about to be slacked all the way into the Cold Palace?

My Imperial Elder Brother is into men, and my Imperial Elder Sister is into women.

Imperial Father has pinned all his hopes for the empire on me.

I’m trembling-should I tell him that the one I love is a eunuch?

Imperial Father: “Impressive.”

I bought a eunuch off the street. On his very first day in the manor, he started throwing his weight around.

When the others refused to follow his orders, he turned right around and complained to me.

Everyone waited for him to be put in his place, but instead, I said, “From now on, whatever Pei Yunchuan wants, you give it to him.”

He was about to gloat over his newfound power, but he hadn’t even let out a laugh before I continued with my announcement.

“He is the man I am going to marry.” He froze, his voice shrill as he shrieked, “You deranged lunatic, what kind of nonsense are you spouting?”

The Battle for First Seat.

Just as the match between my junior sister and me was about to be decided, my life-bound sword suddenly turned its edge on me and gravely wounded me.

The sword spirit said, “Your swordplay is too fierce. You would have hurt her. I didn’t want you to bear the infamy of injuring a fellow disciple, so I had to act as the situation demanded. I’m sorry.”

They all say swords have souls, and that they are loyal to the masters they acknowledge.

But I had rescued the Muyuan Sword from the abyss, then carried it to fame throughout the world. For decades, we were inseparable.

Even so, he remained proud and untamed. Everyone advised me.

A bond with a divine sword could not be forced. What was not mine would never belong to me, no matter how tightly I held on.

In that case, I might as well give the Muyuan Sword to my junior sister.

I thought they were right. After all, in all these years of using the Muyuan Sword, I had never been able to draw out even seventy percent of my strength.

It was time to choose a new sword.