Female Protagonist

The day I gave birth, the situation was critical.

I begged Zhang Shuai to sign the consent form for a C-section, but his mother wouldn’t allow it.

Through the door, he shouted anxiously, “Zhaozhao, try a little harder, you can definitely give birth naturally.”

In the end, I suffered an amniotic fluid embolism and both mother and child died.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at fifteen.

Zhang Shuai stopped me at the entrance of the village: “Zhaozhao, I heard you’re going to Vocational School too?”

My younger sister and I were both princesses of a fallen kingdom.

The day our capital fell, enemy soldiers came to violate us, and my sister shoved me forward.

She thought I was certain to die.

Instead, the enemy’s young lord rescued me, and I later became his Noble Consort.

My sister was reduced to slavery and suffered every day.

Consumed by hatred, she killed me—and was reborn alongside me.

This time, she rushed to leave with the enemy soldiers first.

“Sister, this time, I will be the Noble Consort.”

What she did not know was that I had never wanted to be a consort.

With royal blood in my veins, if I was to become anything, I would become the empress who restored our kingdom.

My best friend and I ended up inside the same novel.

She was the scheming second male lead’s hopeless admirer.

I was the obsessive villain’s substitute lover.

In public, we pined for men who didn’t love us.

In private, we spent their money like there was no tomorrow.

After three years of living it up, the heroine—the woman they supposedly truly loved—came back.

Once we learned that both men would lose their minds over her, my best friend packed a little bag and knocked on my door late at night.

“I’ve saved enough.

Have you?”

“Not quite,” I said.

“But I can spend yours.”

So we faked our deaths and ran away together.

Three years later, she had the misfortune to run into her ex-husband.

“I’ll cover for you!”

I told her.

“Run!”

Then I turned around and walked straight into a solid chest.

The obsessive villain calmly undid his tie and bound my hands.

“Try getting away yourself first.”

Before the Divine Lord descended to the mortal realm to undergo his trials, he gave me his Little Carp as a love token.

To my surprise, the carp leaped out of the fish tank and followed him into the mortal world.

In my panic, I followed suit. Eighteen years later, amidst a vast expanse of heavy snow.

Standing atop the city walls, Crown Prince Wei fired an arrow that pierced straight through my bridal sedan.

“Yue Nu, it is you who are shameless, insisting on marrying me. I already have someone in my heart.”

The woman in red he held in his arms was that very Carp Spirit. I knew mortals could not see through her disguise.

To help him complete his trials, I stepped out of the sedan and entered the Wei Palace on foot.

Three years later, the Carp Spirit became pregnant, triggering a Heavenly Punishment.

Believing slanderous lies, Crown Prince Wei had me bound to the city walls to endure eighteen strikes of Heavenly Thunder in her stead.

At that moment, my heart turned to ash. I summoned Siming Jun. “Siming, it is time to return to the Nine Heavens.”

After graduating from college, I moved into a shared rental with my rich second-generation boyfriend and started a business from scratch.

I was the one building the company. He was the one suffering through it with me.

Every day, I came home exhausted to our small apartment.

And every time, he would have a fragrant, steaming meal ready for me.

Life was hard, but we both felt happy.

Until one day, I saw the barrage comments:

[Oh my god, the male lead is still here suffering through this startup with his ex-girlfriend. When is the female lead finally going to show up?]

[The male lead is still too young. His parents already paved a golden road for him, but he refuses to take it and insists on staying in a rental eating instant noodles with his ex.]

[It’s fine. Once the ex-girlfriend’s startup fails and she starts drinking and getting violent, and later even cheats on him right in front of him, he’ll obediently go back and inherit the family business.]

[But honestly, summer, a rental apartment, bare skin, heads down and working hard… the sexual tension between these two is insane.]

My mother was a woman from another world.

Right beneath my imperial father’s nose, she taught me that all people are equal and that women hold up half the sky.

Because the emperor doted on her, he made an exception and let me, a princess, attend the imperial school.

Once I learned to read, everything became clear.

I understood exactly why my brothers fought for the throne.

Artifact-conservation student Lin Fu wakes in the body of the lowest-ranking maid in the imperial harem, where saving a priceless cup brings her to the attention of Emperor Qin Zhi.

Protected by the kind Empress Shen Chenxiang, she finds purpose restoring paintings, porcelain, and other damaged treasures inside a palace that destroys people far more easily than objects.

After tragedy takes her benefactor, Lin Fu is pulled into a dangerous struggle among the Emperor, the Shen clan, and the Yan clan.

To avenge the dead and protect the children entrusted to her, she must survive as the Emperor’s favored consort without allowing the harem to turn her into another weapon.

From shattered porcelain to broken friendships, every relic she repairs reveals a history of love, betrayal, and the things no pair of clever hands can ever restore.

On the day my husband ascended to immortality, a shaft of divine light struck me in the eyes.

From that moment on, I was blind.

The light coursed through my body day after day.

The pain left me unable to hold my chopsticks or even walk.

Every breath felt like needles piercing me.

Only later did I learn the truth.

My husband’s junior martial sister resented me for being his mortal love trial, so she had decided to teach me a lesson.

My husband knew exactly what she had done, yet he gathered her into his arms and sighed indulgently.

“How could you be so willful?”

“You must never do this again.”

“And in three years, you will lift the spell from her.”

His junior sister threw herself happily into his embrace and declared that he was the best senior brother in the world.

My heart felt carved apart, but my eyes were so dry I could not shed a single tear.

Once, I had still held out hope for my husband.

I had thought he did not know.

It turned out he knew everything.

He had simply chosen her and abandoned me.

Later, I ascended too.

On my first day in the immortal realm, I borrowed the power of the welcoming light and destroyed his junior sister’s eyes.

Ever since Noble Lady Lin fell into the water, it was as if she had become a different person.

She had originally been born lowly and kept to herself, so much so that the Emperor barely noticed there was someone like her in the Harem.

But now, she had won His Majesty’s favor.

In just half a year, she was exceptionally promoted to Noble Consort.

Whenever it was just the two of us, she would flash me a brazen smile.

“Lu Lan, sooner or later, your seat as Empress will be mine.”

She was a transmigrator. I couldn’t beat her.

So the next day, I pushed another consort into the water.

And just like that, in the Harem under my command, there were now two transmigrators.

I went to great lengths to win over Zhou Tingshen, but he treated me badly.

He never made our relationship public, never took the initiative to share anything about his life with me, and never showed me any care or concern.

At first, I thought he was just reserved by nature.

That was until the day I heard someone ask him:

“Brother Shen, why does that old classmate of yours keep looking for you? You two aren’t dating, are you?”

“Isn’t our great beauty Du chasing after you? I thought you two were the couple.”

After a long pause, Zhou Tingshen finally spoke. “We’re not dating.”

I picked a time and asked Zhou Tingshen out, then seriously tried to discuss it with him.

“Zhou Tingshen, could you… pretend we were never together?”

A flash of impatience crossed his face. “What are you making a fuss about now?”

“I’m not making a fuss. Just take it as me begging you. I can’t let my friends know this is the kind of relationship I’m in. They’ll laugh themselves to death at me. It’s too humiliating…”