Imperial Harem

I could hear the Noble Consort’s thoughts.

Inside her head, she cursed the emperor: “That decrepit bastard!”

“He’s much better at lecturing me than he ever is in bed!”

I looked up in shock.

She was nestled sweetly in the emperor’s arms, feeding him a slice of pear.

Inside her head, she was still raging: “Would someone please poison him already?”

“I’m so damn tired of serving him…”

I am a blood demon, and the young demon I raised with my own hands poisoned me and carved out my core.

She fell for a mortal man, stole another woman’s identity, and entered the imperial palace.

Then she reduced the emperor’s wife—the woman who had once shared all his hardships—to a beggar.

She thought that would make her the heroine of the story.

Demons do not usually pity humans.

But she dug out my ten-thousand-year demon core just to steal a man?!

I would feed it to a dog before I let her have it.

For three whole years, I took contraceptive medicine because I was terrified of having children.

Sob, sob—we koi lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.

No matter how rich that dog emperor was, I feared even he could not afford to raise them all.

After refusing to enter the imperial harem in her elder sister’s place, Shen Wanning awakens in the past with every memory of the life that destroyed her.

Emperor Qin Zheng remembers that life too, and his determination to reclaim her draws Shen Wanning back into the palace she tried to escape.

Surrounded by a resentful sister, ambitious consorts, and powerful men who mistake her compliance for dependence, she turns their desires against them and plots a ruthless path to freedom.

On our wedding night, the prince was summoned away to the side courtyard by his cousin.

I had already taken off my bridal robes and slept soundly until morning.

After all, neither of us was the heroine.

Why should one supporting villainess make life difficult for another?

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.

Mother often taught me, “A principal wife must have the grace to accept others.”

I was born into a prestigious family as its eldest legitimate daughter. From the day I entered this world, it was destined that even if my future husband was not a prince, nobleman, general, or minister, he would at least be the eldest legitimate son of a family equal to mine in status.

A man destined to inherit his family’s legacy and become the head of his clan was, in all likelihood, never going to be monogamous.

And so, from my earliest childhood until the day I married, I heard the same lesson over and over again: “A principal wife must have the grace to accept others.”

My father wanted me to enter the palace in my elder sister’s place, so I packed my valuables that very night and ran away.

I left the capital and traveled south toward Jiangnan through the turn of winter and spring.

Thin snow and frost-laced woods followed me most of the way, but by the time I reached Jiangnan, the grass was lush and orioles filled the air.

Drunk on the spring scenery, I spent my days roaming mountains and rivers to my heart’s content.

One day, I was crouched beside a food stall with shining eyes, waiting for a braised pork knuckle to come out of the pot, when hurried footsteps erupted behind me.

A hand seized my ear and hauled upward until I had no choice but to rise with my face twisted in pain.

My father strode out from among the servants with a mocking smile. “Yin Chuchu, agree to enter the palace for your sister, and I can overlook your running away this time.”

The emperor had ordered the Yin family to send a maiden to the imperial selection, and by custom, my eldest sister should have gone.

But she had been sickly since childhood, and Father and his concubine could not bear to send her into that man-eating palace, so they set their sights on me instead.

My own mother had died giving birth to me, and as the unsupported second daughter of the Yin household, I was someone they could squeeze however they pleased.

Was my sister made of flesh and blood while I was not?

I lowered my head, gripping the silver hairpin I had bought at the night market the evening before. “And if I refuse?”

His wrinkles bunched into a hideous mask as he laughed. “Where could you possibly hide? Unless you die, I will turn over every inch of earth to find you.”

Understanding dawned across my face, and I dipped into a graceful bow. “Thank you for granting my wish, Father.”

Then, before his stunned eyes, I drove the silver hairpin into myself.

The early-spring wind slipped cold fingers beneath my clothes as I lay on the ground, regretting only that fragrant bowl of pork knuckle.

If it had finished cooking a little sooner, perhaps I could have eaten myself to death instead.

This was the seventh time I had died, and frankly, I was tired of it.

Pei Qi traded cities for a beauty, a grand gesture that became a legendary romance. Unfortunately, I was not that beauty, nor was I Pei Qi; I didn’t even know him.

My husband was merely a soldier defending the city. Because he refused to surrender, he died in that war, though the city was ultimately held.

The following year, when Pei Qi traded cities for his beauty, I became that beauty’s Foot-washing Maid.

My husband was an emperor too powerless to rule.

Again and again, his ministers stopped him from deposing the empress, naming our son crown prince, or making me his empress.

After he died, the empress imprisoned me in the Cold Palace for twenty years, keeping my son alive only as long as I survived.

On the day death finally took me, a eunuch came to say that my son had been given poisoned wine as well.

History called me a temptress and a demon who ruined the realm, though I had spent my life urging mercy and never harmed a soul.

My husband and I once promised to find each other in another life.

Yet when that life came, I avoided the crown prince’s gaze and did everything I could not to be chosen—only to hear him tell his mother, “I choose Eldest Miss Song as my crown princess.”