Military

For six years after marrying into Xiping Marquis Manor, I spent six years a living widow.

My husband was stationed at the Northern Frontier, yet somehow found time in the midst of his duties to fall madly in love with another woman.

She was beautiful and strong, able to ride tall warhorses, wield a long spear, and read the art of war.

She fought shoulder to shoulder with my husband on the battlefield, killing the enemy.

The people and soldiers of the border city all called her the General’s Lady.

As for me, the true General’s Lady, no one even knew I existed. She was the eagle of the Northern Frontier.

I was a sparrow trapped in the inner courtyard.

But disaster was already creeping closer.

The general saved a woman.

Then he asked me to surrender my place as his lawful wife.

I held the divorce paper and laughed coldly.

“Gu Nianwu, success has gone to your head.”

You may command a thousand troops, but I command ten thousand ghosts.

Without me, where would all your glorious victories have come from?

After disguising myself as a man and joining the army in my husband’s place, I failed to endure the loneliness and kept a lover on the side.

When the war ended and I returned home, I discovered that my husband had taken a concubine too.

Well, now I didn’t feel guilty anymore. We were even!

But then I saw that beautiful concubine.

I was utterly stunned.

Can someone please tell me why my lover had become my husband’s concubine?

I married a pig butcher in my young mistress’s place. On our wedding night, I said, “From now on, you slaughter the pigs and I’ll sell the meat. As husband and wife, we’ll work together and make a good life for ourselves. When we have children, we’ll send them to school and do our best to free them from the fate of becoming butchers.”

Then my rather handsome husband pressed a hand to his forehead and laughed.

After they discovered I was not their real daughter, they began withholding everything—my food, my clothes, even the charcoal for my fire.

My betrothal to the Pei family became the only thing I could rely on.

But Pei Xuan’s moods were impossible to predict.

A single word from me would often anger him enough to send a letter breaking off our engagement.

I spent my days in fear and my nights in worry.

At last, I fell gravely ill.

When I woke, the lady of the household stood before me.

“A captain serving under my uncle commands a hundred men.”

“His birth is humble, but he is young and brave.

He has distinguished himself in battle again and again.”

Holding the letter of repudiation, she looked pained.

“The Peis may be an excellent family, but your present standing makes you an unsuitable match.

You live in constant fear.”

“What are wealth and glory worth beside your life?”

“We were mother and daughter once.

I truly want to find you a good husband.”

I pressed a hand to my chest and nodded through my tears.

“I understand, my lady.”

“I will marry him.”

In my previous life, before my elder sister entered the palace to become empress, she bent her head to tell me, “Ah Ting, when I’m gone, you must take care of yourself.”

I promised her through my tears.

Five years later, the empress fell out of favor.

Her enemies had her raped, and that night she hanged herself.

The emperor decreed that the deposed empress of the Meng family was without virtue.

No one in the capital was permitted to wear mourning white.

I went to beg forgiveness on behalf of the Meng family.

Struck by my beauty, His Majesty took me into the palace, where I became the most favored woman in his harem.

The day I dragged him into the flames to die with me, he closed his hands around my throat in a rage.

“I have treated your family well!

For your sake, I even overlooked that defiled, deposed empress!”

I let the fire climb over me as though I could feel nothing.

“I didn’t.”

When I woke again, it was the day my sister entered the palace.

She stroked my head, then turned toward the palace that devoured people.

I stripped off my fine clothes and jewelry, then turned toward the bloodshed of an army camp.

Let us see whether that imperial bastard would still dare call her “deposed empress” when I surrounded his palace with my army.

When the Imperial Astrologer declares twin princesses an ill omen, one of them must be sent to the brutal frontier.

In their first life, Princess Jinghua remains in the palace, only to be poisoned by her embittered sister.

Reborn together, her sister seizes the chance to stay, certain that Jinghua will suffer in her place.

Instead, Jinghua grows into a formidable warrior and strategist while her sister’s stolen palace life collapses around her.

With Great Zhou weakened by betrayal and Jiang’s monstrous emperor demanding a bride, Jinghua transforms a marriage procession into an army—and sets her sights on the throne itself.

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.

When I was eight, a lame Daoist wandered into our village.

Mother took pity on him and poured him a cup of water.

He declared that of the three of us siblings, one would become the supreme sovereign, one would become the mother of the realm, and one would stand in a doorway and sell her smiles.

My elder brother had studied since childhood, so naturally he was destined to become the supreme sovereign.

My little sister was beautiful, so naturally she would become the mother of the realm.

And naturally, the one fated to sell her smiles from a doorway had to be me.