Politics

I was the daughter of a male courtesan and a prostitute, born of their illicit affair.

For someone of my birth, life was supposed to mean servitude or prostitution.

My parents often urged me, “While you’re still young and beautiful, coax some wealthy, powerful patron into buying your freedom.

You can become his concubine.

That would be better than selling your looks in a brothel.”

But I was young and proud then.

I refused to become a powerful man’s plaything, to spend my whole life at someone else’s mercy.

So before the madam could make me take clients, I escaped from Rouge House.

The general returned from war with a pregnant woman in tow.

I closed the memorial before me and asked Lin Jingfeng coldly, “Shall I grant you a marriage?”

“You are the only woman I wish to marry, Your Majesty,” he said calmly.

I hurled the imperial seal at his forehead.

“I am the emperor!

Have you no decency?”

Blood wound from his temple to his brow.

He wiped it away without a thought and smiled.

“I guarded your bitter, frozen border for three years.

At the catastrophe of Yanxu, I faced an army alone for you.

We had an agreement: the realm is yours, and you are mine.”

His words were quiet and measured, but a bloodthirsty light burned in his eyes.

This young general, this madman, was so beautiful he might have stepped out of a painting.

I stared at him, unable to speak.

Five years after forcing me into his palace, Xiao Heng finally tired of me.

His new favorite stared at me with innocent curiosity.

“Is this lady one of Your Majesty’s consorts too?”

Xiao Heng gave a contemptuous laugh.

“Her?

Used goods who’d already been married.

A woman like that has no place among my consorts.”

I said nothing, merely lowered my head and bowed respectfully.

At that inopportune moment, I remembered his hand around my throat, his eyes red as he enunciated every word: “You and I are going to torment each other for the rest of our lives.

Even if you die, you’ll die here beside me.”

I had fallen for a shadow guard.

The father of my child knelt before me, begging the Empress Dowager to grant him the favor of marrying the woman he loved.

My nails nearly broke the skin of my palms, yet I smiled and asked who had won his heart.

He said Zeng Zi’an, Grand Secretary Zeng’s only daughter, was the love of his life.

But Zeng Zi’an no longer existed.

All that remained was me, consumed by the hunger for power, looking down upon the world.

The princess went out in search of amusement and was captured by the enemy.

On the battlefield, they demanded a hostage in exchange.

Lu Wei, our commanding general, turned to me—the woman standing beside him disguised as a man.

I had spent more than ten years at his side, risking my life with him and helping him win battle after battle.

Only he knew I was a woman.

He had even promised to spend his life with me.

But when he saw the enemy’s blade against the princess’s throat, his anguish was plain.

“Once we’ve brought her back, I’ll come for you.”

He handed me over himself.

By the time that blade reached my neck, he already had the rescued princess in his arms.

Dragged into the enemy camp, I waited day and night for him.

Instead, the news arrived that he was about to marry her.

That evening, I revealed to Xie Lin, the enemy emperor, that I was a woman—and chose to be with him.

Later, Lu Wei finally declared war, announcing that he was coming to rescue me.

Watching Xie Lin make our baby laugh, I sent back a languid reply: “Today is my son’s one-month celebration.

Don’t spoil it.”

Lu Wei lost his mind.

The Noble Consort told me she had traveled here from another world, and that we were all characters in a novel.

She was the heroine, I was the wicked second female lead, and the emperor was the hero.

She was determined to win him over.

Sure enough, she took his undivided favor, then my authority over the palace women.

She even wanted my throne as empress.

“What do you have to rely on but a man’s affection?”

I had finally had enough.

This woman from another world had no power whatsoever.

How dared she reach for my position?

“A sparrow is still a sparrow.

Even if I gave up this phoenix’s nest, could you hold it?”

My ancestors had helped found the dynasty.

My great-grandfather had saved an emperor’s life and received the extraordinary honor of burial in the imperial mausoleum.

My father had inherited the title of duke, and my elder brother was now a chancellor of the first rank.

“You call this ‘palace intrigue,’ do you?

Then let us see what you have to pit against me.”

I was reborn on the very night Liang Zhiyan and Zhao Lingyi had arranged to elope.

As his fiancée, I gave him money for the journey.

Grateful to me, he slipped out of the city with her under cover of darkness.

What awaited them was a life of sleeping rough and grinding poverty.

He would never again have the chance to wield the power he had held in my previous life.

During the autumn hunt, my fiancé’s precious first love deliberately shot an arrow through my hair.

The ladies around us went white with shock.

But her eyes reddened, and she shrank behind my fiancé.

“My arrow went astray.

I didn’t mean to hurt her.

But she stood in front of my quarry and wouldn’t move.

Surely she bears some of the blame?”

My fiancé shielded her and shouted at me: “Weapons don’t have eyes.

If you can’t dodge them on a hunting ground, that’s your own incompetence.”

I merely murmured assent.

Then I raised my bow.

Three arrows whistled from it at once.

They pierced the left sides of the pair’s chests and the venomous snake behind them.

The two collapsed into pools of blood, their faces paper-white.

I picked up the snake and gave them a cold smile.

“Why didn’t you dodge?

Didn’t feel like it?”

My mother taught me never to trust a man’s affection.

When a marquis’s family chose me to marry their reckless third son, I saw my chance to rise.

He already kept a pregnant mistress, but I had no intention of fighting her for his love.

I would save her, secure my place, and make myself indispensable.

In a house full of secrets, every crisis could become a rung on my ladder.