Politics

On his deathbed, the late emperor entrusted me with his heir—and had me bound and dragged back overnight to assist the new emperor.

Isolated and alone, the new emperor glared through bloodshot eyes, snapping at anyone who came near like a wolf cub.

“Better that I betray the world than let the world betray me!”

My eyes lit up.

The new emperor, later: “On second thought, the world hasn’t wronged me quite that badly.”

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.

For four years, Emperor Pei Guannan has refused to fill his harem, and the court blames the man at his side.

Xie Yuanzhen has shared his hardships for fifteen years, asking for neither power nor reward.

But loyalty cannot give the dynasty an heir, and love cannot silence the ministers.

To protect the emperor’s name, Yuanzhen leaves the palace to serve the people.

Across snowbound roads and the endless rain of Nanyue, the words they cannot say become letters—and a promise to live to eighty.

At fourteen, naive Ah Yuan enters the imperial palace beside her fearless friend Xiaochun, believing the two of them can survive anything together.

But as Xiaochun rises through the emperor’s favor, the women around them are drawn into a harem where affection is political currency and every child can become a weapon.

Ah Yuan survives by holding fast to kindness, even as loyalty turns into leverage, ambition demands blood, and the people she loves make choices she cannot undo.

Across a lifetime shaped by palace secrets, she bears witness to the cost of clinging to power—and to the quiet courage it takes to walk away.

While we were fleeing the famine, my elder brother, He Peizhi, insisted on taking in a mysterious mother and daughter, heedless of the danger to our whole family.

Later, the young woman was carried off by bandits and vanished without a trace, and my brother blamed me for refusing to save her.

Years afterward, his success brought us neither relief nor reunion, only Bai Yuanqing’s merciless revenge.

Given another life, I will no longer work myself to the bone for a brother who cares only for his precious Qingqing.

In the year when I was at my most spineless, the Noble Consort called me oversensitive.

That very night, I took a rope to her bedchamber, intending to hang myself beside her bed.

Fortunately, she found me in time and rescued me in tears.

Later, a beauty newly arrived at the palace called me as stupid as a pig.

I said nothing.

I simply took out my rope.

The Noble Consort said nothing either.

She just kept slapping her.

“Even I daren’t scold her.

Who do you think you are?”

I paid for my fiancé’s journey to the capital to sit the imperial examinations.

He came back with a reward far greater than first place.

During the palace examination, His Majesty saw a face identical to his own.

He confirmed that my fiancé was his long-lost eldest son.

Restored to the imperial family, he was named crown prince.

Naturally, his engagement to me—a mere concubine-born daughter of a seventh-rank county magistrate—could no longer stand.

But he remembered what he owed me.

He took me as his sister.

He even found me another husband: a marquis’s heir.

He himself became engaged to the chief minister’s legitimate daughter, who would be his crown princess.

Everything had worked out for both of us.

Thanks to his protection, I spent five blissful years in my husband’s household.

My mother-in-law dared not subject me to her rules.

My husband dared not entertain other women.

Everyone treated me with respect.

Until, on an afternoon as ordinary as any other, he was deposed.

I was sent into the palace because I wasn’t clever.

Before I left, Mother warned me never to fall for the emperor.

I asked her what falling for someone meant.

“It means seeing him makes you happy.”

Puzzled, I tilted my head and asked: “Happier than eating braised pork?”

“A hundred times happier.”

I immediately thumped my chest and promised I would never fall for anyone as long as I lived.

After all, nothing in the world tasted better than braised pork.

Then one day, the noble consort everyone called arrogant and overbearing smiled and pressed a sweet cake into my hand.

I had been the most pampered princess since childhood, yet everyone called me brutal, cold, inhuman.

Even my younger brother, now emperor, had slowly begun to distance himself from me.

He said he had found his real elder sister.

I smiled at Princess Ronghua.

She did bear a certain resemblance to my imperial brother.

Indeed.

A pair of bastards passing themselves off as imperial blood.

The year I turned fifteen, I buried my foster mother and entered the imperial palace.

I became a princess.

They said the late empress had cut me from her womb before setting herself on fire.

That I looked exactly like her.

How could I not?

Fifteen years of going hungry at every meal and swallowing medicine every day had seen to that.

At least all that effort had paid off.

I had finally wormed my way into the palace!