Power Struggle

When the master hosts a banquet, he often has beautiful women serve wine.

If a guest refuses to drink, the beauty is executed on the spot.

Unluckily, I am that unfortunate beauty.

Tonight’s guest of honor is an aloof and distinguished scholar, Yan Xuan.

First cup: he complained the wine was cold and wouldn’t drink. A sword swung, a head fell.

Second cup: he complained the server was vulgar and wouldn’t drink. Blood splattered on the spot.

By the third cup, the serving maid pleaded pitifully, but his expression never changed.

Now it’s my turn to offer wine.

The swordsman beside me sharpened his blade ominously.

I raised my hand and splashed the wine across his face.

“Are you just asking for it?”

When the palace announced that I was being elevated to Noble Consort, everyone in my family looked grim.

Everyone understood the principle that great merit can threaten the throne.

My father’s achievements were already so great that there was nothing left to reward him with.

This rank of Noble Consort was a naked warning.

If I wanted to keep my whole family safe, I had to hand the emperor a weakness of mine-something he could hold over me and use to put his mind at ease.

Father, Mother, your daughter is off to be arrogant by imperial command!

Starting today, I’m going to be the most outrageously overbearing little menace in the harem!

The Young General, who avoids women, took a concubine.

The Crown Prince asked me, “Why does she look so much like my beloved consort?”

I smiled coquettishly, “I just have a common face.”

My husband is someone who transmigrated into a novel.

What a coincidence. So am I.

He said, “I’m the protagonist of a male-oriented webnovel, so what I’ve gathered isn’t a harem, but various factions.”

I said, “I’m the protagonist of a female-oriented webnovel, so all those various factions of yours love me but can never have me.”

He said I was joking.

I burst out laughing. “You caught me. I was joking. The truth is, they’ve already had me.”

I used every trick in the book to marry my wife.

In front of others, she refused to acknowledge me. Behind closed doors, she kept me at an even colder distance.

I knew she hated me.

But I could live with being hated by her.

Until one afternoon, at the dining table, she suddenly said to me, “He’s back from overseas. We… should spend some time apart.”

I froze.

From the day my wife and I met until now, seven years had passed.

And I still hadn’t managed to warm her heart.

Looking at her indifferent face, I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. “Okay.”

She had always been efficient and decisive. That very night, the villa was emptied out, leaving only me behind… She had even taken the housekeeper with her.

I drank beneath the moon until dawn, yet my mind only grew clearer.

I had waited all these years. Suffered all these years. What right did I have to give up now?

Who the hell did some bastard back from overseas think he was, daring to compete with me?!

When I was thirteen, in order to serve the distinguished guest who had come from afar, I smeared lard on the soles of the lead dancer’s shoes, making her slip and embarrass herself on the spot.

After that, the beauty sent to his room became me, just as I had wished.

Yet that impossibly refined nobleman merely looked me over twice, then said a single sentence that left me chilled from head to toe, as if a basin of ice water had been poured over me.

“I saw everything just now.”

After our entire household was seized, My Lady became pregnant with our enemy’s child.

“What does a mere blood feud over a murdered father amount to?”

Faced with my disbelieving question, she gently stroked her swollen belly.

Her face was full of happiness.

Everyone said I was blessed by fate.

Born behind vermilion gates, I rested my head on jade and wrapped myself in brocade.

At three, I began my education, studying essays on how to govern the realm.

At five, I held an abacus, calculating the empire’s grain and coin.

At twelve, I debated the scholars in the clan school and, though I was a girl, took first place above them all.

At fifteen, during my coming-of-age banquet, warlords from three regions offered mountains and rivers as my betrothal gifts.

And yet, I chose the hardest road of all.

The day I eloped with a lowly soldier who guarded the city gate, the entire city laughed at me for debasing myself.

After one night of passion, I was stricken from the Yin Clan’s rolls, my spotless reputation ruined.

No one knew that the soldier was the last surviving bloodline of the imperial house.

They were fighting for the realm.

What I was fighting for was the right to take history’s iron brush in hand and rewrite the world with a name that could not be questioned.

On the day I came of age, the snow fell heavily, and he said he wanted to break off our engagement.

Later, he knelt before me and begged me to spare him.

They drove me out of the family.

Later, with my own hands, I sent them into military exile.

After I went blind, lines of broken, disjointed text began to appear before my eyes.

[The princess is so pitiful. She injured her eyes saving her cousin, but right now, that very cousin is next door, rolling around in bed with the princess’s brother.]

[Too bad the princess can’t see. If she could, she should immediately bring people over and catch them in the act.]

My cousin had lost her mother when she was young.

The Empress Mother pitied her and had her enter the palace to serve as my study companion.

But several of my imperial brothers were always bullying her.

They liked seeing her teary-eyed, timid, and pitiful. I stood up for her, only to have my eyes injured by one of my imperial brothers.

I became blind. So it turned out that, behind my back, they had already become so intimate.

I did not go and catch them in the act as those lines wanted.

Instead, I had someone inform my other two imperial brothers.

My cousin was so pitiful. Surely she deserved a few more people to love her.

Later, I ascended the throne as Empress Regnant.

My cousin received the love of three of my imperial brothers.

All of us had bright futures ahead.