Pregnancy

Men with big butts are good at bearing children. That’s what my mom always taught me.

She said that no matter how disobedient a man was, once you got him pregnant, he’d do whatever you said.

As luck would have it, my boyfriend abducted me and took me deep into the mountains, demanding that I bear children for his bachelor buddies.

“You’re not allowed to stop until you’ve had eight sons!”

Eight? I passed out from sheer delight.

Well, in that case, don’t mind if I do…

When I was fifteen, my royal father chose me from among his many daughters.

I was Xizhou’s brightest pearl, yet he sent me by carriage across the Gobi, the desert, and the grasslands.

I was to travel to the distant Central Plains and marry their Crown Prince.

The Crown Prince had his moonlight and his childhood sweetheart.

But the bright moon must sink, and green plums must ripen.

In the end, only the pearl’s light endures.

The boy I’d secretly loved was expelled from school for protecting his childhood sweetheart.

Years later, I became the most famous talent manager in the industry and ran into him waiting tables at a restaurant.

He had long since forgotten me, but I still wanted to give him a chance. I asked him, “Xie Xingyun, do you want to be an actor?”

He came with me.

It took me three years to transform him from a waiter carrying plates into the entertainment industry’s hottest new star.

Then the childhood sweetheart he’d protected all those years ago came looking for him.

My older brother was eighteen when he was married off as a live-in son-in-law to my sister-in-law.

My sister-in-law said that if he gave her a child, she’d reward him by letting him continue his studies.

Later, the day my brother passed the imperial exam, Father still refused to give up and asked,

“Son, now can my grandson change his surname back to mine?”

Chapter 0

I am a Noble Consort, and I can hear the Emperor’s thoughts.

In my previous life, I followed those thoughts and fulfilled his every wish.

I thought I would climb the ranks and maybe even snag the seat of Empress for myself.

In the end, the Emperor turned out to be the worst kind of bastard.

He rejected every kindness offered to him and insisted on courting disaster, falling in love with a Fisher Girl outside the palace.

Against all opposition, he made her Empress.

And because he feared I would harm his Empress, he had me sentenced to death in advance.

After being reborn and hearing the Emperor’s thoughts again,

I leaked the information to my sworn enemies.

[His Majesty breaks out in hives whenever he eats lychees.]

[His Majesty plans to punish your family.]

[His Majesty cannot stop praising your younger sister.]

Consort An and Consort Shu were stunned.

“Sister, what should I do? Please, Sister, hurry and think of something!”

In my senior year of high school, the school beauty, Song Shuyao, once came to me to borrow money for medical treatment and asked me not to tell anyone.

As it turned out, she used it to get an abortion. She hemorrhaged and died on the operating table of a shady little clinic.

Years later, Lu Jingnian-the untouchable top student everyone had once admired from afar-pursued me obsessively and proposed to me.

Then, when I was eight months pregnant, he locked me in a basement in the suburbs.

He cut open my belly while I was still alive and said, “This is what you owe Yaoyao and our child.”

Only then did I learn that before Song Shuyao died, she had held his hand and told him not to blame me.

But he was convinced I had deliberately killed the woman he loved and their child.

That day, I died under Lu Jingnian’s butcher knife, my eyes wide open in hatred.

Then, carrying a hatred vast enough to drown the heavens, I returned to the day Song Shuyao came to borrow money from me.

After Pei Xingzhi had Li Pin beaten to death with rods for the sake of the Noble Consort,
I was ill for three months.

When I recovered, it was as if I had become a different person.

I no longer racked my brains to win his favor, no longer grew jealous over which concubine’s palace he would dine in that day. I became cautious, careful, and obedient to the rules.

When Pei Xingzhi summoned me again to attend his bed,
word came from Changchun Palace that the Noble Consort was having a nightmare and wanted him to keep her company.

In the moment of hesitation before he could decide, I had already fetched his cloak for him and fastened it in place, speaking softly:

“The roads are slippery in the snow, Your Majesty. Please watch your step.”

Pei Xingzhi suddenly seized my hand, his voice slightly hoarse. “You’re not going to ask me to stay?”

I smiled gently. “I would not dare sway Your Majesty’s will.”

After all, every time I tried to keep him before,
he had never stayed.

I was abducted as a child, but because I had fair skin and a pretty face,

I was carefully trained into a temptress made to ensnare wealthy young masters.

That night, in the most extravagant luxury suite in Macau,

Zhao Rongzheng lay there, languid and sated, his gaze falling on me as I wept like a flower in the rain.

“Stop crying. I’ll pay off your brother’s debt for him. From now on, you stay with me.”

I took the money, coaxed him with sweet words, and then vanished without a trace.

Five years later, news that the Seventh Young Master of the Zhao Family was divorcing his wife to marry a widow shook all of Hong Kong.

Zhao Rongzheng, now the man in power over the Zhao Family, personally stepped forward to handle this sordid scandal.

Seated high above me, he looked down at my meek, submissive, pitifully vulnerable appearance.

“What is it? Does every man in the Zhao Family have to fall into your hands at least once?”

At my elder sister’s engagement banquet, the man who was meant to become my brother-in-law suddenly turned to propose to me instead.

“Wrong. I wish to marry the Second Miss.”

Everyone was thrown off by this turn of events, not knowing how to react, but once they recovered they forced a smile and congratulated me.

Only my elder sister came to find me late at night. “In a past life, he and I spent over fifty years together. It was only after I married him that I learned there was another woman he loved.”

“For those fifty years, we fought constantly because of that woman, until we grew to despise each other. If you don’t want to marry him, sister can help you reject this match.”

But I declined her kindness and still intended to marry him.

I have no romantic feelings for him. Whether he loved one woman or several was something my elder sister cared about; I did not.

At seventeen, the old madam gave the head maids in the courtyard two choices.

Either become concubines to the masters of the various branches, or become the wife of a steward from the outer quarters.

There were four of us. Three chose to be concubines; only Yuchuan chose the steward.

She asked me why. I lowered my head and thought silently:

Because I don’t want my children to be servants anymore.