Royalty

After transmigrating into the neglected wife of an impoverished prince, Song Xuewei wants only enough money to escape and live in peace.

Instead, her sharp tongue and modern business tricks turn Prince Dun’s failing flower estate into a fortune—and draw her close to his gentle secondary consort, Lin Chuxue.

When imperial cruelty shatters their unlikely family, Xuewei is forced onto the revenge path fate intended for her.

Armed with a deadly bond that makes every corrupt courtier share her wounds, the self-proclaimed slacker walks into the New Year banquet ready to topple a dynasty.

In the third year after I married Zhao Yan, he made me Empress.

On one condition: I was not to lay a finger on the Imperial Noble Consort he held so dearly in his heart.

He seemed to have forgotten that I was his lawful wife first.

My imperial sister’s tomcat set his sights on my female cat and was rejected.

My mother consort ordered me to apologize, so I did.

The tom still refused to give up, and my cat’s other suitors beat him up.

Then Mother Consort told me to kill my “femme-fatale cat” to appease my sister…

This time, I refused.

“Think about who she is and where you stand,” Mother Consort advised.

Understanding dawned on me. “Oh. It’s because my mother is a coward.”

My mother might be a coward, but I was not.

Neither was my cat—she was, in fact, the greatest feline beauty in the entire imperial harem.

At fourteen, Ruan Qingzhu sells herself into the wealthy Jiang household for a few good meals, fully intending to run away. Her extraordinary martial arts soon make her the senior maid and bodyguard of the Jiang family’s spirited eldest young lady, Wanying. When an imperial marriage decree and a northern war threaten Wanying’s future with General Li, Qingzhu must choose between the freedom she once prized and the family she has found.

Xu Jiao built a merchant empire while funding her childhood sweetheart Song Yin’s path into officialdom.

When she catches him courting a powerful princess and learns he expects her to accept life as his concubine, she ends their engagement and turns her full ambition toward business.

Her talent carries her from imperial supplier to a third-rank official, drawing the respect—and carefully restrained affection—of Crown Prince Xiao Jingyi.

But as court factions close in, Xu Jiao must decide whether love behind palace walls can offer partnership instead of confinement.

Luo Yufu sacrifices her chastity to save Crown Prince Xiao Jinhe, only to dream of the future he will force upon her: a loveless marriage, betrayal, and death beneath a rain of arrows.

When she wakes before their engagement is sealed, she refuses to repeat that doomed fate.

But escaping the Crown Prince means untangling the Empress’s schemes, her sister’s hatred, a hidden conspiracy inside her own family, and Wanyan Shu—the ruthless hostage prince who once killed her in that dream, yet now seems determined to stand at her side.

This time, Luo Yufu will not wait for destiny to choose her ending.

I had transmigrated into an unfavored consort in the imperial harem.

Before I could even process that, a line of blood-red text appeared in midair:

[Your identity as a transmigrator has been exposed. Run!]

What?

My life came first, so I immediately made a break for it.

But along the way, as I fled, I discovered something.

The palace matrons, eunuchs, guards, and even the consorts from every palace began joining in one after another.

Every single one of them claimed to be a transmigrator.

Had I stumbled into a whole nest of transmigrators or what?

After we crossed the final palace gate, the emperor, leading the Imperial Guard, had us surrounded on all sides.

The young ruler looked at me at the head of the group and let out a cold laugh. “Su Cairen, are you planning to rebel?”

I glanced back.

Good heavens. The runaway party behind me had nearly grown into an army!

Before I was born, my father dreamed of a phoenix.

The very next moment, my mother went into labor.

Father therefore decided I had been born to a magnificent destiny.

And since good fortune ought to stay in the family, I would simply have to find myself a live-in son-in-law.

I am the vicious supporting character in a novel.

Yet I have been forced to watch one transmigrator after another take over my body, throw away all dignity, and grovel before a little beast already rotten to the core, all because they dreamed of saving him.

They called it redeeming the villain—showing him the warmth and beauty of the world.

Without exception, every one of them was betrayed once the little beast rose to power, and every one died without an intact corpse.

Now the cycle has begun again.

I expected another laughable attempt at redemption, but this time, before the villain could grow into his power, the new transmigrator drove a blade straight through his heart.

Blood flecked her face, making her smile look dark and uncanny.

“I’d already made a mortal enemy of him, so why not kill him and end the threat for good?”

“This redemption game is painfully dull.”

On my birthday, the Fourth Princess and I both set our hearts on the same pomegranate-blossom crown.

At a loss, Father told each of us to choose a young man from the imperial clan to ride and shoot on our behalf.

Whoever struck the kite first after it was released would win.

I chose Qin Yan, my dearest childhood friend.

I knew he could hit the mark with his eyes closed, and I was certain he would make my wish come true.

But all three of his arrows missed by a hair.

I hid in the attic and wept after losing, until Qin Yan came to find me and finally snapped in exasperation, “That enormous gold crown would never have suited you. Jade is better. Plain, pure, and far easier on the eyes.”

“Stop competing with the Fourth Princess over everything.”

Then, with the solemn patience of someone offering hard-won wisdom, he said, “Jiajia, you need to understand that sometimes being right for something matters more than winning it.”

I took his lesson to heart.

So years later, when Father held trials to choose my prince consort, Qin Yan placed first in both the civil and martial examinations.

And I still did not choose him.