Schemes And Conspiracies

After Wei Xuan and I had tormented each other for most of our lives, he finally grew tired.

On his deathbed, he refused even to see me.

He had our children deliver his last words instead.

“In my next life, I would rather be your brother for a lifetime than spend half a life as your resentful husband, with both of us losing the ones we truly love.”

Sure enough, the moment he returned to the past, he rushed to free his childhood sweetheart from prison and showered her with tenderness.

Then he forced his mother to take me as a goddaughter.

Smiling, I accepted the jade pendant and bowed with perfect obedience.

“May all be well with you, Elder Brother.”

His hand faltered, then dropped stiffly to his side.

Before long, we were each betrothed to someone else.

He remained in the capital.

I was bound for Lin’an.

Yet on the day my boat departed, he tore off his wedding robes, leaped into the river with no thought for his life, and clung desperately to the gunwale, begging me to stay.

In my third year as Empress Dowager, my greatest fear is not the court officials, nor the brushes held by the court historians.

It is the moments when I wake from a dream in the dead of night and instinctively call out the name of Xie Wuyang.

As the palace lanterns flicker to life, I am reminded that three years ago, I was the one who personally wrote the secret order sending him to his death at Yanhui Ridge.

My mother was a woman from another world.

Right beneath my imperial father’s nose, she taught me that all people are equal and that women hold up half the sky.

Because the emperor doted on her, he made an exception and let me, a princess, attend the imperial school.

Once I learned to read, everything became clear.

I understood exactly why my brothers fought for the throne.

I am the only mortal in a xianxia drama—the lowly tool sacrificed to an immortal-demon romance.

I schemed, endured every humiliation, and fought only to survive, yet after my death, every immortal despised me.

“Dying was one thing. What a pity she sullied the snow.”

After being reborn, I watched the live comments reveal the plot, swallowed my blood and tears, and began playing the most fragile, kindhearted heroine imaginable.

Little by little, I tested the personas the audience loved most, until they adored me—until they went mad for me.

Then I would lay this world of immortals and demons beneath my feet.

Who could ever guess that Fairy Xueyi, the peerless prodigy unseen in ten thousand years, was only a mortal?

After Huang You wakes in the middle of the night and overhears two ghosts talking about hidden money, greed pulls her into a deadly game of fortune, curses, and borrowed fates.

Her roommate Wanting insists the ghosts are Water Ghosts looking for a Substitute, but each warning only makes the promised wealth harder to resist.

As more secrets surface, Huang You realizes that both the ghosts and Wanting are hiding their true intentions.

To survive, she must decide whom to trust before her Eight Characters, her life, and even her body are stolen by forces that have been circling her from the start.