Slow Romance

After overwork kills her in modern China, Zhang Yinhe is reborn as an abandoned infant in an ancient dynasty—and learns before she can even speak that freedom will never be given to her.

Sold into slavery, exchanged for profit, and repeatedly treated as someone else’s property, she survives every household, prison convoy, raider camp, and pleasure house with sharp instincts, shameless nerve, and the hard-earned skills of a former office worker.

Her fight for independence entangles her with Gu Zheng, a disgraced young master hiding a general’s true identity, and Anyang Ge, the quiet herdsman who once offered her a gentler life, but neither affection nor safety can tempt her back into a cage.

Armed with a false beard, a belt of pearls, and knowledge from a later age, Zhang Yinhe crosses war-torn borders in search of drought-resistant seeds and a future built on her own terms—even if Gu Zheng must first learn that love begins with an equal choice.

I was the bedchamber maid of the Second Master of the Marquis’ Mansion.

I heard he was quite handsome, but incapable of performing as a man, which had only made his temper stranger by the day.

So on the day I was to attend his bed, I stewed him an enormous pot of lamb tails. “My lord, as they say, for limp-tail syndrome, you supplement form with form…”

Before I could say another word, he lifted his eyes and smiled.

“Get out.”

I transmigrated into a sweet romance novel as the vicious female supporting character.

The story went like this.

The male lead loved his wife with all his heart.

But his wife fell ill, and her days were numbered.

Right then, his wife’s younger sister-that is, the original owner of this body-climbed into his bed.

His wife was magnanimous.

Not only did she not blame her sister, she even asked the male lead to marry her after she died.

Left with no choice, the male lead could only pinch his nose and agree.

And all of that was merely the setup for the entire sweet romance.

The real story was this: the male and female leads meet, and the female lead slowly gets the male lead to open his heart, helps him move on from the pain of losing his wife, and finally, happy ending!

As for the original owner, that eyesore, after being abandoned by everyone and cold-shouldered by her husband, she jumped off a building and killed herself, successfully clearing the way for the female lead.

When I was five, my father brought home a handsome deaf boy and made him my child husband.

I prided myself on being a progressive woman; since childhood, I always told people he was my brother. I never expected that, more than ten years later, one drunken night,

I slept with him – and forgot about it.

If you read a lot of historical romance novels, then I’m sure you’re familiar with this scene: An assassin draws his blade and lunges at the male lead.

At the critical moment, the female lead rushes forward and takes the stab for him.

She collapses into his arms, and he cries her name in panic…

When I transmigrated, this exact scene was unfolding.

You think I was the female lead? Nope.

And of course, I wasn’t the male lead either. I was the assassin.

Fu Shiyu, the crown prince of Beijing’s elite circles, was famously untouchable.

I worked as his chief interpreter for three years.

He still never managed to remember my full name.

Until the day I “ran into” him at the gallery he often visited, my fingertip brushing over his Adam’s apple.

“CEO Fu, your tie is crooked.”

He pinned me against the floor-to-ceiling window and bit my earlobe.

“Who are you calling CEO Fu?

“Say that again. I dare you.”

While everyone else was fighting for the Emperor’s favor, I built an intelligence station in the cold palace.

Until the day he died, the Emperor never knew that the woman stirring up the hidden currents of his harem was someone whose name he could not even remember.

I died in Yongxiang Alley during my third winter there.

Not truly died-only the kind of death where your name is crossed out in vermilion ink on the registry.

They said Noble Lady Li, who had once worked in the imperial garden and was later favored by His Majesty for her beauty, had gone mad.

Because on the late Empress’s memorial day, I let my hair hang loose, went barefoot, and sang a rousing rendition of “Liangzhou Ci.”

In truth, I was not mad. I had simply calculated that the Chief Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial would pass through the imperial garden that day.

Madness was the best pass in the cold palace, and the best armor.

On the day I moved into the West Third Institute, only one lame old eunuch came to lead the way.

The weeds in the courtyard rose past my knees, and the moss on the well curb was as thick as a velvet blanket.

My roommate, Attendant Li, had been thrown in here three years ago after offending the Imperial Consort.

When she saw me arrive, she did not even lift her eyelids. She only kept rubbing a length of hemp rope in her hands, its edges worn fuzzy.

I set my only bundle down on the crumbling earthen kang.

Inside were two sets of worn palace clothes, a bald writing brush, and half a ream of yellow paper.

The paper pasted over the window lattice had a hole in it the size of a fist. The north wind poured in with a howl, carrying the faint sound of pipes and flutes from far away.

I stared at that hole, but in my heart, a sliver of light slipped through.

In a madwoman’s world, there were the fewest rules.

Here, perhaps, I could live.

The man who had been sleeping in a separate room from me for the past six months was standing there with a pillow in his arms when I blocked him at the top of the stairs.

“The two of us together aren’t even fifty yet. We’re at the age when we should be all over each other. Is sleeping in separate rooms normal?”

He frowned at me, staring so hard that cold sweat prickled down my spine.

At last, he nodded. “Mm. It isn’t very normal.” Emboldened, I snatched the pillow out of his arms and grumbled, “You never used to be like this.”

“What did I use to be like?”

“You used to hold me every night when we slept, and before bed you’d call me your little baby.”

“…Did I?”

“You did!”

Look at me. Do these look like the eyes of a liar?

I’m a fanfic writer with nearly a million followers on Big-Eyed Guy.

My OTP? A wildly popular young actress and a famous up-and-coming director.

Soon, self-media accounts across the entire internet would be required to register under their real names, and verified influencers with over a million followers would be the first batch to go public.

The moment I got wind of it, I deleted my account and ran.

Because I was that wildly popular young actress.

But netizens loved drama far too much to let it go. They started posting gossip threads across every major social media platform: Girl, who the hell are you?

I transmigrated into a school angst novel-but I’m an emperor.

When my childhood friend fell in love with the new transfer student, I immediately bestowed a marriage upon them.

“Lowborn wretches, why aren’t you kneeling to thank Us for Our grace?”

The class monitor accused me of cheating and listed a whole pile of motives.

Me: “You don’t get the final say. I am the emperor. What I say goes.”

“Spout any more nonsense, and I will exterminate your entire clan.”

The school bully confessed to me and said he was willing to do anything for me.

Me: “Merit deserves reward. I appoint you Chief Eunuch.”