Slow Romance

I was the most envied courtesan in all the capital.

Simply because I bore a seventy-percent resemblance to the Crown Princess, someone threw down a fortune and bought me on the very night I was first listed.

Hugging that heavy pile of silver, I sat in a small sedan chair, both thrilled and anxious.

I secretly made up my mind: even if my patron turned out to be some nasty sixty-year-old geezer, I would still gaze at him with tender affection and kiss him anyway.

As long as I could get my contract of sale and take hold of my own freedom, I could do anything!

But when I saw the prisoner in the cell, soaked with urine and raving like a madman…

I turned around and wanted to leave.

Sorry. I had still overestimated myself!

The year I turned eighteen, my mother took five taels of silver and married me off to Ji Songzhu, a man infamous far and wide for bringing death to his wives.

Before me, both of his previous wives had died of sudden illness three days before the wedding.

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.”

One month after I died.

My childhood friend, the top celebrity I had long since cut ties with, did something completely out of character.

He canceled every job and shut himself away to write music.

In the end, he bid farewell to the music industry with a song called I Miss Her.

Everyone said he must have gone insane to give up such a dazzling future.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on New Year’s Eve, at the height of my fame.

The host prompted me as part of the program, asking me to call someone and wish them a Happy New Year.

Without the slightest hesitation, I dialed his number.

His voice trembled on the other end.

“Happy New Year to you too.”

This time, I want to live toward hope.

A new neighbor moved in next door-a man who radiated a wild, untamed energy from head to toe.

He always came home late at night.

On the rare occasions I ran into him in the elevator, he was quiet and withdrawn, looking nothing like a decent guy.

Until one night, without the slightest warning, the water in my apartment cut off.

Halfway through my shower, I stood there in silence for a long moment before wrapping myself in a bathrobe and knocking on my neighbor’s door.

“Bro, can I borrow your bathroom?”

On my first day as the City Goddess, a half-grown boy came to offer me incense.

“Make my father meddle in my life less!”

So I kept his father busy with business, leaving him no time to press the boy to study.

Then his grandfather arrived, wielding an enormous sandalwood ruler.

After the beating, the boy limped back into my City God Temple.

I quietly poked my head out and saw him baring his teeth as he complained, “What a lousy deity!”

I could not stop myself from muttering, “I am not lousy.”

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.