Chapter 1

Chapter 1

In my second year as empress, I was reborn right at the moment Zhou Ningjin loved me most.

In my previous life, I conceived almost at once.

In the mirror, my face was as tender as a hibiscus bloom. Soon enough, pregnancy would blot it with spots. My willow-thin waist would no longer be graceful after childbirth, and stretch marks would appear too. Even I found it hideous and unbearable.

At one point I nearly went mad, ordering the imperial physicians to find a way.

Yet Zhou Ningjin never showed the slightest disgust. After I became pregnant, he came to my palace even more often.

He would often stroke my swollen belly and smile, saying I had a different sort of beauty.

Back then I believed he truly loved me, and that was why he liked even that version of me.

It was not until I had given birth to three children in a row that my body began to fail. The imperial physicians said I had exhausted too much blood and qi and needed a long rest, or else the depletion would continue, my spleen would weaken, and I might even lose my life.

Even so, Zhou Ningjin kept staying with me night after night. He said he liked the fullness of my belly when I was pregnant…

He only liked me when I was like that.

Because I believed that was affection, and because I feared someone else would steal it from me, I kept sinking deeper and deeper into it.

Until … death.

I gave him five children, but not one of them was raised by my side.

Children were young and needed care, yet I was always busy bearing more of them. Later, my body grew worse by the day, and I had no room to care for anything else.

Zhou Ningjin used that as his excuse to take the children away.

Looking back now, aside from his own selfish desires, he probably had been calculating from the very beginning.

He gave the children to Consort Zhen so he could use the harem to balance the court, forcing my father to hesitate before going against the Zhen faction. Even when they turned around and struck first, he made my father swallow the resentment.

And in the end, when my illness was beyond saving, my father was framed on a trumped-up charge.

My father had been upright all his life, yet because of me he was smeared with false accusations and died on the road to exile.

Consort Zhen played her role to perfection.

When I was dying, all I wanted was one last look at my children. But after Zhen brought them to me, all five of them looked at me like I was their enemy.

My fourth daughter, who had only just turned two, even knocked over my medicine and said I had stolen Father Emperor’s favor for Consort Zhen.

She said I was a wicked woman who should have died long ago.

She called Zhen her mother, while treating me like an enemy.

What could a two-year-old child know? She had clearly been taught.

In the end, I died with my eyes open.

This life, I do not want children anymore.

This life, it is my turn to go mad.

“My lady, the emperor is staying over here again tonight.” Cuixia came in cheerfully from outside.

I clutched my chest and let out a muffled groan. “Go invite Imperial Physician Ren. I am a little unwell.”