Ranking

I am the real heiress who was deliberately switched at birth by a nanny.

Raised among the worst people at the very bottom of society, I grew up seeing nearly every shade of darkness this world had to offer.

After I returned to my biological family, everyone expected me to give way to the fake heiress and stop competing with her for their affection.

What they did not know was that shallow affection could never satisfy my ambition.

“I’m going to be the Empress someday!”

Ten-year-old Song Weiwei stood on a dirt slope facing the imperial city in the distance, shouting those words with all the swagger she could muster.

As for me, I sat on a dirt mound with my chin propped in my hand, speechless.

“Song Weiwei, you still haven’t paid back the two copper coins you owe me.”

Song Weiwei turned around and rapped me on the forehead.

“What’s the rush? Have you ever seen an Empress who welshes on her debts?”

She hopped down from the slope and turned to coax me.

“Just think about it, Du Zeyi. If I become the Empress, you’d be my sister. You can have anything you want. Why worry about those two copper coins?”

As if becoming the Empress of a nation could be that easy.

I muttered under my breath, rubbed my forehead, and raised my voice. “My mother’s calling me home for dinner!”

Then I slipped away as fast as I could.

Leaving only Song Weiwei behind, stamping her feet in exasperation.

“Fine. I’ll marry him.” I raised my hand from behind the other princesses.

Father had many daughters, but his favorite was Princess Changning, his eldest and the only daughter born to the Empress.

I was the most inconspicuous of them all; Father had probably forgotten I existed.

My husband was an emperor too powerless to rule.

Again and again, his ministers stopped him from deposing the empress, naming our son crown prince, or making me his empress.

After he died, the empress imprisoned me in the Cold Palace for twenty years, keeping my son alive only as long as I survived.

On the day death finally took me, a eunuch came to say that my son had been given poisoned wine as well.

History called me a temptress and a demon who ruined the realm, though I had spent my life urging mercy and never harmed a soul.

My husband and I once promised to find each other in another life.

Yet when that life came, I avoided the crown prince’s gaze and did everything I could not to be chosen—only to hear him tell his mother, “I choose Eldest Miss Song as my crown princess.”

I am the future Crown Princess.

One day, a woman who has traveled a thousand miles in search of her husband stops my carriage in the middle of the street.

She produces the Crown Prince’s personal jade pendant and declares that he married her while living among the common folk.

Unfortunately for her, she does not understand that making me Crown Princess is the Emperor’s way of proclaiming his favor before the realm.

This is not a position she can take.

The world is one giant slapdash production, and I somehow drift through it anyway.

My father is a financial tycoon, but I can barely handle addition and subtraction under ten. My mother is a gorgeous award-winning actress, while I look perfectly ordinary. My brother held his first solo art exhibition at four, while at five I was still toddling after him babbling nonsense.

Even our maid, Wang Ma, and our butler, Uncle Chen, turned out to be retired legends hiding in plain sight.

Thankfully, all of them adored me. I slowly made peace with being ordinary.

Then one day, a genius girl who had gone viral online showed up at our door and demanded that I give her back her place as the real daughter of the Su family.

Wonderful. The worry that had been hanging over me for years finally dropped dead.

I took an arrow for my husband and suffered grave internal injuries.

After four years recuperating on an estate in the south, I returned to the capital and found another woman had taken my place.

My son relied on her, my daughter adored her, my mother-in-law valued her, and even in our marriage bed, my husband called out her name.

I could not bear it and made a scene.

Together, they drove me to my death so the obstacle I had become would disappear and they could live happily as one family.

For twenty years, I wandered as a ghost and watched the end they brought upon themselves.

Then I was reborn on the road home.

I had returned.

“Don’t go back to the estate yet; I want to visit the Empress Dowager in the palace,” I said.

The emperor’s wet nurse praised the medicinal cuisine my family made, calling it miraculous.

That very night, soldiers came to seize the secret recipe.

My father and mother guarded it with their lives and died beneath the blades.

My sister-in-law was dragged away, violated, and left to rot in the wilderness.

I only survived because she had hidden me in the water vat in the back courtyard.

The tyrant’s wrath destroyed my family, all while my brother was far away at the border, defending his city for him.

Five years later, the newly appointed Guardian General returned triumphant from the war.

At the victory banquet, the tyrant asked what reward he desired.

He knelt and bowed solemnly: “Your servant has lost both parents and has only one little sister left in this world.”

“She has long admired Your Majesty. I beg Your Majesty to grant this wish.”

I was fighting someone in the street when Young Madam took a liking to me on the spot.

She gave me fifty taels of silver and asked if I was willing to become her husband’s concubine.

They say a debt of recognition should be repaid with one’s body. Fair enough.

But was this really the way to repay it?

Still, I was desperately short on silver, so I gritted my teeth and agreed.

Only after entering the manor did I learn that my husband was introverted, my mother-in-law was tyrannical, and my sister-in-law was insufferably arrogant.

Young Madam hadn’t bought me back to serve anyone at all.

She had brought me into this family to be King Yan.

Xu Feiyun has spent her life as the obedient maid of the privileged half-sister who taught her to call suffering a blessing.

When that sister stages her death to test her husband’s devotion, Feiyun enters the Shen household as a temporary second wife and quietly turns every piece of the reckless scheme to her own purpose.

Between a frightened child, a husband awakening to the truth, and a family built on buried crimes, Feiyun must decide how much tenderness is real and how much is another weapon.

Her revenge will bring the Xu family to judgment—but true freedom lies beyond vengeance, in the ordinary world someone once taught her she deserved to see.

In my second year as empress, I fell ill and was left barren. From then on, I could no longer bear children.

The emperor turned his favor to Consort Zhen and spent ten years doting on her through seven pregnancies.

Then the imperial physician knelt before the emperor and said Consort Zhen did not have long to live.

The moment I fell ill in this life, I already knew the day Consort Zhen would die.

After all, in my previous life, the one who died was me.

For the ten years my parents were away at war, I was fostered on a country estate and grew up rough around the edges.

I was nothing like the gentle, refined Shen Miaoyi, who had grown up beside them.

She was the daughter of their fallen comrades and had followed my parents to the frontier from the age of six.

“Miaoyi may not be our daughter by blood, but she is dearer to us than one.”

I resented her for stealing my parents.

I resented her for keeping them to herself for ten years without sparing me even one.

So, for once, I fought back and stole her marriage to the Young Prince.

But after Shen Miaoyi married another man, her life turned miserable.

The Young Prince felt guilty and secretly helped her.

A rift opened between us.

I fought back one more time and refused to speak to him until the day I died.

Kneeling beside my bed, he said he regretted it.

“Ningshu, please don’t leave me alone.”

“Once you recover, we can go back to the way we were and ride side by side again…”

I did not want that life anymore.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my parents were arranging a marriage for Shen Miaoyi.

This time, I spoke first.

“The Young Prince likes powder blue. Sister Miaoyi would look perfect in it.”

When I was eight, a lame Daoist wandered into our village.

Mother took pity on him and poured him a cup of water.

He declared that of the three of us siblings, one would become the supreme sovereign, one would become the mother of the realm, and one would stand in a doorway and sell her smiles.

My elder brother had studied since childhood, so naturally he was destined to become the supreme sovereign.

My little sister was beautiful, so naturally she would become the mother of the realm.

And naturally, the one fated to sell her smiles from a doorway had to be me.

I fell in love with my rival—and my roommate.

The good news: she was a woman.

The bad news: she was straight.

On the surface, Pei Ruoqing and I couldn’t stand each other.

In secret, I was practically begging, “Big Sister, slap me.”

We stayed tangled up like that until our five-year college reunion.

After the reunion, I used my drunkenness as an excuse to climb into her car.

When I saw that our old class president was still hopelessly in love with her, I deliberately picked a fight.

She shot back coldly, “He likes me.

Does that really make you so jealous?”

Before I could answer, an out-of-control truck came hurtling toward us.

I threw myself over her without thinking—and died protecting her.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on freshman move-in day, staring straight at Pei Ruoqing as she pushed open our dorm-room door.

After my sister fell into the water, she seemed to become a different person.

She stopped chasing after the heir to Prince Qin. Instead, time and again, she pushed me in front of him.

With grief in her eyes and stubborn resolve in her voice, she said, “You have always been the one in his heart. I won’t stand between you anymore.”

At the same moment, lines of text appeared in the air before me.

“I know it hurts to give the man you love to someone else with your own hands, but this is the only way to make the male lead recognize his feelings sooner and spare you all that suffering.”

“People only treasure what they can’t have. Now that you’ve pushed your sister at Qin Yi, he’ll get bored with her and lose interest.”

“Once Qin Yi realizes you’ve truly given up on him, he’ll grovel and beg you to take him back.”

“Our Eldest Miss deserves the best. Change the male lead! Qin Yi has liked someone else, so he’s already tainted. Let him marry the supporting female character. Once he discovers how vicious the sister really is, he’ll regret everything—but by then, you’ll already have found someone better. Turn this angst story into a revenge fantasy!”

Tears shimmered in my sister’s eyes as she faced Qin Yi with absolute determination. “Don’t worry. I won’t pester you again. You and my sister are the perfect match.”

I hid my shock and looked at Qin Yi.

Only to find him staring at the words in the air too, momentarily lost in thought.

I had transmigrated over a decade ago, and my face-slapping counterattack System finally arrived, late as ever.

By then, I was already the Empress.

“Host,” the System said, “first mission: the maidservant slaps the young miss.”

I gazed at the young miss’s grave and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

My young mistress was a transmigrator.

She declared arranged marriage unacceptable and ruined the match between me and the childhood sweetheart I had hoped to marry.

Then she insisted that women should not be trapped inside the home and forced me to enlist with her.

We became separated from our unit and stranded in a vast desert without water.

I risked my life to obtain two barrels of water from desert bandits and repeatedly warned her to ration it.

While I slept, she used every drop to wash her hair and bathe.

I died of thirst, while she emerged spotless and was rescued by the passing Crown Prince.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day she first tried to persuade me to enlist.

Born a princess yet treated as the sacrificial “flower” for her twin brother, Lou Guanqi grows up with her health, fortune, and future quietly drained away.

After enemy soldiers carry the twins beyond the border, she survives humiliation and abandonment before finding a real family in Yunhuai Village, where Lou Sibao becomes the devoted elder sister she never had.

When the court drags Guanqi back into imperial power, every betrayal pushes her closer to vengeance—and every victory costs another piece of the love that once saved her.

As an ancient gu curse begins to reverse, Guanqi must decide whether a stolen throne can heal a life built on sacrifice, or whether power will devour everyone who still calls her family.

In a secret chamber beneath my imperial father’s former residence, I found a breathtaking woman who claimed to be my birth mother.

She told me my true father was the deposed crown prince who had died long ago in the old capital.

The realm, she said, should have been mine.

But when I finally took the throne, she went mad.

Born with a violent nature and abandoned by her family, Xu Qingqing agrees to marry an abusive scholar for her beloved elder sister’s sake-only to beat her new household into peace, turn an enemy into a husband, and storm a marquis’s estate when her sister’s life is threatened.

My elder sister cared more about dignity than anything else.

After our family was stripped of everything, we were sold together to the Red Pavilion as entertainers, and my elder sister, a gifted qin player, declared, “Even if I must sell my art, I will do it with dignity, for my qin is meant for nobles and high officials, not common rabble unworthy of refined music.”

The patron she insulted lunged at her, and I sacrificed my body to preserve her dignity while she went on to become the Red Pavilion’s foremost art courtesan.

When a wealthy merchant took a fancy to her and made her his lawful wife, I begged her to redeem me too, but she only said, “Wait a little longer, and I will take you out once I find a respectable excuse.”

I waited five whole years, until she had become one of the capital’s celebrated noblewomen, yet her rescue never came.

In torn clothes, I stopped her sedan in the street and asked whether she had forgotten her promise.

She looked me over in disgust and said, “I have no sister as disgraceful as you.”

Through my tears, I demanded, “Did I not become this way because of you, and do you truly not understand what I suffered?”

She pouted and replied, “I watched every step that brought you here, so what hardship could possibly excuse you?”

With that one sentence, she turned the whole street against me, and they cursed me as a shameless whore.

Fury overwhelmed my heart, and I died coughing blood.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day she refused to play for the patrons.

She was standing there with her neck stiff, arguing with a man.

On our wedding night, my husband told me something plainly.

His heart belonged to Concubine Song, and there could never be anything between him and me.

I was not to use my position as the lady of the household to make Concubine Song’s life difficult.

Furious, I tore off my bridal veil and gave him two choices.

Either we went to his parents together and asked what exactly they meant by arranging this marriage.

Or he brought Concubine Song to me so the three of us could settle matters face-to-face.

He feared I would bully his beloved concubine, while I feared she would use his favor to humiliate his lawful wife.

After a brief hesitation, my husband chose to summon her.

The three of us sat down and agreed on three rules.

First, Concubine Song was never to set foot in my main courtyard, and anything that happened if she did would be her own responsibility; the same rule applied to me.

Second, since my husband refused to consummate our marriage that night, we would never share a bed for the rest of our lives.

Third, if his parents pressed us for an heir, he would deal with them, and if I suffered punishment or loss because of it, he would compensate me.

My husband’s face turned glacial as he signed the agreement in a fury.

From that day on, he never entered my room again.

Concubine Song basked in her victory and laughed at me for giving up the finest man in the world.

The two of them settled into their sweet little romance.

I was too busy building a life of my own to spare them a thought.

But three years later, my husband stepped into my courtyard with an uneasy look on his face.

I knew at once that he regretted everything-and that he wanted to sleep with me.

I said calmly, “Let’s divorce.”

I have never been able to stand idle people.

The moment I married into the Li family, I found my new husband surrounded by a flock of talented beauties—and not a single one of them doing a day’s work.

So I lined everyone up and put them all to work: the pipa player to the music house, the dancer to the embroidery shop, and my useless heir of a husband off to perform for Prince Qi.

What started as a scheme to pay off the manor’s debts snowballed into a commercial empire—until the court, the temples, and a rebellion turned my money-making machine into something far more dangerous.

After refusing to enter the imperial harem in her elder sister’s place, Shen Wanning awakens in the past with every memory of the life that destroyed her.

Emperor Qin Zheng remembers that life too, and his determination to reclaim her draws Shen Wanning back into the palace she tried to escape.

Surrounded by a resentful sister, ambitious consorts, and powerful men who mistake her compliance for dependence, she turns their desires against them and plots a ruthless path to freedom.

Ever since I was little, I had been a little slower than everyone else to speak and act.

People had always laughed at me for it when I was a child.

Gradually, I stopped wanting to speak.

Until the emperor asked me, in front of everyone, whom I wanted to marry.

When he named the gracious Prince Rui, my eyes lit up.

But by the time I nodded, the emperor had already asked, “Surely you don’t mean Prince Yan?”

Across the hall, the prince everyone called cruel and ruthless lurched in his seat and dropped his wine cup.

At sixteen, a food-loving girl enters the imperial harem as lowly Attendant Yun, determined to survive its suffocating rules and earn enough favor for a decent meal.

Her accidental bond with the formidable Empress Dowager and the neglected Princess Ruyi lifts her through the palace ranks, but every kindness hides a calculation and every pregnancy can redraw the balance of the throne.

When rebellion, poisoned bloodlines, and a stolen son force her to choose between motherhood and survival, Yun must bury her heart behind palace walls—until the child she surrendered returns as Emperor and asks her to become his mother at last.

In my first life, I married Shen Yan, and everyone envied me for securing such a fine match.

Shen Yan won fame while still young, rose swiftly through the ranks, introduced new reforms, became Grand Chancellor, and wielded immense power as he guided a boy emperor.

But that glory belonged to Shen Yan alone.

No one knew how much bitterness I swallowed behind the gates of his illustrious household.

When I was given another life, I waited until Shen Yan’s name was renowned throughout the realm, packed my belongings, wrote a letter of divorce, and sat smiling outside our gates to await him.

“Congratulations on your triumph, my lord. I ask to leave your household of my own accord. From this day forward, may each of us be free.”

I stole my sister’s man.

During the year she was abroad, the man she’d been longing for all these years came to me with her photo in hand.

“Do you know the girl in this photo?”

I took off my mask, revealing a face identical to my sister’s, and smiled sweetly.

“Are you looking for me?”

My rich-girl deskmate introduced me to a summer part-time job: tutoring her younger male cousin.

She said he had masochistic tendencies.

The harsher I was with him, the better he listened.

So I raised my Meow Combo Punch.

“Dharma Cultivation Sanda!”

I disciplined that cousin straight into the advanced class.

The rich girl stared at the school bully in shock.

“Which cousin of mine have you been tutoring?!”

I was born face-blind, yet the crown prince of Beijing’s elite circle had always stood by me.

Until one day, when I overheard him talking about me with his friends.

“A whole month, and she still hasn’t noticed. Shen Jin, you’ve really got talent.”

“But your girlfriend looks like she’s close to figuring it out. Shouldn’t we switch back?”

In the corner, the man called Shen Jin pinched a cigarette between his fingers and shook his head.

“I’m afraid that won’t work. Yin-yin is still waiting for me to come home for dinner.”

I stood in the doorway and sighed, disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting someone new after all.

I had already grown tired of sleeping with both of them.

I had no idea my boss was a famous fanfic author, one with excellent prose, thrilling plots, and a perfectly balanced diet of content.

And I was one of his top-paying readers.

His new story was a complete departure from his usual style: an utterly squeaky-clean original novel.

I happily topped up my account to buy the chapters, but the more I read, the more I realized the dense, romance-impaired heroine was a lot like me.

The only difference was that the male lead was a shy, innocent, introverted herbivore-type boss whose little inner commentary was ridiculously cute.

He was nothing like my real-life boss, who barely spoke, had a severe case of germophobia, and was an absolute menace.

Later…

The author posted in the comments: “≧◇≦ Thank you all for your support. I-I-I’ve decided to be brave and confess!!! >_<”

Magnanimously, I sent the author a huge gift. “Go for it! Be brave, author! Fear no hardship!”

The very next second, my cold-faced, frowning boss walked out of his office and stopped in front of me, his face bright red.

Me: “?”

Shen Chang’an is reborn on the day her elder sister again tries to force the family into a disastrous royal marriage.

In their first life, that choice delivered the throne to a ruthless prince and condemned more than three hundred members of the Shen clan to grotesque deaths.

But Chang’an soon discovers that her sister remembers the past as well—and has merely chosen a different prince to cling to.

Refusing to entrust her fate to any man, Chang’an retreats to Jiangnan, studies statecraft and military strategy, cultivates a divine reputation, and turns the imperial succession into her own chessboard.

Crown Prince Lu Zhao wants to possess her; Third Prince Lu Heng thinks he can use her to seize the throne.

Both are wrong.

Armed with foreknowledge, family power, and an unshakable will, Chang’an sets out not only to avenge the dead, but to claim the realm for herself.

Nan Tao, an enslaved maid in a wealthy household, discovers that the baby-shaped ginseng fruit her mistress orders buried is alive.

As the fruit reveals the truth behind the household’s miracle heir, Nan Tao uncovers a cycle of trafficking, forced pregnancy, and women transformed into trees harvested for profit.

With a holy monk and his three disciples, she must uproot the dead tree that holds her soul—even though destroying it will erase her forever.

A dark feminist reimagining of a mythic delicacy, Ginseng Fruit turns supernatural horror into a haunting story of inherited violence, motherhood, and liberation.

In my fifth year by the side of that charming, reckless young playboy, someone snapped a photo of me that made it look like I was pregnant.

For a while, rumors flew through our circle. Everyone thought I was going to use the baby to force my way up and marry into a wealthy family.

When his long-estranged first love heard the news, she came charging back from overseas.

I thought a bloody storm was about to break loose.

But by the time Lu Heran returned from his business trip, all he heard was that I had gotten rid of the baby and slipped back to my hometown.

Sigh. Good girls like us can fool around all we want on ordinary days.

But if we really got pregnant with a child and no proper status, our parents would beat us to death.

Six years ago, forced to choose between Huo Yanxu and my future, I chose my future and went abroad to study.

Six years later, I returned after completing my studies, and Huo Yanxu confessed to me with six years of devoted waiting behind him.

I helped him secure his position as heir to the Huo Family, only to hear him tell his friends, “Pretending to be a lovesick lapdog has been exhausting. Once I marry her, she’ll make money for both of us, and I’ll take Yinyin traveling around the world.”

The young woman in his arms was smiling brightly.

Someone warned him, “Aren’t you afraid she’ll turn on you?”

“We’re getting married tomorrow. Her family cares so much about reputation. You think she’d let herself become damaged goods?”

I laughed coldly. Six years ago, I could give you up for my career. Nothing has changed.

Because of her physical development, Li Zhuguang was maliciously humiliated and secretly photographed by her classmate Zhang Kang.

Luo Xing, once her only friend, also turned her back on her amid the rumors.

To strike back, Li Zhuguang deliberately got close to Song Wangshu, the top student Luo Xing had a crush on, using Zhang Kang’s jealousy to force him to expose himself.

She then returned the evidence of the secret recordings to each of the victims.

After Zhang Kang was expelled, the off-campus landlord retaliated by planting a pinhole camera in her room.

With help from Luo Xing, Song Wangshu, her teachers, and her classmates, Li Zhuguang finally dragged the malice lurking in the shadows out into the sunlight-and learned to trust the people around her again.

Everyone in my family was a villain.

In my last life, my father was impeached by Xie Linyuan, the emperor’s brother-in-law.

So Father drugged him and hired several men to ruin his chastity.

After Xie Linyuan rose to power, he had my entire family arrested and our estate confiscated.

In this life, I was determined to be a good person.

I reached Xie Linyuan in time to save him after he was drugged.

He reclined against the bed, his face flushed, but his tongue remained as sharp as ever.

“What shameless temptress is this?

How dare you resort to such vile tricks to harm me?”

My fault.

I had been in such a hurry to save him that I had not even dressed properly.

I said awkwardly, “Well, Lord Xie… should I fetch a girl from next door to cure you?”

“A virgin courtesan would do too?”

After being stolen from her husband and caged in the palace, Jiang Yunshu dies branded as the stain on an emperor’s perfect reign.

Reborn before her disastrous marriage, she breaks her engagement, evades Prince Jing’s search, and chooses the sickly Crown Prince Xie Zhao as her unlikely ally.

Armed with memories of betrayal and rebellion, Yunshu pursues revenge against everyone who destroyed her first life.

Yet the partner she meant to use may become the one man willing to share both his throne and his years with her.

The boy I’d secretly loved was expelled from school for protecting his childhood sweetheart.

Years later, I became the most famous talent manager in the industry and ran into him waiting tables at a restaurant.

He had long since forgotten me, but I still wanted to give him a chance. I asked him, “Xie Xingyun, do you want to be an actor?”

He came with me.

It took me three years to transform him from a waiter carrying plates into the entertainment industry’s hottest new star.

Then the childhood sweetheart he’d protected all those years ago came looking for him.

In our village, a child who dies before his parents cannot be given a funeral—unless he dies in an unclean place.

When my drowned best friend is laid in the mourning hall, a seven-day vigil turns my guilt into terror, and the truth behind the hauntings proves more horrifying than any ghost.