Snow Falls, Love Turns to Frost

(A pure palace-intrigue story. Even love is just an act.)

(An entirely fictional Qin dynasty, not to be used as a historical reference.)

Zhang Wei transmigrated into the body of Wei Lan, a lowly concubine-born daughter about to be sacrificed to the emperor.

After reading Wei Lan's memories, she resolved to avenge her.

This time, Wei Lan, who had once admired the emperor, no longer wanted his filthy, rotten love.

She wanted power: to rise through the ranks, become empress, and then empress dowager.

So before the emperor, she played the sweet, naive, foolish concubine who always needed his protection.

Before the other consorts, she kept her head down and fawned on them.

Everyone knew she was a coward who was easy to push around.

She flirted with the emperor and tricked the noble consort.

She planned every step carefully and put on an act every day.

In two years, she rose from Noble Lady to Noble Consort.

Yet everyone thought the emperor had promoted her out of pity.

Everything she was entitled to in the open, she claimed openly.

Everything she wasn't supposed to have in secret, she quietly took for herself, too.

On his sickbed, the emperor held her hand and asked if she had ever truly loved him.

She coldly pulled her hand away and said, “Never.”

She cut off his hopes.

She vaguely remembered that snowy day, when she had once called out loudly from behind her, “Miss, are you a consort in this palace?”