Distant Horizons

[Two equally strong leads + intense push and pull + seductive beauty adored by everyone + fictional characters awakening]

The Liangdi died at twenty-one, all because she drank a cup of tea offered by the Crown Princess.

The day she died, unceasing rain fell day and night, layer upon layer of water covering the ground.

The rain swallowed the hum of swords and blades hitting the ground, and drowned out the sobs before the mourning hall.

The usually aloof and composed Crown Prince, who kept everyone at arm’s length, quietly shed tears as he leaned against the coffin, like a little cabbage still fresh and green after enduring wind and rain.

Dropping the act, Your Highness?

The rain of Yong'an Year Seventeen fell all the way back to Yong'an Year Fourteen.

A crack of thunder jolted Shen Yao awake. She had returned to the age of eighteen.

The one who called you “sister” every day was only pretending; when it came to poisoning you, she showed no mercy. And the cold husband who kept his distance from you was pretending too: in private, he had fallen deeply in love with you before he even realized it.

But you’re a fiction, too. Your joys and sorrows, your rise and fall, your life and death, your love and hatred, all hover on the page.

*

Created by modern people, Shen Yao is an ancient woman with the aura of a woman adored by all, but none of the luck of a female lead. She failed to become a villainess and instead became the early-departing white moonlight.

When creators shape women, they like to turn them into beautiful objects stripped of agency, destined to be tied to tragedy and rescued.

But women can grow flesh and souls of their own.

Twenty-one, and then twenty-one again. In a dead end, she walked on and on.

She raised her eyes toward the world beyond the page, gazing at it from afar through mountain mists and veils of water.

“You think your love is what made me unhappy?”

She stood before him, stepping beyond the fate written in ink. Taking his trembling hand, she pressed it to her heartbeat and told you not to believe those words, but to believe me, to love me.

The ending has not yet arrived.