1v1 pure love, strong female lead, evenly matched. See how a woman can hold up the sky.
Overnight, I transmigrated to ancient times and ended up in a brothel? Hah, I, Liu Ruyan, refuse to accept my fate! When the madam's red-hot hairpin burned A Cui's hand, Liu Ruyan had just transmigrated into a "slender horse" for sale in the brothel. The girl was only sixteen, but she was called "ungrateful" just for refusing to flirt with a rich merchant. In this world, a woman's pain was worth less than a man's complaint that she was "no fun." But Liu Ruyan refused to accept it. She used charcoal to draw the blood and tears of the women on the wall, and Gu Yunzhou was so struck by the drawing that he took her back to his estate. The look in the woman's eyes in the picture was just like that of the white-clad woman locked away in his rear courtyard.
Cutting her hair and binding her chest, she became "Liu Yan" and stormed into the academy to rouse the musty scholars: "A woman holds a brush for herself, not to please anyone!" She opened the Yanxia Pavilion and hung up the slogan "Dress to please yourself," making rouge red for the first time for the women themselves.
Then she came across Ye Wei, the beautiful madwoman in Gu Yunzhou's rear courtyard. Once a brilliant aristocratic woman, she had fallen in love with a poor scholar through poetry, only for her family to crush their love. On her deathbed, clutching an old brush, she murmured, "I only wanted to choose for myself."
Liu Ruyan suddenly understood: what she wanted was never protection. She wanted A Cui, Aunt Su, Ye Wei, and women like them to dare to say "it hurts" and dare to say "no."
Later, she became empress, and her very first edict declared, "Women may take the imperial examinations and may refuse marriage." The court criticized her for usurping a man's place, but she smiled: "Just watch how a woman can hold up the sky."
This is not one person's rise against the odds. It is the dawn of countless souls who were scorned, finally daring to raise their heads!
