After Kangxi Read My Mind, I No Longer Wanted to Die

Lin Jianwei knows she is not normal. She clings to life through the delusion that she is loved. After dying in an accident, she transmigrates into the Kangxi dynasty as a girl waiting to be selected for the imperial harem.

The imperial palace is as deep as the sea, with danger lurking everywhere. She trembles with fear, trying to wear the mask of a “normal person” and survive. What she does not know is that Emperor Kangxi, seated upon the throne, bears a secret: he can hear the schemes and lies in everyone’s hearts.

Tired of the harem’s hypocritical inner voices, the emperor alone catches hers. Her thoughts are bizarre and fantastical: one moment she worships him as a god, weaving a lovesick dream in which he dotes on her alone; the next, she plunges into despair so profound it feels as if no one could ever love her. Outwardly timid and obedient, inwardly she performs a solo act of utter madness and innocence.

At first, he finds her strange and amusing, like a peculiar “patient.” But when repeated shocks from reality make her break down and resolve to die, he realizes he can no longer stand by and watch.

“If you’re going to delude yourself into thinking I love you,” he declares, forcing his way into her shattered world, “then delude yourself for a lifetime!”

He brings all the emperor’s skill and patience to bear, confronting, navigating, and merging with her pathological fantasies, step by step drawing her from the prison of imagined love she has woven for herself into the warmth of his real embrace.

This is a story of redemption, of “love and reality,” between a tormented, fragile soul and a powerful emperor.

From needing no love to finding it at last, she finally discovers a reason to exist in the Qing dynasty.