An Ancient Concubine Transmigrates to the 1970s

Qin Wanqing sat propped up on her daybed, covering her mouth as she swallowed the last mouthful of black blood. The corners of her lips lifted in the faintest smile. She slowly lay back, clutching the tiny, ordinary safety clasp she had carried since childhood. Blood stained it, and then a flash of white light shone from it.

She lay on the cold daybed beneath a canopy embroidered with gilded peonies on winding branches. The Minister had once chosen it for her himself, but now it seemed like a cage holding her prisoner. As her consciousness blurred, she remembered being seventeen, before her father was framed. She had been the legitimate daughter of a third-rank official, sitting by the window embroidering a pair of lotus flowers. Sunlight had fallen across her silk skirt, warm as her mother's hand.

After her father was imprisoned and the family fell into ruin, she was sold to a brothel and forced to swallow a bowl of pitch-black medicine that made her barren, crushing her hope of ever becoming a mother. Later, she became the famous favorite concubine of the Minister of Nancheng, known to everyone as Concubine Qin. But the rivalry for favor in the back courtyard was like needles dipped in poison. The Madam's feigned cordiality, the other concubines' open and covert attacks: she had no one she could speak honestly with. She stayed in her lonely courtyard, watching her haggard reflection in the mirror. After learning that her parents had died on the road to exile more than five months ago, she had no reason left to go on.

She had sensed the trap the Madam had laid this time, but couldn't be bothered to avoid it. When the bowl of “calming soup” was brought to her, she didn't hesitate. She raised it to her lips and drank. With a life this devoid of joy, ending it a little sooner seemed like a clean solution.

The frantic cries of her maid and the steward's hurried report reached her ears. “My lord! Madam! Concubine Qin... she's gone!” She thought, At last, I'm free. I won't have to watch anyone's face or compete for that pitiful scrap of affection ever again.