Tales of Paradox

[Alternate setting + strong female leads + business battles + marriage alliances between powerful families + love of country]

.

Nine volumes in total, each a standalone story set in a different time and place, spanning the past and present, East and West.

Stories of love, hatred, obsession, entrapment, and redemption.

There should be an adult fable in here that catches your interest.

.

Volume One [The Player]: Mu Jinyue breaks free from her family's power struggles, stirs up the world, and takes charge of the game of fate;

Volume Two [The Strategist]: Meng Xiaoer cuts her way through the business world, exposes conspiracies, and secures an unquestioned voice;

Volume Three [The Hand]: Lou Chaoning lies low amid political power struggles, uses her intelligence to break through the deadlock, and preserves her principles and honor;

Volume Four [Breaking the Deadlock]: Mu Shang rises from hostage prisoner to phoenix, shatters the crisis threatening her country, and ascends to the throne as the Empress of the Firmament;

Volume Five [Finding Peace]: Liu Ruyan struggles through an ordinary life, outwardly gentle but burning within. Torn between reality and her true self, she finds inner peace as an ordinary person;

Volume Six [Spring Blossoms]: A tree spirit searches for the mortal who has been reincarnated for a thousand years. Though their love is mutual, it ends in regret: she gives up immortality just to see him off;

Volume Seven [Summer Cicada]: A Valkyrie is slandered for a hundred years. Her golden mask breaks to reveal a face that stuns the world. A general saves her country, but they part at the Bridge of Helplessness;

Volume Eight [Autumn Moon]: A mute slave is scorned by the crown prince. A prince gives her the name Wangshu and saves her. When her lover is brutally killed, she avenges him with a blade and dies with him.

.

Some wield swords to shape the land, some command the game and reshape the world, some hold fast to themselves through ordinary life, and some love so deeply they embrace death.

No love-addled heroines, no feigned weakness, no dependence on others: only women who make their own way.

In their own eras and on their own battlefields, they wield ruthlessness as a blade, intelligence as a shield, and devotion as their backbone, ultimately becoming their own salvation.

.

[Please note: All characters, organizations, institutions, and so on in this story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.]