The Emperor's Sole Favorite

In the spring of the third year of Yongchang, during the Great Zhou dynasty, Empress Dowager Shen brought her orphaned niece, Shen Wan, into the palace to raise her. Everyone at court knew the Empress Dowager was adding a woman to the young emperor Xiao Che’s harem. The Shen family girl was destined to become a phoenix perched on a parasol tree. But the truth was quite the opposite. Reborn, Shen Wan knew better than anyone that her aunt was wary of the emperor, and the emperor was equally wary of the Shen family. In her previous life, she had been a casualty of their power struggle. Her aunt had sent her into the harem as a pawn to consolidate her own power. But when her family fell from grace, Shen Wan suffered humiliation in the Cold Palace and met a miserable end. And the emperor cousin who had once shown her a brief moment of tenderness, Xiao Che, ultimately turned a blind eye to it all. When she opened her eyes again, Shen Wan was sixteen, back at the moment she first entered the palace. She hid the weariness and hatred in her eyes, once again playing the timid, sweet, and naive cousin she had been in her previous life. She went along with her aunt’s plans to find her a “suitable husband” outside the palace. As for her emperor cousin, she avoided him whenever possible and kept her distance. Her only wish was to use her aunt’s influence to find a way for herself and the people she cared about to survive, leave the palace, and live out their days in peace. Emperor Xiao Che had ascended the throne as a boy and was deep and calculating. He keenly sensed the wariness the Empress Dowager and his young cousin felt toward him. At first, he found it amusing and paid it no mind. That changed when he happened to see his cousin, who dodged him like a startled rabbit, praying softly before a Buddha statue in an empty shrine, not once but twice. The first time, she greedily made ten wishes, ranging from “May Aunt enjoy endless happiness” to “May the calico cat in the imperial garden stop stealing the little yellow bird’s food.” Her wishes were trivial yet full of life. The second time, she secretly swapped the juiciest peach on the offering tray for a shriveled one she had brought herself, muttering, “Please don’t blame me, Buddha.”