Given a second chance at life, Su Miaoqing drew up a ten-year plan for her career in the imperial palace.
1. Finish in two years the palace-intrigue goal that was originally supposed to take eight, securing the empress’s throne for her elder sister, the legitimate daughter of the family. (Completed)
2. After being condemned for two lifetimes as a temptress who corrupted the imperial court, this time she would enter the halls of government, turn the tides, and make her name remembered before she died!
To become a respected, upright female official, her first priority was to dismiss the twenty male courtesans sent to her by the various factions in her household!
The others were easy enough to get rid of. The real problem was the scarred-faced child bridegroom she had never given a second glance to in either of her previous lives.
Thinking of how, after her deaths in her first two lives, her male courtesans had celebrated, while the child bridegroom alone had sacrificed himself for her and guarded her coffin in the underground tomb until he died, Su Miaoqing was moved by his devotion. She decided to treat him a little better and make him her husband in name and in fact.
But on their wedding night, the bright red quilt was covered in a list of accusations against Su Miaoqing. The child bridegroom she had been about to take to bed had run away!
Su Miaoqing figured the house dog had grown wild. Since she was only repaying her debt of gratitude anyway, she might as well set him free.
On the day she chose a husband at Feng Terrace, Su Miaoqing was weighing whether to pick the peerlessly handsome young Marquis Lu or the brilliant scholar Xie...
That night, in a brocade bedchamber, a sharp blade slipped beneath her collar and opened her robe.
Xiao Yu: So the treasured daughter of the Duke of Jin's family is a fickle woman after all.
Su Miaoqing stared at the handsome, dignified man in front of her, his face fierce and imposing beneath his fitted clothes.
Su Miaoqing: ...Who are you?!
*
Xiao Yu hated Su Miaoqing to the depths of his soul. He had protected her for two lifetimes, lost his post and his looks, and gone from her childhood companion in the Duke's estate to a stranger separated from her by life and death in a tomb. From beginning to end, Su Miaoqing had never once looked him in the eye.
Given another life, Xiao Yu shut his heart away and focused solely on his career. He swore he would never love Su Miaoqing again!
But the woman he had once loved had become his sworn enemy at court.
Watching Su Miaoqing charm and outmaneuver the nobles and ministers with her silver tongue, Xiao Yu ground his back teeth together and decided to collect the debt she owed for the two lifetimes he had sacrificed himself for her!
In the imperial study, Su Miaoqing glared at the hundreds of volumes of documents Xiao Yu had submitted as evidence.
Su Miaoqing thought, Let’s see what tricks you’re trying to pull this time!
Outside the door, the court officials, civil and military, thought: This time, Xiao Yu will surely bring down the Su family’s wicked temptress once and for all!
Xiao Yu: Your Majesty, I accuse Su Miaoqing of failing to uphold her private virtues, breaking her promises, and seducing me only to abandon me!
Su Miaoqing: ...?!
(Written on 2022.11.10)
Theme: The story of a powerful woman's growth
