Spring Is Thick Behind the Palace Gates

[I've Become a Tycoon After Being Exiled is now updating! Coming soon: Lady Lingluo / This Fairy Is Anything But Proper. See the column for details.] Jing Jia, the legitimate eldest daughter of the Duke of An's household, had been tormented by her stepmother for ten years. After her younger brother earned merit by saving the emperor, the Empress Dowager ordered Jing Jia to enter the palace as her companion. She was careful with every word and action, hoping only to find a suitable husband and marry soon. She had no unrealistic fantasies, let alone any delusions about the lofty emperor. But no amount of caution could guard against other people's schemes. The palace ladies were vying for the emperor's favor, and their schemes landed her at his side. The walls of the Forbidden City seemed to collapse around her. Jing Jia did everything she could to endure and simply wanted to live in peace, but the palace was a tangled web of factions, and no one was willing to leave her alone. At her most desperate, the always-harsh emperor reached out to her. His eyes, looking down at her, roiled with hidden currents. "Serve me, and I can help you." Jing Jia could only take his hand. If no one was going to let her live in peace, then even if the heights became a new hell, she would repay every last person who insisted on scheming against her by kicking them into the abyss! She never imagined that when she finally stood as an equal beside the inscrutable emperor, Zhenghe, the man who had once calmly taught her to claw her way up by any means necessary, would willingly lower his head before her, eyebrow pencil in hand. His once profound, cool eyes were full of tender submission. "I beg you, Your Majesty the Empress, grant me the grace to serve you for the rest of my life." *Also known as She Became Empress by Embracing Her Dark Side and Everyone's Pushing the Empress to Go All Out *Reading guide 1. Most of the clothing and jewelry in this novel, along with the palace interiors and decorations, are based on references from the Palace Museum website. Details on palace rules, food and drink, customs, and festivals are based on Memoirs of a Palace Maid and Memoirs of a Eunuch. 2. This is a slow burn, like a gentle simmer. You can't rush the moment when they finally fall for each other~ 3. The heroine goes through some hardship early on, then turns the tables on everyone later~ 4. Neither lead is a good person. They aren't devoted only to each other early or midway through the story, but it's one-on-one in the end. Synopsis for I've Become a Tycoon After Being Exiled Miao Wan only realized she had transmigrated into a palace-intrigue novel when she was already on the road to exile with her husband's family. Of course, palace intrigue had nothing to do with her. She was the cannon-fodder first wife whom the heroine's childhood friend, cousin Qiao Ruichen, had married at his parents' behest. The Qiao family got caught up in palace intrigue, was framed, and was cruelly exiled. The first wife couldn't adapt to the bitter cold of the northwest. After miscarrying, she fell ill and died, eventually appearing as a grave in the novel's epilogue. Miao Wan looked at her mother-in-law, trembling as she did embroidery in their broken-down house to support the family, and her sister-in-law, whose hands were swollen like radishes from washing vegetables. She rested a hand on her rounded belly and sighed. Fine. Since she was here, she'd make the best of it. First, she'd set a small goal: avoid ending up as a grave and earn a few billion. As for not adapting to the northwest cold and miscarrying? She was a born-and-raised northwestern girl and a famous pig farmer for miles around. She could raise over a thousand pigs just fine. How could she not raise a little bun? Impossible. Reading notes: 1. An alternate-world setting with a bit of everything. The male lead and the original heroine aren't romantically involved. The heroine is already pregnant when she transmigrates. 2. The story starts in the northwest, and the heroine has a smooth, satisfying ride with no humiliating setbacks. 3. The main plot is raising a child and making money. The romance is minor, and the male lead is mostly a plot device. Theme: As long as you don't give up hope, life has no dead ends.