The Emperor's Skinny Horse Consort

Gu Jiaomei lives up to her name. With her charming beauty and willowy figure, she is a prized courtesan carefully raised by Madam Zhao with gold, silver, and jade. She was meant to be sent to local salt merchant Yang Jinfei as a concubine.

On the night before she is sent away, Gu Jiaomei has a dream and learns that she is inside a story about a sheltered young woman who indulges her own selfish desires. In the story, she is little more than a tool. At the Yang residence, she abuses her beauty to get her way, drives a wedge between father and son, gives in to jealousy, and commits every sort of misdeed. Within a few years, she meets a tragic end, losing her head and her body.

So Gu Jiaomei, who has always meekly accepted her lot, refuses to go along with it. She absolutely cannot go to the Yang residence!

To escape the fate she saw in her dream, Gu Jiaomei sets her sights on climbing higher. She seduces the Prince of Yan, Chu Li, a guest of honor at the Yang residence who will become the new emperor four years later. And in the end, it seems to work.

Gu Jiaomei escapes her status as a bondservant and leaves Yangzhou, but Chu Li, who had saved her out of a moment of kindness, does not take her with him.

Two years later, Gu Jiaomei has reinvented herself as the beloved concubine of Chancellor Li Weiran.

This time, her alluring figure at the banquet finally captures Chu Li's heart. Desperate to hear her call him "Brother Li," Chu Li begins to consider taking his subject's concubine.

After finishing her dance, Gu Jiaomei sees Chu Li staring at her in a daze and smiles with satisfaction.

What's the point of being Weiran's concubine? If she's going to be anyone's concubine, it should be the future emperor's!

A scheming beauty who's delicate and soft, and good at putting on an act VS a calculating nobleman who seems noble and fair

PS: 1. The heroine isn't kindhearted and is very good at pretending. She uses both Chu Li and Li Weiran more than she truly cares for them.

2. The male lead is Chu Li. Later on, he has to suffer through a long, painful pursuit of his wife. He may be a bit of a scumbag, but there will be no switching male leads. The male lead is a virgin.

3. The setting is a fictionalized Ming dynasty. Clothing, government, and culture are generally modeled on the Ming dynasty.

Blurb captured on 2020.9.30

Theme: A poor woman's birth cannot be changed, but she can change her own fate