A Concubine's Daily Climb to the Top

My upcoming novel next door, Not a Concubine, is open for follows. Blurb at the bottom.

Blurb for this novel:

The year Shen Qinghe entered the palace, the emperor already had the empress who had risen to favor, the Noble Consort who reigned over the six palaces, and Lady Gao, who had the emperor's favor.

She had neither a powerful family nor extraordinary cunning, but she was determined to make her own way in the imperial harem.

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Emperor Jianzhao met a woman in the rain. With skin like ice and bones like jade, she stumbled into his arms in a panic, her eyes hazy and alluring. From then on, the palace had a new favored consort from Jiangnan.

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Shen Qinghe gained much in her life, and lost much, too. But if you ask whether she regrets it, Shen Qinghe has never regretted a thing.

She had already gained more than enough in this life. Love, power, status: everything she wanted became hers.

Content warning: Not a double-purity couple; multiple male leads

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Blurb for the upcoming novel Not a Concubine:

Zhou Ran missed a step and, when she woke up again, found herself a concubine sold to the young master of the Qin family.

The young master of the Qin family had married a woman surnamed Wang. The couple had reportedly been in love for years, but remained childless, so the old madam came up with the idea of buying a concubine. Zhou Ran was the unlucky one.

According to the contract, if she gave the Qin family a son within three years, she'd receive a hundred taels of silver and be allowed to return home, enough for an ordinary family to live on for a lifetime.

But Zhou Ran, who came from the modern world, was firmly child-free. Have a baby? In her dreams!

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Qin Zimo didn't like the idea of buying a concubine, but his mother and wife pressured him into it, so he could only grit his teeth and accept. Still, whether or not he went to her room was up to him.

He'd assumed the concubine bought from a farming family would be crude and vulgar, but one glimpse of her lively, radiant manner changed his mind. Qin Zimo was intrigued, and went to her room after dark.

On the first night, the woman blushed and said she was menstruating and couldn't serve him. Qin Zimo believed her.

On the second night, she looked pained, clutching her belly and saying she might have eaten something bad. She wept and worried he'd be angry, and Qin Zimo believed her again.

On the third night, she had a limp and timidly said she'd need a month to recover before she could get out of bed. Qin Zimo remembered seeing her laughing and kicking a shuttlecock around the courtyard that day. She'd treated him like a fool. Scowling, he undid his clothes.

He was hooked.

Qin Zimo happily waited for her to give him a chubby little boy, only to discover countless bowls of contraceptive medicine hidden under the bed.

Qin Zimo wanted to strangle her. His wife advised him to get another concubine instead, but he politely declined with a smile.

Let her go? As if.

Even if she died, she'd die in the Qin household.

Later, a fire burned down the courtyard. Qin Zimo gathered up her charred bones, remembering the words he'd once said, and laughed and cried at once.

He broke with Wang. She didn't understand. She was only a concubine. Qin Zimo wept. Wasn't that what he'd thought, too? She was only a concubine. He hadn't known until he lost her that she was the one he couldn't bear to let go, the flesh of his heart.

He entered a monastery, praying only that she would have a happy life in her next one.

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Possessive pursuit, faked death. The heroine is flexible and resilient, quietly trains the male lead, but refuses to have a child.

Theme: Love life, cherish it, and bravely keep going even in difficult times