They’ve All Been Reduced to Ashes

I'm delicate, pitiful, and without a mother's protection.

Yet I've struggled through life, trying to figure out how to escape the home that should have been my refuge.

In the eyes of the court, my father is honest and upright. To me, he's self-righteous, arbitrary, and domineering.

In front of outsiders, my mother is virtuous and gentle. With me, she's heavy-handed and determined to grind down my spirit.

I lie helplessly in bed and sigh. What a miserable life.

After more than ten years of bowing and scraping, just as I am finally about to sneak away...

My mother takes me to offer incense.

One wrong step, and then another.

A villain covers my mouth and nose and drags me away. Those ruthless criminals all have blood on their hands.

Too bad I was just one step away from escaping that suffocating home. How could I give up?

I manage to lure them in and barely escape.

Unfortunately, someone with a truly wicked mind points the criminals in my direction.

They're only ten feet away. I can only turn and run. If I find out who did this, I'll curse him so his son has no... well, you know.

In the pouring rain, I run, stop, and run again. The people following me draw closer and closer.

At last, I can't run anymore, but then a carriage appears before me.

My always-gentle, actually-evil little sister watches as the carriage wheels roll over my fingers.

As I'm dragged away, I look up, and rain falls into my eyes.

I'm not going to cry.

Life is nothing but one fall after another.

At rock bottom, I'm tied up with a rope like livestock. It hurts. I feel so wretched.

Then a man in white appears out of nowhere. His movements flow like water, like a peerless hero riding on a rainbow cloud to save me.

I can't deny it: my lovesick heart is utterly smitten.

What happens next is better left unsaid.

When I finally lie in the mud, with only one last breath left, the rain still pours from the sky and falls into my eyes.

I still won't cry.

- -

Ji Yu, the Crown Prince famous throughout the land, has never felt sorry for people like this.

Weak, pitiful, like a parasitic vine, bullied by everyone.

He himself is the sort of person who will do whatever it takes to achieve his ends.

Ruthless and decisive, he never shows any unnecessary kindness.

But later, there is a moment that hurts him so badly, he wants to go back to the past. Even if he has to be covered in blood, he would trade anything to give her a lifetime of peace.

----Coming soon: "The Prince of Liang's Preemptive Crematorium"----

Cen Lang, the sickly third daughter of a great general, has a dream.

In the dream, the two families arrange a marriage, and she is wed to the Prince of Liang. He's peerlessly handsome and talented, the most renowned man in the capital. There's just one thing: his heart belongs to someone else, his white moonlight.

For the sake of this white moonlight, he ignores her, his princess consort, grows increasingly cold, and even denies her the respect she deserves.

The neighboring courtyard is filled with revelry every night, and from time to time his white moonlight arrogantly bullies her to her face.

Yet she loves the Prince of Liang and keeps all her pain bottled up for his sake.

At the end of the dream, to save his white moonlight, the Prince of Liang forcibly takes her blood, heedless of her lifelong illness. She struggles through a month of pain before she dies.

She wakes with her heart pounding.

Cen Lang, bedridden and sickly for years, clutches her chest and coughs in fright. The pain of the illness that killed her in the dream seems to linger in her heart. She lifts her face, her eyes wet with tears brought on by coughing.

Cen Lang's moist, round eyes make her look bewildered. The dream seems absurd.

What Prince of Liang? She's never even met him. How could she become entangled with him?

But then news arrives that the two families will be joined in marriage.

- -

The Prince of Liang has loved someone for a long time. At last, after persuading his father-in-law to agree to a marriage, he brings home the person he treasures most.

But his darling seems strangely distant from him.

When he approaches her, she spits up blood.

When he so much as touches her, she spits up three mouthfuls of blood.

The Prince of Liang, the capital's most powerful and dashing man, adored by women everywhere, spends his wedding night in his study for the sake of the woman he cherishes.

The usually far-sighted Prince of Liang can't figure out why. All he can do is watch over her while trying to find a way to ease the heart-wrenching pain of love.

- -

Cen Lang has spent half her life wanting nothing. She doesn't want to be involved in this bloody, life-threatening conflict, so she gathers her money and looks for a chance to leave.

She'll let the Prince of Liang and his white moonlight live happily ever after.

Who knew this plan would somehow reach the Prince of Liang?

That night, the red candles flicker. All the servants present see the usually cold-faced Prince of Liang pin her down on the bed, eyes red.

"Trying to run?"

"With what other bastard?"

# The male lead's white moonlight is the heroine #

# The heroine's dream is false #

----Coming soon: "Qing Dynasty Time Travel: Finding an Amnesiac Kangxi"----

Yu Sangzhi was born in the apocalypse, one of the few with psychic abilities.

She's solitary and powerful. Beneath her weak, pitiful exterior lies a violent and vicious personality.

Sometimes people see her looking delicate and tearful, even as she stomps on a zombie's head and snaps its arm while crying.

The knife spinning in her hand whizzes through the air, bringing out a spray of the zombie's white brain matter.

One day, she finds herself in a dynasty called the Great Qing, where the lush green fields are nothing like the ruins that once covered the land.

Her starving mother, skin and bones, hands her a little hoe. Her younger brother behind her cries to be fed.

Her mother says, "Go cut some pigweed."

She says, "?"

- -

Kangxi, on his southern tour, never expected that there would still be people left from the corrupt and embezzling factions. Wounded by an assassin, he collapses by the road.

When he wakes, he sees a pair of slender, delicate hands. The woman looks fragile and charming, her figure as willowy as a willow in the breeze. Every frown and smile of hers is graceful and shy.

When she sees that he's awake, she puts on an utterly vulnerable expression and offers him the little hoe in her hands. When he touches her, he can feel her trembling with shyness.

She asks, "Could you help me with something?"

So after Kangxi occasionally returns from cutting pigweed at night, he sees the girl sitting in a tree, her skirt stained with blood, chewing on a blade of grass as she gives him a gentle smile.

- -

Kangxi finally remembers who he is and escapes the days of cutting pigweed.

How could a young emperor, born to such privilege, be mixed up with commoners like these?

That day, the people bow before him. The imperial carriage is raised high, and ranks of armed guards lower their heads as they await the return of the young emperor, already famous in his youth.

Inside the small carriage on the way back to the palace, the helpless, delicate Yu Sangzhi leans against the seat, presses her lips together, and gives everyone a frightened, timid smile.

- -

Ever since Emperor Kangxi returned to the palace, all the consorts feel that life has become much harder.

That shameless woman puts on a charming act, but inside she's rotten to the core.

We can't go on living like this.

----Coming soon: "The Little Brat of the 1980s"----

Lin Yuan is known throughout the surrounding villages as a fool. It's a shame she has such a pretty face.

Everyone in Lin Family Village feels sorry for her.

Lin Yuan's parents have taken a hefty bride price and just want to get rid of her. Luckily, there's a fool in the same village, the son of a village official.

A fool with a fool. No one will say a peony was stuck in cow dung.

But...

Yuan Yuan, from another continent, transmigrates into her body.

As a church saintess who has been doted on since childhood and fawned over wherever she goes, Yuan Yuan blinks, confused as she looks at this utterly destitute world.

Her gaze shifts and lands on the young man from the Xie family next door.

He's quiet and reserved, but he helps her wash her clothes and put on her socks, just like the bishop who always stayed by her side in the church.

- -

Everyone who has been with Xie Mingyi for a long time knows that Brother Xie is tough, clever, and perceptive. No one has ever dared to cross his line.

He clawed his way up from a remote little place to where he is now. His subordinates are always on edge, not daring to entertain the slightest improper thought.

But no one knows how Xie Mingyi, so formidable outside that he makes people tremble with fear, gently coaxes someone at home into putting on her socks.

Theme: A tragic past takes a lifetime to heal.