Beloved Consort

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[Obsessive, Unhinged Emperor x Alluring, Airheaded Beauty] The emperor is reborn, a love tangled in hatred, and maximum melodrama

The heroine's side: Cui Mei is a singing and dancing girl kept by the Lu family. Her features are as lovely as a painting, and her slender waist sways like a willow branch. She is exceptionally beautiful. From childhood, she has been taught how to use her charms to compete for favor and serve men. She is no different from those slender beauties from Yangzhou sold to the highest bidder.

At a banquet, she was dressed up and adorned. Before her pipa performance had even ended, a handsome young gentleman swept aside the curtains and scooped her up in his arms. Amid the suggestive looks of the crowd, he carried her into the inner chamber, where they consummated their affair.

Only after she was taken to the imperial palace and made a Beauty did she learn that the gentleman was none other than the reigning Emperor, Xiao Chang!

Cui Mei knows she uses her looks to serve people, but she still wants to win the emperor's favor. Why would she enter the palace if she didn't want to become his favorite consort? Still, she finds Xiao Chang rather strange. No matter what she does, he thinks it's wonderful.

Cui Mei learns to play the se. Everyone in the palace stuffs their ears, convinced she sounds like someone fluffing cotton.

Xiao Chang claps and cheers, "My beloved consort's playing is like a phoenix's jade feathers shattering and a hibiscus weeping dew. It's heavenly music, so beautiful!"

Cui Mei learns to paint and creates a picture of chicks pecking at rice.

Xiao Chang praises her without end: "My beloved consort's painting has improved at an astonishing pace. Soon you'll be the equal of Gu Kaizhi and Wu Daozi!"

Cui Mei learns to play Go. Her reputation as a hopeless player spreads through the harem, until even the maids refuse to play with her.

Xiao Chang loses to her all ten times they play, yet still says, "My beloved consort's skill is superb. I can't compare."

Everyone says the harem is full of danger at every turn. Yet Cui Mei rises with remarkable ease from Beauty to Lady of Bright Deportment, then to the Imperial Noble Consort who reigns supreme in the harem. She doesn't have to do a thing. Xiao Chang simply lays everything at her feet.

Just as she falls in love with Xiao Chang, she has a dream. In it, every step is a struggle. She uses every means imaginable to win his favor, only to die a truly miserable death.

The hero's side: Xiao Chang is an emperor with three thousand beauties in his harem. He has both a white moonlight and a cinnabar mole. He is a flirtatious, amorous man with countless consorts. The Lu family presents him with a beautiful singing girl. She is alluring and sensual, with a slim waist and full breasts. She is charming and sweet, knows how to flatter him, and is uninhibited in bed. She is just his type.

He dotes on this beauty, spending half of every month in her palace and showering her with gifts. Yet despite all his favor, he still makes her drink contraceptive soup and begrudges her a title, refusing to grant her a palace of her own. She comes from a lowly background. When other consorts ask why he favors Cui, he casually replies that she is uninhibited and knows how to have a good time.

Cui becomes the laughingstock of the harem. Even the palace maids gossip behind her back, saying she rose through the ranks with her bedroom skills and that His Majesty is merely obsessed with her body, not genuinely attached to her.

He believes the same. Hard-mouthed and cold-hearted, he lets her be mocked and bullied. He sleeps with her, yet looks down on her. More than anything, he fears people will discover that he has fallen for a lowly singing girl and scorn him, their emperor.

Even after Cui works her way up and is made a Consort, he lets the Noble Consort, who comes from a general's family, give her a humiliating title meant to make her a plaything.

She's just a toy, a pampered slave. He shouldn't care about her, and he doesn't.

But after she breaks the Noble Consort's glass cup, is framed for harming a Lady of Bright Deportment's child, and is sent to the Cold Palace, he only means to punish her lightly. Then he hears that she gave birth to a daughter in the Cold Palace, and that both mother and child have died. Xiao Chang goes mad...

Now that he is reborn, there's still time. He will love her properly and give her honor, favor, a child, even the throne as empress. But why is she growing more distant from him? She wants nothing at all, except to leave him. And the person she loves is someone else?

She leaves resolutely, unwilling even to keep their child. Xiao Chang holds the wailing baby, tears in his eyes, and tries to make her stay: "Meimei, I can't live without you, and neither can our child. Please stay."

The only answer is her figure plunging into the rushing current. Xiao Chang's eyes nearly burst with anguish. He has been reborn and knows he was wrong. Why, then, still can't he make her stay?

Content warning: A story about chasing his wife into the crematorium. The hero is an emperor with a harem, flirtatious and amorous, and unfaithful in his past life. He's still awful at the beginning after being reborn. The heroine is an airheaded beauty who will do anything to win favor, but her heart belongs to someone else. She doesn't love the emperor in either life.

The hero and a male supporting character are reborn. The heroine will remember her past life later on.

The swallow hairpin on her hair, she felt ashamed of the mandarin ducks in the mirror.

At dawn she returned to Hengtang, while bright stars saw her off in her jeweled carriage.

Xiao Lang already resents how far away Penglai Mountain is, and now another ten thousand mountains lie between them.

Up Next: The Empress Doesn't Love Me After All [Both Reborn] [Win Her Back at Any Cost] [Powerful Abduction]

Xie Mingzhi is a renowned virtuous empress of the Great Zhou. From a prince's concubine to the exalted empress, second only to the emperor, it took her a full twenty years to earn her reputation as a virtuous empress. She is the emperor's most trusted companion, the most respected elder sister among the harem consorts, and the beloved legal mother of his children born to concubines. To preserve her reputation as a virtuous empress, she has never made a misstep in her life. Though the emperor does not love her most, they treat each other with respect and devotion, sharing meals at the same table. They have four sons and three daughters, and are held up as a model of an affectionate imperial couple.

The court officials admire her, saying she has the talent of Empress Lu and Empress Wu, but none of their wickedness. Her life should have been free of regrets.

Reborn one day at the age of seventeen, she refuses to join the selection of consorts, enter the palace, or marry the emperor. This time, she will live for herself.

But her dead emperor husband has also been reborn. He offers her the position of princess consort, then the throne as empress, with both hands, and clings to her like a ghost. No matter how she explains that she never loved him, he refuses to believe her.

Theme: No matter how humble your origins, never give up the chance to strive for a better life.