The story is complete. Please leave a rating! The blurb for my next novel, Spring Waters, Slender Waist, is below.
Blurb:
Xian Si is a palace maid, and a little pretty.
She spent seven years clawing her way through the harem, rising from a lowly maid in the Bureau of Palace Supplies to a first-rank maid serving at the emperor’s side.
In those seven years, she learned to read her masters’ expressions and knew exactly how hot their tea should be. In the eyes of the younger maids, she was a formidable, respected senior.
But Xian Si knew full well that no matter how glorious things seemed on the surface, she was still a servant her masters looked down on.
When the palace granted its annual leave to marry, she was twenty-three and about to leave the palace to get married.
But on that very day, the emperor happened to glance at her a little longer.
That night, her clothes were torn away, and she knelt at the emperor’s boots.
Afterward, the emperor leisurely fastened his collar, his cool fingertips grazing her as he looked down at her like a merciful god regarding an ant.
“I won’t take you without compensation. I’ll grant you a better fate.”
The emperor was occupied with state affairs from dawn to dusk and never paid attention to the servants around him.
For years, the palace maid serving at his side had known exactly how strong to brew his tea, how finely to grind his ink, and how much pressure to use when massaging him. That was all.
Then one day, he took a look and realized she was rather pretty, and pleasant to have around.
She was only a maid. If he wanted her, he would take her.
But with his wedding coming up, he couldn’t be bothered to give her a consort’s rank and invite unnecessary complications.
After he had taken her, he noticed that she and the chief eunuch at his side seemed to get along well. With a wave of his hand, he arranged for the two of them to become a eunuch-and-wife pair.
Liu Lun was the most prominent servant at the emperor’s side. If she married him, she would have been granted a better fate and found a suitable husband.
Later, the emperor never imagined that the maid’s unyielding backbone would be like a pine on a mountain ridge, impossible to break.
The phrase “servant’s bones” was not merely about groveling like a servant. It also described the purity of her character.
As for him, he had developed a taste for her and was still unsatisfied.
Seeing her paired off with that eunuch made him inexplicably sick with jealousy.
He went back on his word without hesitation, imprisoned her at his side, and became a tyrant.
[Reading Guide]
* Fictional setting inspired by the Ming imperial court / both leads are sexually inexperienced / one-on-one romance / intelligent, coercive love / groveling pursuit / bitter, passionate romance / status gap / powerful man humbled / happy ending / sweet on the surface, black-hearted underneath
* [A clever, aloof, ruthless, powerful villain emperor vs. a clear-eyed, gradually ensnared, loyal, cautious, stunningly beautiful palace maid]
* The heroine and the eunuch in the blurb have no actual or formal marital relationship. This story continues the style of my previous work. The male lead is once again a villainous, controlling man who is deeply devoted to the heroine and drives the story. It is a little sweeter than my previous work, and the ending is happy. The setting sticks closely to the historical period, and the heroine is a native of this ancient world. The story focuses on the male lead’s sophisticated psychological manipulation and the heroine’s gradual surrender to his control, with a suffocating slow-boil dynamic and melodramatic love and hate. At heart, this is a coercive romance. A coercive romance. A coercive romance. The male lead is extremely powerful and the female lead extremely weak. This is not an empowerment fantasy or a strong-female-lead story (emphasis added).
* The male lead’s name is Han Zheng.
* 80% anti-piracy protection, 72 hours. If your subscription rate is below 80%, you will see repeated chapters within 72 hours of the latest chapter being posted. They will be restored afterward. Please support the only legitimate edition on Jinjiang.
Completed coercive romances of a similar type:
The Deceitful Groom
My Heart Cannot Be Broken
Servant’s Bones ●
A Sigh for the Golden Cage
A Fine Son and a Fine Wife
Pre-release: Spring Waters, Slender Waist
Yangchun is a maid to the eldest daughter of the Zhou family.
A maid’s position comes with decent perks and plenty of opportunities for pocketing a little extra, but the work is exhausting and lowly.
She keeps her head down, works hard, and rarely speaks, planning to run away once she has saved enough money.
When the eldest Zhou daughter gets married, custom dictates that one maid be sent to her husband’s household for ten days to test the groom before the wedding, mainly to see if he is up to the task in bed.
There are plenty of flirtatious maids in the household, so Miss Zhou picks the dependable, unassuming Yangchun.
As a maid, Yangchun has no say over her own fate. She grits her teeth and agrees.
Night falls. Red candles shine bright.
The new groom is elegant and refined as he presses down over her.
On the bed, Yangchun endures the pain, trying to accommodate him, feeling as though she is being split apart.
-
The new groom is the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, a powerful and influential man who has made his mark at a young age.
The trial marriage goes very well. Miss Zhou marries him without a hitch, and the couple live together in perfect harmony.
Yangchun has fulfilled her duty. She wipes away her cold sweat and prepares to bundle up her things and leave.
Just then, the new groom, who is doing his new bride’s makeup, points at her. “That maid served me well enough. Keep her as a concubine.”
Yangchun is thunderstruck.
-
To be a concubine of the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi is an unimaginable privilege. Everyone envies Yangchun for rising to a life of luxury overnight.
Xie Zheng thinks so too. After that night, he can’t get enough of her.
But Yangchun longs for the world outside, and yearns to breathe freer air.
She refuses to accept this fate.
-
*Maid vs. scholar-official
Blurb dated 2024.11.24
*Male lead is sexually inexperienced. Love by force.
Theme: Keep striving to live, no matter how difficult things get.
The Concubine Escapes
Within the Palace
Husband [Nonhuman]
Welcome to the Secret and Strange Infinite World
Peach Blossoms Shattered
Escape from You
A Sprig of Spring Sorrow
Piano Keys [Hong Kong Showbiz]
Misty Hong Kong Island
💔 Crematorium is a pure one-man show. This is a story about the domestication of the heroine. I thought that there was so much foreshadowing in the front and in the middle. It was really scratching and I wanted to make people watch it. It was just to see the love in this kind of spiritual bullying. What kind of decisions can the heroine make, what kind of love thoughts does she go through, and what kind of character arc is finally achieved. The previous writing is very good, but my final result is a living person. In the end, the heroine lost her soul and was domesticated successfully, becoming a tool shell for the hero to satisfy his one-man show of love. The heroine's thoughts in so many chapters in the middle are always spinning in circles, and there is no step forward at all. At least every time she is entangled and painful, she has to push forward instead of repeating the previous thought experience after going through a stage. She is spinning in circles from beginning to end, and the heroine is too disconnected from the middle to the end. The same goes for the male protagonist. No one remembers the harm the female protagonist received except possessiveness. The male protagonist also seems to have lost his memory. The two of them suddenly forgot their past and started to turn into disgusting industrial saccharine. I really didn't think about spending money to get through all the pulling and pulling in the middle. The feeling I got was a sense of betrayal by the female protagonist. I rarely leave negative reviews like this, but this time I bought the finale with real money, and this kind of novel is only finished to see the finale. Good, but the result is completely disgusting. I rarely read a novel and get so angry like this. I know what kind of story it is. There are a lot of twists and turns in the front and the middle, and the heroine's ideological struggle is also very good. In the end, this person's soul is taken away and her personal will is taken away. I'm really disgusting. I don't know why I wrote the previous ones if this is the case. I really feel sorry for my money 💔. I will remember this article and learn a lesson.
The young couple just pretends to each other and is tired of it 🐶
She still looked good when she was a palace maid
It's so depressing and tiring to watch. This kind of male protagonist is simply sick to the extreme. Especially in the middle, in order to tame the female protagonist, it's like boiling an eagle. Can normal people bear it? Can you still convince yourself to fall in love with him?
A pair of heroes and a mother-in-law, it makes me laugh and feel moved
The writing is really on point, it would be a pity if the two of them were not in love till the end.
Congratulations to my wife on the completion! Thank you for your hard work 🤩 🤩
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