[Coming next: "After the Demon Empress and Tyrant Are Both Reborn". Please add it to your reading list~]
[Complete | Chapter comments open | 80% anti-piracy]
One heroine and three male rivals | Awakening in a storybook | Rebirth | Ensemble cast
Meng Ziyuan awakens to her own sense of self.
She discovers that she’s the villainess in a novel about a three-man romantic rivalry.
The male lead, Cui Jihen, has the face of a sage and the heart of a devil. He suffered humiliation throughout his youth, then rose to power and became a treacherous chancellor who holds the court in his grasp.
The second male lead, Lu Yanxi, is a refined scoundrel and noble-born dandy. He knows the heavens above and the earth below, and at a young age he earns the third-place title in the palace examinations, winning everyone’s admiration.
The third male lead, Li Ge, starts out as a poor, innocent young man. Later, he reveals himself to be a prince of the grasslands, noble and untouchable.
The three men join forces to bring down the great villain, exacting their revenge in blood. As the villainess, Meng Ziyuan is naturally doomed to a terrible fate. She dies a gruesome death.
-
To survive, Meng Ziyuan does everything she can to keep her head down.
In the novel, she’s the wicked ex-wife who earns the male lead’s loathing. He divorces her and forces her to drink poison, while the haughty Chancellor Cui watches coldly as she suffers agonizing pain, her insides torn apart, until she dies.
To avoid this fate, Meng Ziyuan works hard to win Cui Jihen over while he’s still a penniless scholar, then quickly divorces him and runs away as soon as the opportunity arises.
But when they meet again, the man’s eyes are red as he begs her, “Don’t leave me.”
In the novel, the second male lead, Lu Yanxi, is never short of women, while she’s beneath him in every way. After awakening, Meng Ziyuan never even considers getting involved with him.
But later, she sees him take a bullet for her, staining the long stone steps with his blood as he lies on the brink of death. “To me, you’re warmth in the snow, shelter from the rain, a flower in my blood. You’re more important than my life.”
In the novel, the third male lead, Li Ge, disappears after a brief encounter with her. Meng Ziyuan naturally assumes their paths have parted for good.
But the young man transforms into a prince of the grasslands and leads an army to flatten cities in his desperate search for her.
When they meet again, the once-innocent youth has changed completely. His eyes are filled with the obsessive pain of loving someone he can’t have. “When have I ever refused to let you toy with me? Is that still not enough for you?”
Meng Ziyuan is on the verge of tears.
Weren’t they supposed to hate the universally despised villainess? Why are they all acting like they’d die for her? What are they trying to do?
-
After barely making it to the ending, Meng Ziyuan finds herself inadvertently tangled up with the male lead and the two supporting men. Now all three fight over her every day, and it’s giving her a headache. But things get even worse when the original heroine packs up her things, walks obediently over to Meng Ziyuan, tilts her head, and says with a grin, “Little Yuan, how about you and I move in together?”
Meng Ziyuan nearly faints. Great. Now it’s four people fighting until they’re bloody.
Meng Ziyuan: “Stop! All of you, stop fighting! Instead of beating each other to a pulp, the five of us should just focus on making a good life together...”
[A seemingly gentle, honest heroine who’s actually a scheming heartthrob VS ① a seemingly vicious chancellor who actually sobs and throws a fit when his wife runs away + ② a seemingly spoiled young noble who loves her deeply until the day he dies + ③ a seemingly innocent puppy-like young man who’s actually an obsessive, unstable prince of the grasslands]
Content warnings:
1. The heroine is a virgin; all male leads have had no previous partners. There are temporary one-on-one relationships, but this is not a multiple-choice romance. The heroine chooses only one in the end.
2. The heroine is married to Male Lead ① from the start. They divorce midway through, after which she has temporary romantic relationships with Male Leads ② and ③, who are supporting characters in the original novel. Again, this is not a multiple-choice romance. It will be clear by the middle of the story whom the heroine chooses.
3. The heroine and the original heroine have a close friendship, not a romance.
4. An important supporting character transmigrates.
---Upcoming Novel---
"After the Demon Empress and Tyrant Are Both Reborn"
A humble man hiding his claws | Rebirth | Marriage first, love later
1.
In their previous lives, Zhongli Heng and Shen Puyu were an honest, unassuming couple brought together by an imperial edict arranging their marriage.
Zhongli Heng was the gentle, scholarly Prince Jin, with a refined air. Of all the princes, he was considered the least capable of shouldering responsibility and was quickly excluded from the political arena.
Shen Puyu was the lowborn daughter who was least loved in her family. Timid and meek, she was neither loved by her father nor her mother. As soon as she came of age, her family pushed her into a marriage to take the pressure off themselves, marrying her to the utterly useless Prince Jin as his princess consort.
The two timid, ineffectual people married, were cast out of the capital’s noble circles, and sent to a desolate fief to live out their miserable days.
2.
Unexpectedly, a palace coup drenched the imperial family in blood, leaving not a single prince or grandson alive and throwing the whole court into chaos. With no one left to rule, someone remembered Prince Jin, who had been kicked out of the capital, and forced the supposedly useless prince onto the throne. His timid, weak-willed princess consort became empress.
The court officials all thought this puppet couple would be easy to control.
No one could have imagined that this seemingly pliant and gentle emperor would, on his very first day on the throne, behead the regent, confiscate the grand tutor’s entire estate, seize the general’s military command, and establish the “Heaven’s Eye” to keep watch over all the officials. Anyone who made even the slightest mistake was dragged out and executed.
The officials trembled in fear and cursed him as a tyrant!
They pinned their hopes on the weak and easily bullied Shen Puyu.
“Her Majesty the Empress is dignified and gentle. Surely she can talk His Majesty around...” The official didn’t get to finish his sentence. The scene in the Palace of Earthly Tranquility left him staring in utter shock.
There stood the usually virtuous empress, wearing a red dress with seductive eyes. Kneeling before her was a cool, aloof young man: the most honest and upright third-place palace examination laureate in the empire. Shen Puyu breathed out her words like a sweet fragrance, playfully running a finger under his chin. “My dear subject, I find you rather handsome.”
The official gritted his teeth and spat out a curse: Demon Empress!
3.
For more than a decade, the whole empire lived under the shadow of the tyrant and the Demon Empress.
Then one day, the Crown Prince returned from the dead to seize the throne. The tyrant and the Demon Empress were executed, and the nation set out on a bright new path.
But no one could have imagined that after their deaths, the tyrant and the Demon Empress would both be reborn.
They awoke the day before the Crown Prince seized power.
“We lost our grip once in our last life. This time, we’ll turn things around,” Shen Puyu says, analyzing the situation as she props up her feet and cracks sunflower seeds. “What do you think? Go on, tell me.”
Zhongli Heng gazes at her silently for a long while. At last, his eyes redden as he asks, “Did it hurt?”
In his final moments in their previous life, he watched Shen Puyu pierced through the heart by a storm of arrows. Zhongli Heng had only one thought then: His Puyu is so delicate. It must have hurt terribly.
Every time he remembered it, his heart felt as though it were being torn apart.
Theme: Even the little people can defy fate and change their destinies through perseverance.
The General's Rhapsody
Everyone but Me Gets the Crematorium Treatment
Hey, Ex, You Sent That Harassment Text to the Wrong Person
Gentler Than Night, More Passionate Than Summer Rain
Crossed Temperatures [Chasing His Wife]
My Husband Is So Weak, But He's Just Pretending
The Sleep Aid Blogger Who Keeps Asking for Updates Is My Boss
Cut Your Losses in Time [Winning Her Back]
The Demon Queen and the Tyrant Reborn
Addiction Game [Winning Back My Wife]
You Said You Wouldn't Bite Me!
An Unspoken Secret
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After reading Chapter 152, I felt that what this article really wants to write about is not three men competing for a woman, but how a "evil female supporting character" who was originally destined to have a good destiny gradually has her own consciousness, desires and choices. Everything Meng Ziyuan did initially had a strong purpose of survival. She pleases Cui Jihen, gets close to Lu Yanxi, and deals with Li Ge. Many times it is not because of love, but because she knows that she will die tragically according to the original plot. But as the story progresses, she no longer just acts to survive, but actually develops feelings of her own: she can love, be jealous, be reluctant, and think about who she wants to spend the rest of her life with. This is her most important growth. The love of the three men for her also represents three completely different relationships. Cui Jihen is undoubtedly the most distressing and tragic person. He has always loved Meng Ziyuan, but he doesn't know how to love others. He is used to using his status as husband and wife, control, threats and coercion to keep her, mistaking "cannot lose" for "love". His trauma can explain all this, but it cannot eliminate the hurt suffered by the heroine. Chapter 149 is particularly cruel: the heroine walks towards Lu Yanxi naturally when she sees him. Cui Jihen stands alone in the snow, finally understanding that the person who once played with him in the snow will never look back. The author is not denying his love, but telling him that loving someone does not mean that he will be able to possess her. Cui's real growth may be to accept her loss and no longer let her pain become a debt she must repay. Li Ge's feelings were defeated by deception and coercion. He used the heroine's amnesia to fabricate the relationship between husband and wife, hurt Lu Yanxi, and restricted the heroine's freedom. Even if there was sincerity in that relationship, the foundation of the relationship is still false. Fortunately, his departure was honorable: he finally understood that becoming the king of a country meant that he could no longer abandon his people for personal feelings. The heroine asked him to keep moving forward and not look back, which was the clearest farewell to this relationship. In contrast, the relationship between Lu Yanxi and the heroine is closest to true "love between two people." The heroine will take the initiative to kiss him and long for him. She will be jealous because he has painted "other women", and she can't help but be happy when she learns that the person in the painting has always been her. She was not repaying her kindness to Lu, nor was she compromising after being deeply moved, but she was taking the initiative to get closer mentally and physically. The most touching thing about Lu Yanxi is not just his gentleness. He was also jealous and possessive and wanted to hide her, but he was always waiting for her permission. What he wants is not just to get her, but to be chosen by her soberly, proactively and uprightly. Later, he refused the official career offered by Jiahe and was willing to accompany the heroine to travel around the world. He also advanced the relationship from a momentary passion to a life together: he didn't just want to spend one night with her, but he had already put his life into her future. The biggest advantage of this article so far is that the characters' emotions are not flat. The heroine's love for Lu does not mean that she has no feelings for Cui; she will still be moved and distressed by Cui, and she will not be able to completely let go of everything they have experienced together. But love still exists, which does not mean that the relationship is suitable for starting over. Heartbeat can only prove that the relationship has not disappeared. Trust and freedom determine whether two people can continue to live together. The shortcomings of the novel are also obvious. The battle for the imperial throne in the later period was relatively sloppy, and the overthrow of Emperor Yuan and Huang Quan was too smooth; some characters would suddenly lose their wits or lose control of their emotions when advancing the plot. The heroine has clearly confirmed that she loves Lu, but while enjoying his company and intimacy, she refuses to confess and evades commitments because she is afraid of death, which indeed makes readers feel depressed. She thought she was protecting Lu by hiding it, but in fact she decided for Lu whether he was willing to bear the loss. But I don't agree with "the heroine will die if she doesn't choose Cui". Choi deserves to be loved, but he shouldn't automatically get the heroine as compensation just because he loves the most painfully. The heroine can be criticized for hesitating, evading, and not being candid enough in relationships, but she still has the right to choose her lover. If a novel with the concept of "awakening" and "changing one's destiny against nature" still requires the heroine to distribute herself according to the degree of suffering of the man in the end, then it will truly deviate from the core of the story. After reading this, I think the ending of the relationship is relatively clear: Li Ge bids farewell, Cui Jihen learns to let go, and Lu Yanxi becomes the heroine's true partner. The biggest suspense next is not who she will choose, but whether she can escape the backlash of the script. The corpse spots on her body, the approaching death, and the setting of Jiahe and Shanmin's "two souls coexisting and looking for a new body" are likely to point to the final way to break the situation. I hope that in the end Meng Ziyuan did not survive because of a man's rescue, but that she truly broke the rule of "evil female supporting characters must die tragically". She can choose Lu Yanxi, or she can cherish Cui Jihen and say goodbye to Li Ge, but the most important thing is that she can finally take this life back from the script and the hands of others, and say frankly: This is my body, my feelings, and my life.
😭 Cui Muchun, you too have today. . . But it's so crazy, I like it. I hope you are the real palace.
The foundation of this story is really good. The beginning is very stable, and the writing is also delicate, especially the character of Cui Jihen - from confiscating his family and exterminating his family to going to the capital, his silence, restraint, and lack of explanation are impossible to ignore. His weight is not derived from the pile of words, but from every detail, making it difficult to put down after reading it. I can also understand that the main text needs a male protagonist. Just judging from the reading experience, there is a big gap between the presentation and handling of the "Terminal" character and the depth of Cui Jihen in the early stage. Many of the highlights and parts that should be developed about him are just mentioned once. As a result, when reaching the end of the text, the sense of power is not enough, and readers are prone to question: Why him? And why can people like Munchun be placed in extra chapters? In the main text, he is clearly an option worth pursuing, but he is arranged as a "regrettable footnote". He endured so much and wrote so many heart-wrenching details, but in the end he only left one sentence: "My husband will protect you." Such a farewell was so heavy that it couldn't fit him at the end of the text. It's not that he has to win, it's just that he deserves to be treated more completely, rather than being kept, heard, and then taken away. This is my true feeling as a reader. There is no other meaning. Thank you to the author for writing such an unforgettable person.
Lu Yanxi is really good. I feel that the heroine really likes him the most.
After reading the book, my biggest regret is that I was not able to see the wedding ceremony of Lu Jun and Meng Ziyuan, nor was I able to see their peaceful life with their children around their knees after marriage. I secretly hope that at the absent wedding banquet, Jiahe, Cui Jihen and Li Ge can all be present to see them make that solemn promise to each other under the witness of everyone - "May we live together forever". But then I thought about it, although the story has ended, the dream that the author weaved for us has never ended. Those unfinished plots have already taken root in my heart and grown their own branches. Dreams are the most beautiful, and hope follows them. Thank you for this novel, which gave me a good dream.
Dear author, when will the heroine give Lu a title and give him a child? I really like the two of them getting married together.
Late spring is beautiful! I only love late spring~,
I really like Lu Yanxi. He really respects the heroine, cares about her, and has pure love. He treats the heroine as an object and swings it as he wants. Not to mention hurting the heroine. Unless the heroine has masochistic tendencies, the damage is real and cannot be wiped out by Meng. Only Lu Yanxi tolerates the heroine and accepts everything and the reluctance of the heroine. He will not force her.
Cui Muchun has no sense of existence! 😭 heartbroken