The Golden Cage [An Lingrong Derivative]

**My original yuri novel next door, After Marrying a Female Ghost, I Became a Top-tier Star in the Metaphysical World, is now underway. If you're passing by and interested, please visit my profile and add it to your favorites. Pretty please, mwah!**

**Anyone want to read a story about the great demon king Longyue killing her brother and ascending the throne as empress? (I'm digging a hole and burying myself in it. The blurb is at the bottom of my profile.)**

I got way too into Empresses in the Palace and deeply related to An Xiaoniao, which gave me this idea. You can start from Chapter One. Lingrong will gradually change, but this isn't a story about her reaching the pinnacle of the imperial harem. There will be very little proactive palace scheming and face-slapping.

1 Xiu vs. 0 Rong (feelings have been confessed)

I'm writing this out of love. If you see this, leave a comment and add it to your favorites. That's the biggest support you can give me! Please!

(This is not a strict derivative of the Empresses in the Palace TV series or novel. I'm just writing whatever I feel like, indulging myself and letting loose. The characters may be out of character, and I've changed a lot. There's no logic, but I'm sensitive, so please be kind. Lingrong's outlook will gradually change. I don't want to base this on actual history, so the emperor is still Xuanling. The true villain is always the feudal hierarchy.)

Oleander blossoms whirl red through the air like rain. Consort Li An dies in Jingchun Hall.

At last, she has made a choice for herself. She drifts out of the cold, gloomy Purple Imperial City, hoping that in her next life she can be a blade of grass or a flower, born pure and dying peacefully.

Her memories are hazy. When Lingrong opens her eyes again, she finds that she really has become a flower: an oleander, beautiful in bloom but poisonous all over.

She watches with open eyes as the flowers bloom and the petals fall, as oceans turn to fields and stars shift across the sky, as the imperial dynasty collapses and humanity builds a completely different new world with technology.

After enduring a cold rain in early autumn, An Lingrong closes her eyes heavily. She never expects that when she opens them again, it won't be spring, but summer, when she is seventeen and has just become favored, the center of everyone's attention.

In a daze, she thinks it was all just a long dream. Its fragments are blurred and elusive, yet they keep affecting her.

Lingrong looks toward the sunlight on the horizon and the oriole flying beyond the palace walls, and asks herself once more:

Why can't I take charge of my own life?

My life may not have been upright, but it was worthwhile

The pairing is Yixiu. I've changed Yixiu drastically.

The author is Lingrong's devoted mom, so there will inevitably be a golden finger. I hope you understand.

****Warnings (Please Read)****

She will still sleep with the emperor. Without his favor, it's impossible to live comfortably in the deep palace.

Yixiu's past has been altered by the author and is completely unrecognizable.

I'm writing this for fun, without a plan. If you don't like it, please don't insult me (I'm really sensitive and will cry to my wife all night).

Updates whenever I can, but I won't abandon it (my original novel is updating daily. Please add it to your future reads to support me!)

My writing is poor, I'm uneducated, and I can't write beautifully. I don't do much research, so please don't criticize me if some details about the original novel are inaccurate or some characters are out of character. My writing is poor, and I can't describe things well. My writing is poor, and I can't describe things well!

**My original novel, After Marrying a Female Ghost, I Became a Top-tier Star in the Metaphysical World, is now underway. Please add it to your favorites. I'll bow down to all of you!**

[Devoted, wickedly charming beauty of a female ghost vs. cool, elegant student who grows into herself]

Bai Fangming has loved wearing the wooden bead she found in a graveyard ever since she was a child. When her father showed no affection and her mother never protected her, only that wooden bead could bring her comfort.

Who would have thought that, over time, a beautiful female ghost would come to inhabit the bead, haunting and seducing her day and night?

"Give in to me, and I'll teach him a lesson right away~" The female ghost floats beside her, twirling a lock of hair and coldly watching as others bully Bai Fangming.

*

Bai Fangming makes a pact with the female ghost. Apart from having to put up with a peerless beauty floating beside her every day, she gets everything she wants with ease.

Cast aside like trash by her sons-first family, she repeatedly puts her younger brother, the family's great hope, in his place.

Bullied by a pack of spiteful little ghosts, she uses a set of exorcism spells to thoroughly trounce them.

When a hundred ghosts come to fetch a bride and eerie wedding music rings out, the female ghost, dressed in red wedding robes, stands alone before the bridal sedan. She is willing to be reduced to a wandering spirit to snatch the "bride" back from the Ghost King.

With her soul so transparent that only a thin sheet remains, she still smiles enchantingly as she marries Bai Fangming in a ghostly wedding.

Bai Fangming thinks she can afford to be greedy for once.

She wants the heart of that shamelessly beautiful old ghost, but all she gets is the ghost's longing for her own first love, projected onto her...

*

Bai Fangming shatters the last shackle on the female ghost and says in a cold, quiet voice, "You're free. Get out."

In an instant, the female ghost's sinister aura surges skyward, making her seem every bit the wicked spirit who does nothing but evil. She grabs Bai Fangming's hand with a fiendish, fierce look, her eyes red, and says, "I'm your ghost. I'm not going anywhere."

Theme: Take charge of your own life