Entering the Forbidden Court

[Complete] [Please add my upcoming novel, The Sixth Year of Mutual Respect, to your reading list~~] Lian Li was an orphan. At sixteen, she married the only scholar in her village, and everyone said she had struck it lucky. Lian Li thought so too. She waited for him at his ancestral home, day and night, hoping he would return in triumph and take her with him to the capital. In the spring of the second year of Dayi, the good news she had long awaited finally arrived. An official came to announce that her husband had placed first in the imperial exams. Lian Li dressed up happily, eagerly waiting for her husband to return on leave and take her away. But she waited and waited, hoping and hoping, until all she received was a letter of divorce addressed to the clan elder. He read it aloud to her in front of the entire ancestral hall, showing no regard for her dignity or humiliation. That night, Lian Li cried until her face was soaked. . Li Bozong divorced his country wife, citing one of the Seven Grounds for Divorce: having no sons. He lived amid the splendor of the capital's pleasure district, believing he would never have anything to do with her again. But during the autumn hunt at the imperial hunting grounds that year, he saw with his own eyes the woman who had once been his wife, wrapped in the emperor's robe and led toward the imperial tent. Li Bozong's eyes turned bloodshot. . Lian Li was alone, widowed in all but name, with no one to rely on. Ever since her parents died, many people had secretly said she was helpless, weak, and easy to bully. But even someone as vulnerable as her would not let Li Bozong humiliate her like this! She gathered her belongings and set off for the capital alone, determined to demand an explanation from him. But the journey was fraught with hardships, and Lian Li faced plenty of hostility along the way. Eventually, fed up with the disdain and snubs of others, Lian Li climbed into the carriage of a wealthy household under cover of night. At first, Lian Li only wanted someone to rely on. Once she found Li Bozong, cursed him as a faithless man, and ruined his reputation, she would return to her little village in the mountains. Who could have guessed that once she got in, whether she could ever get out would no longer be up to her? Blurb for the upcoming novel The Sixth Year of Mutual Respect: After six years of marriage, Yanying and her husband treated each other with respect and courtesy. That August, as they approached their seventh year of marriage, Yanying felt their life growing more and more uneventful, but thought it was still perfectly fine. Then, in that very August, her close friend told her that her husband's cousin, who had once come close to being betrothed to him, had returned home after a divorce. Yanying didn't think much of it. But after that, she ran into the woman at every banquet she attended, while more and more people around her made vague remarks meant to put her on her guard. Yanying began to waver. At a night banquet, she saw her husband and the woman emerge together from the darkness. Yanying: "!!" Had he really still been carrying a torch for her all this time? As she fretted and hesitated, unsure whether to confront him over all those rumors, she woke up a few days later, a year in the future. She was lying in bed in mourning clothes, with two small children beside her, their eyes red from crying. Yanying was dazed. Before she could decide whether to feel happy or sad, the elderly maid at her side quietly comforted her, reminding her to focus on the baby in her womb and not grieve too deeply. That night, when no one else was around, Yanying called the maid over and asked, "Whose is it?" The maid: "!!" She nearly left her body in shock. Good heavens, what did Madam mean? Yanying kept a straight face. Nothing in particular. She had simply remembered that night and thought that if he really had been involved with another woman, she couldn't possibly be carrying his child. Trying to be a deadbeat dad again? Not a chance! But just then, the door suddenly opened, and the man she thought was dead walked in, his face black as the bottom of a pot. Theme: Don't get hung up on rules and conventions