After the Empress Is Dethroned

Fantasy novel coming soon: After the Heartless Dao Senior Sister Dropped Out. A sworn-enemies-have-a-baby story. The blurb is at the very bottom. The blurb for this novel starts here.

Not long after Huo Xuanju ascended the throne, he and Empress Su Zhi'ai could hardly stand the sight of each other.

Su Zhi'ai had married him back when he was an unfavored prince. Her father held great power, and she was a peerless beauty, with a face like a hibiscus and the bearing of an immortal. Huo Xuanju had treasured her like a precious gem, treating her as the brightest moon in the sky, as if there were room for no one else in his heart or eyes. Though Su Zhi'ai had been proud and willful since childhood, she had gone from being unwilling to marry him to sincerely wanting to become a loving couple with him and grow old together.

That was until he became emperor and brought a pregnant palace maid before her. Only then did she learn that he had been involved with the maid who had grown up by his side all along.

At the same time, he tightened the screws on the Su family at every turn, filling Su Zhi'ai with ever-deepening anxiety.

In the first year of Tianxing, Su Zhi'ai and her brother Su Guanze raised an army and forced their way into the palace. They were ultimately defeated, and she was deposed and imprisoned in Anchu Hall in the Northern Garden.

The Cold Palace was cut off from the light of day. In plain, threadbare clothes, Su Zhi'ai was forgotten by everyone and reduced to a state worse than a palace maid.

Just when she thought she and the child in her belly would die there, Huo Xuanju came to see her.

He told her, "Once the child is born, go with them to their fiefdom and take up your post there. You can live out your days as the Queen Mother."

That night, a great fire broke out at Anchu Hall.

They said the deposed empress could not bear the humiliation of being banished from the capital, so she had chosen death rather than submit to anyone.

Beneath the towering flames, the palace maids and guards panicked,

but no one saw the young emperor, his eyes brimming with tears as he tried again and again to rush into the blaze.

Three years later,

Huo Xuanju happened to meet Bai Shu, a court official's wife, in the palace.

Simply because Bai Shu had the exact same face as Su Zhi'ai, he ignored the criticism and forcibly kept her by his side.

From then on, Huo Xuanju indulged and doted on Bai Shu. Even when she ran amok in the palace and killed without leaving a trace,

he merely laughed it off when he heard about it.

One day, rebel forces stormed the palace. Huo Xuanju held Bai Shu's hand tightly and refused to let go.

He even placed the dagger he carried for protection in her hand.

The flames blazing across the sky were just like those that had engulfed Anchu Hall that night, turning half the palace red.

But Bai Shu pressed the dagger against Huo Xuanju's neck.

At last, Huo Xuanju's eyes reddened.

"Aiai, how long are you going to keep this up?"

Bai Shu smiled brightly. "Your Majesty, the deposed empress has been dead for a long time. Why have you mistaken me for her again?"

*This is not a rebirth story. Before the heroine enters the palace for the second time, her marriage to the second male lead has already ended.

The romance between the main characters, including intimate interactions and marriage, begins only after the heroine's marriage to her former husband has ended.

Fantasy novel coming soon: After the Heartless Dao Senior Sister Dropped Out

As the top senior sister in the Heartless Dao, a sect with the lowest graduation rate, Xie Yunyan has always kept away from beauty, cold and merciless. She is regarded as the hope of the entire sect.

But after she woke up injured from a mission gone wrong,

Xie Yunyan found a chubby little dumpling sitting on her bed and clinging tightly to her. The moment it saw her wake up, it began crying and calling her,

"Mama..."

Xie Yunyan nearly passed out. She hurriedly flung the filthy thing away.

Unfortunately, her fellow disciples arrived in time to catch the little dumpling.

Xie Yunyan was also informed that

the thing was her biological child, and that she had left the sect many years ago.

She had merely lost a stretch of her memories.

"Look on the bright side, Senior Sister. Maybe this is the curse of our Heartless Dao. Even you couldn't escape it."

Xie Yunyan was close to tears.

She had always studied diligently,

resisted countless temptations, and worked hard to set an example for her fellow disciples, all in the hope that one day she would attain the Great Dao and graduate as an outstanding cultivator of the Heartless Dao.

Why would Heaven treat her like this?

She decided to leave the sect again, to find the memories she had lost and discover why she had fallen so far,

and to track down the bastard who had kept her from graduating.

But Xie Yunyan soon discovered something even more terrifying. The more she looked at the child by her side, the more it resembled her sworn enemy, Pei Yin.

As the young lord of the Brahma Cloud Holy Palace, Pei Yin had spent years undercover in the cultivation world, wielding countless secret identities.

After years of hard work, he had finally risen step by step to become the Sword Sect's leader and the head of the Cultivation Alliance.

At a young age, he stood at the very pinnacle. He was a genius admired by many,

and he was as beautiful as a piece of jade, seeming both demon and immortal, with countless men and women enamored of him.

Pei Yin seemed never to have suffered a setback.

But he alone knew that he had suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of his sworn enemy, Xie Yunyan.

In a secret realm, someone framed him, and he and Xie Yunyan ended up rolling around in the grass. They both lost their memories and began living as husband and wife.

He devoted himself to treating his wife well. They even had a child, and their life was peaceful and warm, as if they could grow old together just like that.

Until one day, as he was making a little wooden rocking horse for their soon-to-be-born child,

Xie Yunyan was still blushing with laughter at his words one moment. The next, after suddenly regaining her memories, she ran him through the chest with her sword.

After Xie Yunyan gravely wounded him, Pei Yin nearly died. When he awoke, he felt the scar over his heart and could not understand how a woman could be so heartless.

He hated her for that sword thrust, yet still wanted to see her again.

But Xie Yunyan was determined and upright. Once she made up her mind, she almost never changed it.

Even Pei Yin, who could travel to Heaven or plumb the depths of the earth, could not find her.

Then one day, as Pei Yin sipped wine in his bedchamber and thought of his wife and child, he suddenly sensed her presence return to the sect where she had once trained.

Theme: Through countless twists and turns, they find a way to survive.