The Elder Sister-in-Law Is Trouble

Coming Soon: The Palace Maid Rises Again

Reborn, child-rearing, and palace intrigue. The blurb is at the very end.

To outsiders, Jiang Yueyi was the elegant and radiant wife of Earl Chengping. Her husband, Qi Hao, was young and gentle, with neither concubines nor bedchamber maids. They treated each other with respect and courtesy.

Only Jiang Yueyi knew that her husband was frail and incapable of intimacy.

She had stayed only to escape her harsh stepmother at home. Everything between her and Qi Hao was just for show.

But as the days went by, she needed a child to secure her position, and Qi Hao and the Earl's household needed an heir.

Jiang Yueyi set her sights on Qi Hao's younger brother, Qi Yuan.

Though born to a concubine, he was strikingly handsome and refined, as bright and pure as the spring moon over willow trees. He was also exceptionally gifted, and had earned his own academic honors at a young age.

On the night Qi Yuan returned home, Jiang Yueyi took off her fine clothes and jewelry, abandoned her usual dignified manner, and dressed herself as a lowly maid before slipping into his bedchamber.

After several nights of passion, Qi Yuan left the Earl's estate, and Jiang Yueyi soon became pregnant, just as she had hoped.

Just as she thought everything would go according to plan, a sudden fire destroyed it all.

Qi Hao died.

And she saw Qi Yuan again, hurrying home.

Qi Yuan had been away from home for many years. On his first night back, his sister-in-law sent a delicate, tender maid to his room.

The maid came late at night, with a slender waist like a willow branch and graceful hands beneath her light clothes.

In the dim candlelight, half her profile shone like a lustrous pearl, like a dew-kissed hibiscus.

She left before dawn, as imperceptibly as a passing spring breeze.

Afterward, he left the Earl's estate. Once he had made all the necessary arrangements, he intended to bring her to live with him, only to learn that she had died, leaving him with nothing but regret.

Not long afterward, his brother, who had been sickly for years, suddenly died. Qi Yuan returned for the funeral.

There, he saw an unfamiliar woman in plain mourning clothes kneeling before the coffin.

It was his sister-in-law, Jiang Yueyi.

She was already far along in her pregnancy. One hand covered her face as she wept, while the other rested on her swollen belly.

Too shy to raise her head and look at him, she seemed utterly helpless.

Qi Yuan happened to catch sight of her limpid, shimmering eyes and felt he had seen them somewhere before.

As though, once upon a time, someone had looked at him just as tearfully,

like the maid who had once been in his room.

Qi Yuan was in turmoil. But every piece of evidence surrounding his brother's death pointed to Jiang Yueyi, so he had no choice but to place her under house arrest first.

Later, when the whole truth came to light, Qi Yuan saw Jiang Yueyi again. She was holding her daughter and looking at him coldly.

He hurried over and stopped her from leaving. For the first time in his life, he said something that crossed the bounds of propriety: "You don't have to forgive me. But you've already had my child, sister-in-law. Do you still intend to remain faithful to my brother?"

The Palace Maid Rises Again

Xiao Qianwei was the lowliest little palace maid in the imperial palace. She had a beautiful face, but just as she thought she would spend her whole life serving others, Emperor Shen Xu took her to his bed, and she became pregnant.

But her good fortune did not last. Not long after giving birth to Shen Xu's only child, Xiao Qianwei died suddenly, her cause of death a mystery.

After her death, her son became a tyrant.

In the end, the dynasty fell, and she too was nailed to the pillar of shame, condemned by the world. It was deeply unfair.

Given another life, Xiao Qianwei was reborn as the little palace maid she had once been in the Directorate of the Palace Household.

Looking around her humble room, she was just about to start planning her future when she realized she was already pregnant.

From then on, Xiao Qianwei devoted herself to raising her child, making up for not having raised him herself in her previous life.

She put more and more effort into caring for him, to the point that she could hardly be bothered to seek the emperor's favor.

Shen Xu summoned her to keep him company as he read. Xiao Qianwei claimed she was ill.

Shen Xu wanted to go flower-viewing with her, but Xiao Qianwei complained that the sun was too hot.

Even on her birthday, when Shen Xu came especially to spend time with her and hoped to share a tender moment, he found that she had already gone off to sleep with her son.

Xiao Qianwei thought that Shen Xu had always been a proper and upright man, and had never paid her much attention. She was no more than an afterthought to him. If she hadn't borne his only heir, he probably wouldn't have looked twice at someone of her low birth.

She also didn't want her child and herself to become targets of the other women in the palace. The most important thing was to live in peace and safety.

Since she had been given another life, she would surely set him straight and raise him into a good boy!

One day, Shen Xu, whom she had repeatedly turned away from her bedchamber, kicked the door open and barged in.

He saw Xiao Qianwei speaking softly to the child in her arms. She only raised a finger to her lips, telling him to be quiet.

Shen Xu had been neglected by Xiao Qianwei for days. Pointing at the bundle in her arms, he gripped her shoulder and asked coldly, "You've forgotten me for his sake?"

He casually set the child down in a corner of the large bed. The curtains fell, and he no longer let her escape so easily.

In the middle of the night, the child slept restlessly. With her waist aching, Xiao Qianwei struggled to go soothe him, but the man beside her, who seemed to be sound asleep, caught her ankle and tugged her back toward him.

He smiled. "So you weren't asleep?"

The child began to cry. The more anxious she became, the more forceful he grew.

Only then did Xiao Qianwei realize that Shen Xu, the wise ruler praised by the world, could also be so dark and brooding.

She looked at her little one and fell into deep thought.

Could her child's behavior in the future have been inherited from Shen Xu, too?

*Reborn, child-rearing, and palace intrigue. The male lead has an unhinged side, which the heroine will bring out in this life.

Theme: Happiness must be actively pursued.