As a Maid

(Complete, ready to binge.)

The greatest mistake Xiao Rou ever made was living too ostentatiously when she was in power.

Knowing full well that Cui Yanheng loved Princess Wei An, an un favored concubine-born daughter of the He family, she stubbornly insisted on breaking them apart. In the end, the princess was sent away to marry a foreign ruler and died in the bed of a barbarian.

Though she was merely a merchant's daughter, she had the gall to ask her uncle to obtain an imperial decree betrothing her to Cui Yanheng.

At last, the Xiao family was dragged down along with her uncle over his embezzlement case. The man who tried the case was none other than Cui Yanheng.

The engagement was annulled, the family fortune confiscated, and she was branded with a lowly status and sent to the Imperial Music Bureau to work as a courtesan.

Xiao Rou sincerely repented. Just as she was preparing to accept her fate and make the best of life at the Music Bureau,

Cui Yanheng kicked open the door and dragged her back to his residence as a servant. He said, "She's dead. I won't let you get off so easily, either."

Whenever his ink-dark eyes, cold as a deep pool, met hers, she remembered what had happened to Princess Wei An. Her conscience plagued her, and she had no choice but to give in.

Each time he lost control and tormented her until she was covered in wounds, she told herself to endure just a little longer. Once she had atoned for her sins, she would leave.

Later, she finally received a scrap of news about Princess Wei An. After overcoming countless hardships, she brought the princess back to Cui Yanheng.

For the first time in three years, she smiled with dazzling brilliance, but Cui Yanheng grew more and more uneasy.

Sure enough, at the Mid-Autumn family reunion feast hosted by the Cui residence that year, she vanished without a trace, like a stone sinking into a dark pool without leaving a ripple.

Only later did Cui Yanheng realize that all these years, it was never that she couldn't escape. She simply hadn't wanted to. Once she believed she was no longer guilty, even with all his power and connections, he could never find one little blade of grass in the vast wilderness.

The next book is open for preorders. If you're interested, please add it to your reading list~~^_^

Preorder: The Love-Struck Madam Wants a Divorce

Blurb: Pei Lujie was the person Qi Yangyang had treasured in her heart for her entire life.

Everyone in the entire Duke's manor knew it. So did her aunt. And Pei Lujie had known it from the very beginning.

Qi Yangyang knew that if her aunt weren't Pei Lujie's stepmother, and if the Duke of Yingguo didn't feel indebted to her aunt, an orphan like her, whose family had fallen into decline, would never have been able to marry Pei Lujie.

It didn't matter if Pei Lujie found her annoying or treated her coldly. They had a whole lifetime ahead of them. All he had to do was accept her affection.

For the five years they were married, she coaxed him into taking every dose of medicine.

When he was young, he had served as the crown prince's double and lived in a charnel pit in Qiangbei. He feared the cold, the dark, and being alone.

So Qi Yangyang found every excuse to cling to him. On summer nights, she took him out to catch fireflies. In winter, when he finished work, no matter how hard the wind blew or snow fell,

a little yellow umbrella was always waiting for him beneath the archway.

When the Pei army was short of money, she used the dowry her parents had left her to help cover its expenses.

She thought that loving someone meant asking for nothing in return, and not even caring how much they loved you back.

Everyone believed Qi Yangyang would love Pei Lujie for her whole life. Qi Yangyang believed it, too.

But one day, Qi Yangyang suddenly remembered that the young man who had risked his life to save her in Qiangbei might not have been Pei Lujie after all.

And from that moment, everything began to spiral out of control.

·

"Pei Lujie only seems as refreshing as the moon and breeze on the outside. Inside, he's sinister, obsessive, pathologically jealous, and dark to the core."

"And you're the only reason he can keep up that beautiful facade."

"You walked away just like that, after making such a dramatic show of how you couldn't live without him. How could he possibly take it?"

"Pei Lujie could die, you know. Aren't you afraid he'll drag you down with him before he does?"

"It's strange. When I loved him, I could love him with everything I had and ignore everything else. I'd stand in the wind and snow holding an umbrella over him, even though my hands were covered in chilblains. I was afraid of the dark, too, but I still worked up the courage to teach him to catch fireflies. Even when he spoke coldly to me and mocked me, I was happy to take it and never tired of trying. But now, I can't even stand being next to him for a moment without feeling disgusted."

#Once a love-struck fool realizes they've fallen for the wrong person, not even eight horses can drag them back. #

Preorder 1: Coveted for Years by My Childhood Friend's Elder Brother

In her previous life, Liu Xiyi gave her heart to the wrong person and ended up broken in body.

Her husband resented her, too. He set her on fire, dying with her.

Meanwhile, the eldest prince Lu Yun, whom she had once falsely accused of harassing his younger brother's wife and ruined in the process,

rose again, killed his father, seized the throne, and ordered the tombs of Prince Rong and his consort dug up.

Just as Liu Xiyi thought he was going to whip her corpse to vent his rage,

he ordered his men to whip Prince Rong's corpse instead.

With trembling hands, he lifted her into his arms. His black sleeves, embroidered with golden cloud patterns, gently wiped the soot from her face.

In a hoarse voice, he said, "Xixi, you asked your elder brother to help you get what you wanted, but is this really what you wanted?"

Liu Xiyi watched as he dressed her in an empress's ceremonial robes. Defying the ministers' protests, he granted the burned corpse the full rites of an empress and seated her upon the phoenix throne. Even the palace servants passing outside the hall couldn't help covering their noses with their sleeves.

She remembered telling him to withdraw his troops that her greatest wish in life was to be an empress, just once.

She knew Lu Yun had always treated her like a younger sister, doting on her and granting her every request.

Reborn, she decided to dump her faithless childhood sweetheart and repay Lu Yun for the dignity he had given her in her previous life.

Back then, she, Prince Rong, and Lu Yun were still children, all living in the central palace.

She and Prince Rong were the beloved treasures of their maternal aunt, the empress. Lu Yun, born to a bandit's daughter, was lowborn and could only live in a neglected side hall in the central palace, where the roof leaked and his robes were patched again and again.

Looking at the boy she had never treated kindly, whom she had used only as a pawn, her eyes quietly reddened. She stitched a cute little rabbit over the hole in his knee, one stitch at a time, then invited him to taste the steamed sweet curds she had made herself.

The boy was so overwhelmed by her kindness that he treasured those old trousers with her embroidery, keeping them at the bottom of a chest. A beautiful handmade wooden box that gave off a foul stench sat on his desk all year round. Inside was the enamel porcelain bowl she always used, decorated with the design "Magpies Cross the Bridge to Meet Immortals." The contents had gone green and furry, impossible to recognize.

A little scene:

"Elder Brother... Your Highness, Xixi may really be leaving this time."

Lu Yun smiled. "Xixi, are you asking your elder brother to come up with a way to coax Third Brother again?"

She shook her head. "I'm really leaving this time. Your Highness, take care."

The smile that had been as gentle as moonlight vanished from Lu Yun's face.

Later, in the dead of night, he barged into her room in bloodstained black robes, holding a severed head. His handsome features wore an expression both cruel and pitiful.

"Xixi, your elder brother has killed the female assassin who wanted to seduce Third Brother. I'll help you be with him. Won't you come back?"

"Xixi, why don't you call me Elder Brother anymore?"

"Xixi, if you want it, I'll cut out my heart and give it to you..."

Liu Xiyi was so frightened that she knocked over the sweet soup, spilling it all over herself. "B-because I don't want to marry Lu Sheng anymore..."

Lu Yun panicked, at a loss. "Then who do you want to marry? Your elder brother will bring him here for you. If you don't know who you like, I'll bring them all here."

Terrified that he might actually go and abduct people, she hurriedly cried out, "You! I mean you..."

Preorder 2: No Escape from the Dark Moonlight

Pei Jin was the precious legitimate daughter of a marquis's household, spoiled into being arrogant and willful from childhood. She couldn't stand Mingyu, who had been raised by a concubine.

When she was nine, Mingyu came to live in the manor. She threw a huge fit and refused to let him in until he drank her footbath water.

Mingyu drank it without a word.

She gave the beggars the money he had earned with great effort by carrying sandbags to pay for his studies. She tore up the books he treasured, page by page, and cut them into paper dolls.

She and her friends made fun of his leg.

Whenever she was in a bad mood, she made him kneel for her or serve as a footstool.

One day, little Pei Jin dreamed of fragments of a life, half real and half unreal.

In the dream, she had grown up and discovered that she had stolen someone else's place.

Mingyu was the dazzling heir of the marquis's household,

while she was only a bastard, born to a concubine and some wild man, and used to extort the marquis.

Worse, when her birth father sent her to be an old county magistrate's second wife, she set her sights on her former cousin.

She got drunk and walked into the wrong room, then forgot the whole thing afterward.

On the day she married her cousin, her husband was killed in the palace. That night, before the red candles could be replaced with white ones, Zhong Mingyu came to her bridal chamber.

From then on, a noble young lady became a plaything in a cage, spending the rest of her life locked away. Zhong Mingyu, meanwhile, made his way through thorns and rose to the highest office by his own efforts. Even the marquis's household had to rely on him.

Little Pei Jin woke up in a cold sweat. She hadn't understood much of the dream, but she vaguely realized that she had to treat Mingyu well.

And so, her daily life changed. When Mingyu knelt in her room with his shirt off, acting as a blood bag to lure mosquitoes, she promptly brought him a stool and said with a sweet smile, "Brother, thank you for taking care of me. Otherwise, the mosquitoes would have bitten me to death."

When Mingyu warmed an ice cube against his chest in winter so she could have tea, she frowned and said seriously, "Brother, you have to keep exercising like this, so you'll be able to protect me in the future."

Mingyu smiled, but his dark eyes were chillingly cold.

Pei Jin thought that if she acted this way, she would surely be able to get rid of Mingyu.

She had no idea that once protecting someone became a habit, that was when it became truly terrifying.

Later, when Pei Jin had grown up, she no longer had to live in a cage, but she still wept miserably. "Elder Brother, I know I was wrong!"

P.S. While the main characters are still family, their relationship is purely familial, with no romance.

Preorder 3: Provoking the Wolf

A coup in the Southern Kingdom turned the imperial city into a river of blood. Princess Xiang Fu, once the Southern Kingdom's most beloved beauty, was ordered to be captured.

Her maid had already been shot through with countless arrows while trying to save her. Xiang Fu fled to the Blackwater Forest, a lawless region on the border between the Southern and Northern Kingdoms.

Unaware of the danger, the rebels chased her into the forest. From deep among the leaves, pairs of green animal eyes watched them, gleaming with murderous intent.

The rebels were torn to pieces. The little princess trembled as she poked her head out from beneath a pile of corpses.

The leader of the wolves was a young wolfman in animal hides and beast fangs, with a pair of beautiful phoenix eyes.

"I... I'm afraid of pain... Please don't kill me... Will you?" the little princess begged, weeping. "I want to live. I'll do anything..."

The wolfman tilted his head, as if he understood.

He carried the little princess back to his den and made her his wife.

Later, the princess tried to escape him. She and her imperial brother plotted to kill him, but they couldn't. If she ran, he'd find her wherever she went. So she decided to die in front of him instead...

The year the princess "died," the young Wolf King wandered alone every night beneath the mulberry tree she had loved to climb. He cried out in grief until his tears ran red, and the waning moon was stained crimson.

He didn't know that she had only climbed that tree to get away from him.

Later, the Northern Kingdom defeated the Southern Kingdom. For the sake of her homeland, Princess Xiang Fu sacrificed her own happiness and went to the North as a concubine.

It was said that the mysterious new ruler of the Northern Kingdom had only been brought back from a neighboring country by the old king in recent years.

The cold new ruler stood before Princess Xiang Fu, dressed in a dance robe. His long fingers were white at the knuckles as he roughly forced up her chin.

That handsome face, like one from a nightmare, appeared before Xiang Fu once more.

"After you died, do you know how many mulberry trees I planted for you? And now you tell me you weren't dead? Hmm?"

Theme: Survive against all odds