The Emperor Regrets

On the day Consort Li Zhihe died, a heavy snow fell on the borderlands her Li family had guarded for generations.

The phoenix coronet and embroidered wedding robe she had never received in life were buried with her coffin in the bottomless imperial mausoleum.

It did not snow in the capital, and the wind was calm. When the emperor, renowned for his elegance and brilliance, heard of her death, not a trace of grief crossed his face. He merely ordered that, with the treasury depleted, the consort's funeral must not be too extravagant.

Watching all this unfold after her death, Li Zhihe could barely keep from spitting blood. So the talk of political instability and crowning her empress once she had a child had all been excuses. The nourishing soups he had coaxed her into drinking day after day had been laced with contraceptives.

How could she ever have had a child?

But there was no medicine for regret. She closed her eyes, and vanished along with the obsession she had clung to all her life.

When she opened them again, she had returned to the day she first entered the palace.

Looking at the emperor who told her to obey the rules and watch her words, and at the noblewomen around her, all eyeing her jealously and eager to steal the affection she supposedly enjoyed...

Li Zhihe gave a mocking laugh, claimed to be ill, and shut the palace gates tight. She wanted nothing to do with an emperor's love. She only wished to live out her days here in peace, becoming the final bargaining chip that would let her father and brothers command the troops at the border without worry.

With the gates locked and palace life lonely and bitter, she was perfectly content.

Zhao Jinxing was an emperor praised to the skies by every scholar in the Grand Secretariat. He governed with diligence and fulfilled his duties faithfully. Compared with the reckless late emperor, he had practically restored the State of Zhao single-handedly.

But this emperor had wronged one person.

Only when that person died did he realize that all his imperial calculations stood no chance against a sincere heart.

#Our Sovereign's Regret

Blurb dated 2024.10.06

Revised 2025.03.08

The novel itself takes precedence.

Coming soon: historical romance, The One I Mistook for You

The husband Shiwei had picked up was handsome as a jade tree and eloquent, making everyone around her who had been waiting to mock the lone orphan green with envy.

She treasured the only family she had in this world. The ginseng she had planned to sell for farmland, she exchanged instead for medicine to treat his injuries. But for some reason, her husband was determined to return to the capital, and Shiwei was at her wits' end.

The neighbor's auntie told her that having a child would tie the man down. Late one night, Shiwei pinned him to the new bamboo bed she had made. She fumbled about, kissing him a few times without knowing what she was doing. Satisfied, she tried to leave, but he caught her by the waist, eyes red.

Pei Junluo was the legitimate crown prince, born to the empress. He excelled in both civil and martial arts, possessed virtue and talent, and was as wise and capable as the ministers had hoped. If nothing went wrong, he was destined by Heaven to rule the nation.

Yet this very man fell into a deep ravine and was forced to repay a country girl who had saved his life.

He watched coldly as she busied herself on his behalf, turning up her nose at all those crude things. How could a woman like her ever be worthy of a nobleman of the imperial house like him?

She was an orphan with no illustrious family and no education or manners. Calling him