A Seductive Beauty's Guide to Climbing the Ladder

The main story is complete. A 100,000-character novella. Occasional revisions.

Next story: The General Doesn't Believe I'm His One True Love, a rebirth-and-redemption romance. Please add it to your favorites. Now serializing.

[When falsehood becomes truth, even truth turns poisonous. Deep love is the deadliest blade.]

Xue Fu knew from childhood that, as the lowborn daughter of a concubine,

she had to seize every advantage and claw her way up.

So she schemed and struggled to become Zhang Yang, the young heir of the Jiangnan Canal Transport Commissioner,'s cherished confidante, the beloved girl he had adored since youth, his cinnabar-marked muse.

But a sudden upheaval changed everything. Her father, whom she had never met, used his power to send her to the Eastern Palace in the royal capital, where she became a secondary consort to the Crown Prince.

Fortunately, she had never loved Cao Duo, and being a Crown Prince's consort was indeed better than becoming a commissioner’s wife.

But she had underestimated Cao Duo's feelings for her.

On the day they parted, desperate to escape the hold of her former lover, she plunged the betrothal hairpin he had given her when she came of age deep into his chest. Then she turned away without a trace of tenderness, letting the torrential rain wash over the bloodstains.

She only wanted to climb into the Eastern Palace. Pressured by power and family ties, she was willing to become the most useful pawn in her father's hand.

But three years later, at a wedding banquet in the Eastern Palace, she saw the figure of the man who should have been far away in Jiangnan.

When they met again, he smiled and spoke amiably, but beneath his smile lay an undisguised, seething hatred.

"You're mistaken, Lady Xue. Not Lord Cao."

"The Sixth Prince."

Xue Fu was afraid. She feared Cao Duo had now climbed a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood to claim royal blood, all to avenge their old love and the wounds of the past.

But when she treated Cao Duo as she had before, Xue Fu discovered that beneath his murderous expression, he still loved her with all his heart.

To secure his favor, Xue Fu tentatively asked whether he would help her conceive a child.

Cao Duo seized her delicate wrist, his eyes bloodshot.

"So what you're saying, Lady Xue, is..."

"You want me to be your lover?"

But Xue Fu didn't know that Cao Duo had two regrets in this life.

First, that at eighteen he had trusted a seemingly chance encounter that hid a trap.

Second, that when they reunited, he knew her whispers were laced with arsenic, yet still drank the poison and let her cut open his heart.

"Your lover?"

"Who says I don't want to be?"

"I've been wishing for this."

A flirtatious, scheming, dark-hearted heroine x a madly devoted, obsessive hero

Reader's Guide:

1. An intense push-and-pull romance. The more she hurts him, the more he loves her.

2. One-on-one, both leads are each other's first. No need to worry if you prefer chaste romances.

"Your Majesty, do you know what it means to be a flirt?"

"Those who take the bait do so willingly, and never let go until death."

--This vast realm was always bait we set together.

The General Doesn't Believe I'm His One True Love

[A lively, resilient princess x a devoted, affectionate young general]

The day Shen Qingfang breathed her last,

white mourning banners fluttered across the general's residence, while a new Princess Fuxi appeared in the palace.

When she was very young, a wandering mystic came to her home and said, "Your fate is bound to the Greedy Wolf; your soul will return to the Purple Enclosure."

Now she had been reborn in the body of Ji Rou, the Ninth Princess, who should have died young in the cold palace. Not only had she left behind her frail, sickly body, she had gained a noble identity.

But she didn't know that after hearing of her death, her elder brother, the undefeated young general who had led the three armies to countless victories, had nearly died in a battle that should have ended in triumph.

Shen Yun Zhao returned to the capital gravely wounded. Bound by her new identity, she could only watch the carefree young man sink into silence and long for death.

The day Shen Yun Zhao tried to die again, Shen Qingfang clutched the jade pendant he had once given her and begged him to recognize her, only for a sharp sword to press against her throat.

"Speak ill of Qing again," the young general said, his eyes glinting with ice, "and I'll cut out your tongue."

In despair, she was sent to marry into an enemy nation by imperial decree.

Along the thousand-mile bridal journey, every attempt she made to reveal her identity was dismissed as demonic nonsense.

Shen Yun Zhao personally tied her wedding dress, unaware that beneath the red veil was the very "younger sister" he loved to the point of madness, yet could never have.

When she finally stopped resisting and submitted to being sent into the Xiongnu royal court,

she heard the wedding candles crackle on her wedding night, followed by iron hooves trampling the royal city outside. Bloodstained armor crashed through the bridal chamber door.

In the candlelight, Shen Yun Zhao, drenched in blood and limping with a spear in hand, walked toward Shen Qingfang in her wedding dress. Blood stained the young man's lips as he pulled her trembling body tightly into his arms.

"How could my little sister get married without telling her big brother?"

"But it's all right. I killed them all, so this doesn't count."

--What use did he have for all those glorious military achievements? They were merely a way to earn an imperial marriage decree, so he could call her his beloved openly and honorably.

Theme: Stay clear-eyed and be true to yourself