·The reader's guide includes content warnings. Please be sure to read it and see if this story is right for you ^ ^
·Also known as The Empire and the Beauty
[Reborn scheming black-lotus princess as the pursuer X deceptively sweet female chancellor as the pursued]
Li Chengxi won in her previous life.
She killed the crown prince and secured the throne.
Only Wen Du, the woman who had risen from government slave to Minister of Works, the most useful blade in her hand, died in the final year of the struggle for the throne.
Before she died, Wen Du was covered in blood, leaning against the wall of the imperial prison. She looked up at the agent who had come to see her off and smiled.
“Tell Her Highness,” she said softly, “I wish Her Highness's realm may endure as long as the mountains and rivers, and shine as brightly as the sun and moon... May all your wishes come true.”
Li Chengxi fell silent for a moment after hearing this. “Understood.”
For seven years after ascending the throne, she reviewed memorials, quelled rebellions, and executed powerful ministers. The candles in her study never went out all night, but there was no one left to trim the wicks for her.
Her old wounds flared up, and she coughed up blood without end. On the night she died, no one was at her bedside.
The last thing she thought of was Wen Du's smile.
Then she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again...
The red candles at her coming-of-age ceremony flickered painfully in her eyes.
The newly arrived maids knelt in the corridor. At the very end was a slight figure, fourteen or fifteen years old, head bowed but back ramrod straight.
Li Chengxi pointed to her and smiled. “Send that maid to my side.”
Someone asked, “Why keep the daughter of a disgraced minister by Your Highness's side?”
She did not answer.
She only thought to herself: A game of chess must be played slowly, and a person... must be slowly won over.
*
Wen Du had a secret. She had been in love with the eldest princess for a long time, so when the princess went to choose maids, Wen Du gave up her chance to rise in the world and went to the princess's residence without hesitation.
Everyone in the capital knew that Princess Li Chengxi was the maddest of the emperor's daughters. Tearing up a marriage alliance edict, pointing her sword at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau... Everyone said she was a heretic and would be deposed sooner or later.
Wen Du did not care.
She simply swept, delivered messages, served tea, and did all the things a maid was supposed to do. But the princess could always pick her out of the crowd at a glance and call her name.
“Wen Du.”
“Yes.”
“Come here.”
Sometimes she asked Wen Du to read memorials aloud, sometimes to grind ink, and sometimes she had her do nothing at all, just stand beside her.
From maid to minister, and then to female chancellor, Wen Du somehow walked this road without understanding how.
Until one night.
Li Chengxi finished reviewing the last memorial. It was already late.
Wen Du stepped forward to clear the desk, when a hand suddenly closed around her wrist.
“Yanjun.”
“Here...”
“Come to my bed.”
Wen Du froze in place.
Li Chengxi did not urge her. She simply held Wen Du's wrist, her thumb stroking Wen Du's pulse again and again as she waited for an answer.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I-I am not...”
“Then come here.”
Later, no matter how much Wen Du thought about that night, she could not figure out how she had been lured onto that bed.
She had only been called by name, only been looked at, and that hand had simply not let go...
And somehow, she had followed.
Like a debt from a past life, one she knew she had to repay the moment she saw her again in this life.
[You want the Nine Phoenix Towers? I'll tear down Chengming Hall to pave the way for you;
You want a name reviled for all eternity? I'll stain the history books alongside you with my vermilion brush.]
Reader's Guide:
1. Both are sexually inexperienced | Both powerful and equally unhinged | Mutual pining becomes mutual love | Used in the previous life, saved in this one
2. The pursuer had two deceased husbands in her previous life (political marriages, no real feelings)
3. The political intrigue is written with care
4. Fictional dynasty, please don't treat it as historical fact
5. A self-indulgent personal fantasy
Theme: Who says women are inferior to men?
