A Black Lotus Empress’s Guide to Rising to Power

*A calculating, seductive black-lotus heroine × an initially aloof emperor who later becomes utterly lovestruck In the fourth year of the Li dynasty, the new emperor holds a selection for his harem. The most beautiful candidate is Qiao Songlan. The young woman is breathtakingly lovely, with a beauty that blazes like a flower. A tiny red mole beneath her eye lends her boundless charm. Yet she is merely the daughter of a low-ranking official in Lingzhou. Her family background is neither impressive nor humble, leaving her utterly unremarkable among the candidates. With beauty but no backing, she should be easy to manipulate. At first, nobody pays any attention to this obscure Lady Hui. Then she takes down the noble consort, the consort, the high consort… Only then does the harem realize that this lady has become the one who stands above them all. * The new emperor is young, levelheaded, and peerlessly handsome. He despises the late emperor for indulging in beauty, and when he walks among the women of the harem, he has always kept his heart untouched. But with new consorts entering the palace, he has no choice but to make the rounds and pay each one a visit. At their first meeting, the woman is pale with illness, hidden behind a gauze curtain. Yet even through the sheer veil, her presence is enticing. She parts her vermilion lips and takes the candied fruit he offers between her lips, catching his fingertip in the process. Warm and soft, her seduction is unmistakable. The next day, after reviewing memorials and dealing with the power struggles at court, he is restless and wanders to the lake in the imperial gardens. A fine rain falls, and egrets dot the misty shore. The climbing vines along the bank give off a clean, sweet fragrance. The woman hooks a finger in his sash, her eyes shimmering with mist, brimming with desire and ambition. Her breath brushes his ear. Her lips graze the pulsing artery at his neck, and every word strikes straight to his heart: “Everything beneath the heavens belongs to the emperor. All under heaven should honor you above all.” And Li Zheng never imagined that even as Son of Heaven, he would one day willingly bow his head and submit to the woman before him, whose beauty could steal a soul. * Qiao Songlan has a secret. The new candidates enter the palace with their own agendas. With her lowly background and peerless beauty, she must look like a choice morsel to them all. But who could have guessed that beneath her stunning beauty lurks a demon who clawed its way out of hell? In her previous life, she was on the verge of ruling the harem. Who could have known it would all fall apart at the last moment? Fortunately, Heaven took pity on her and gave her another chance at life. Now that she knows the story, dealing with the people who once lost to her is nothing difficult. She can also make up for all the regrets, big and small, that she once had. More importantly, she can make everyone who betrayed and harmed her in her previous life experience the pain of a broken heart. * Reader’s Guide: 1. Traditional palace-intrigue story. The male lead is not a virgin. 2. The early chapters focus more on the plot, with a plot-to-romance ratio of 6:4. 3. In the later chapters, the emperor devotes himself exclusively to the heroine. She becomes empress and will attend court to hear state affairs. 【After completion, the whole novel will be thoroughly revised. I’m only responsible for the official version.】 Coming soon: 《The New Emperor’s Dark Moonlight》. Find it on my author page. Blurb: Cong Yao was born a slave convicted of a crime. Before her mother died, she spent her entire fortune to buy her daughter a clean identity. At the very end, her mother told her to live well, and never to think about revenge again. Cong Yao endured and lay low, struggling to survive. All she hoped for was to leave the palace at twenty-five and live a good life, just as her mother had told her. But one offhand remark from a noble sent her to serve the son of the deposed Prince of Ye. He was once the imperial heir apparent, but now he was a commoner of the Qi clan. The boy lived in seclusion inside the palace. To put it kindly, he was under house arrest. To put it plainly, he was buried alive in a tomb for the living. But one can’t have peace when the wind keeps blowing. All her hopes for the future became impossible dreams. The home of the Qi commoner was dilapidated and filthy, cobwebs filling the corners. Dust choked Cong Yao until she couldn’t stop coughing. She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails drew blood from her palms. She crouched down and looked steadily at the boy, who barely reached her height even when standing straight. The Qi commoner was as thin as a dried stalk of wheat, but his dark eyes were as menacing and vicious as a wolf’s. Cong Yao stroked his yellowed hair, then gently took his hand. “Your Highness, do you want to become emperor?” * Qi Qian always knew that Cong Yao was a woman with a great deal of cunning. When his life was at its darkest, she reached out to him, like a bright moon breaking through the thick fog. He beheaded the empress dowager, eliminated the former emperor, and clawed his way out of that desperate situation. So when Qi Qian heard that she wanted to leave, he immediately went mad. He thought he was heartless enough. But when he saw her being bullied, kneeling on the bluestone bricks as scalding tea burned her pale hands red, he felt a pain more piercing than any blade. Those hands had lit lamps for him, sewn his clothes, brushed the mole beneath his lip, and stroked his back through countless unbearable nights as she sang an unfamiliar little tune to lull him to sleep. Qi Qian suddenly regretted everything. What did dignity matter? What did sincerity matter? All he wanted was Cong Yao by his side, never, ever to leave him again. No one would ever be allowed to hurt her again. No matter the cost: gold and jewels, wealth and power, or a mountain of blades, a sea of fire, or the deepest pits of hell. * The new emperor holds court. Beneath the white jade steps, the ministers lie prostrate, trembling in fear. There is only one reason: everyone who objected to the new emperor’s ascension has been slaughtered. Blood runs through the palace and beyond its walls, while the sword of the grim ruler on the throne still drips with blood. “Qian” means exile. It was the contemptuous name the deposed empress dowager gave him to humiliate him. The Imperial Household Department prepared a name with a profound and auspicious meaning, then respectfully delivered it to the imperial study, only to find the new emperor absent. And the jade-faced reaper, whose very name makes the whole court tremble, is at that moment kneeling on the floor, trembling as he rests his head on a woman’s lap, begging her on the verge of collapse: “Big Sister, please don’t leave me, okay?” *Younger, lovesick, possessive emperor × aloof, cold-hearted, resilient heroine *Both are virgins; the male lead is younger, and the leads misunderstand each other at first *The heroine focuses on her ambitions early on; later, the male lead suffers through a painful campaign to win her back Theme: Live again and turn the tables against the odds