[Cool and devoted romantic] x [Scheming black lotus]
Shen Zhaoyi, female, attracted to men, was once a ruthless empress who wielded power over all under heaven.
One careless moment, and she was poisoned to death.
As she lay dying, she watched Xie Qingci, the consort she had once banished to the Cold Palace, charge through the palace gates, drenched in blood, and take countless arrows for her. In the end, he collapsed in her arms, exhausted.
“How could you... be so foolish...” Blood spilled from her lips, and her consciousness gradually faded.
Memories flashed before her eyes like scenes from a film, and Shen Zhaoyi remembered the day they first met.
On the Eastern Palace wall, she tossed a peony toward a young man studying at the Imperial Academy.
The startled boy looked up.
She grinned and said, “Big brother, you're so handsome.”
At her words, Xie Qingci's ears turned bright red. He hurriedly gathered his books and fled as if for his life.
“If there's a next life... I hope you won't be so unlucky... as to run into me...”
When she opened her eyes again, Shen Zhaoyi had somehow transmigrated into a once-popular capital-city romance novel, The Cold Palace's Captive Beauty. She had become the cannon-fodder abandoned consort who was sent to the Cold Palace by a tyrant because of the line, “Your birth chart is exceptionally auspicious. You were born to be empress.”
Even more absurdly, the tyrant hero of the novel was the very same consort she had banished to the Cold Palace in her previous life, the one who later gave his life to save her: Xie Qingci!
Shen Zhaoyi was struck as if by lightning.
Her consort... had become emperor?
Was this the retribution for being a faithless woman who collected lovers?
She had once banished Xie Qingci to the Cold Palace. Now the wheel had turned, and he was the one banishing her...
Worst of all, in the novel's ending, the tyrant was killed by rebels during a coup, while the abandoned consort in the Cold Palace, the very role she had transmigrated into, was forced to join him in death. In the end, they both perished.
But since Heaven had given her another chance, she would never let the tragedy happen again. She would rewrite fate and keep him safe. Even if she had to defy Heaven, she would do it.
Later, she became his wife, his empress, and his partner in ruling the realm.
He asked her, “Why are you so good to me?”
She replied, “Because there was once a fool who died for me.”
Theme: A good horse should come back to its old pasture
