Playing the Substitute Female Lead in Ancient Times

Qi Yu transmigrates to ancient times, stranded in a remote wilderness. To get home, she has to follow the script of a stand-in female character. After leaving the mountains, she runs into a eunuch traveling around to select beautiful women for the imperial palace. In the original story, the male lead, Wu Shiyan, is an emperor who is infatuated with a minister's wife and intends to take her by force. So he raises a favored concubine as her double in the palace, waiting for the right moment to swap the stand-in with the woman he loves at a palace banquet, then shower his beloved with affection without arousing suspicion. The stand-in, meanwhile, enters the minister's household and fakes her death from illness. Thinking of the pampered life she'd enjoy as a favored concubine in the palace, the minister's household treating her with care, and all the money she'd have to spend after faking her death, Qi Yu accepts the eunuch's offer, enters the palace, and is duly made a consort. From then on, everyone knows that Consort Yu is the emperor's cherished favorite, showered with the highest honors. No one in the capital dares slight her. The only thing people find fault with is how strikingly similar the consort looks to Lady Pei. Everyone is discreetly tight-lipped about it, but in time it becomes commonplace. At last, the palace banquet the emperor has been plotting for so long arrives. The noblewomen enter the palace with their husbands. During a chaotic assassination attempt, the frightened women are led by palace maids to a hall where they can rest. Qi Yu switches identities with the female lead, then waits to supposedly die of illness in the inner quarters, fooling the scholar-official. But... the scholar-official doesn't realize she's an impostor. Instead, he clasps her wrist, calls her his wife, and tries to be as affectionate with her as usual... Qi Yu nestles against him, a little confused. Aren't Lord Pei and his wife a fake couple? She can fool the emperor, but she can't fool Qi Yu. * One woman and two men, with the two romance storylines unfolding in turn * Fictional setting, with elements from different dynasties Theme: Live well, even in another world