Rich Wine, Lush Spring (Reborn)

A vindictive woman VS a world-weary man.

Several years had passed since the age of turmoil, and the great clans had helped restore the regime.

Cui Xiangyi, daughter of the Cui clan of Changyang, was married to Wei Juxu and made empress at the age of fifteen.

Rumor had it that this emperor, welcomed to the throne by the great clans, once bent down himself to wipe mud from his young empress's boots while they were out on a spring outing.

So favored was she that every young noblewoman of the Southern Dynasties envied Cui Xiangyi's good fortune.

Yet in the seventh year of Datong, the entire Cui clan was convicted of a crime and put to the sword.

At the start of the eighth year of Datong, alongside the imperial decree ordering Cui Xiangyi to take her own life and atone, came Wei Juxu's newly widowed cousin, the woman dearest to his heart, whom he had just appointed as a Noble Consort.

Cui Xiangyi sat reclining on a beauty couch, her long hair loosely tied with a strip of white silk. With her pale hand, she picked up the cup of poisoned wine and casually swirled its clear liquid.

She raised her eyes to the beauty in her ornate robes and trailing sleeves. "Wei Juxu is so stingy he won't even give you the empress's throne."

Watching the woman's face change in an instant, Cui Xiangyi curled her lips in a smile, tipped back her head, and drank the poison in one go.

--

Reborn, Cui Xiangyi returned to the fourth year of Datong, when she was still an unmarried young lady in her family home.

The bridal crown on the low table gleamed brilliantly. Gazing into the bronze mirror, she smiled as she adjusted it, then welcomed the groom in his wedding robes into Fengyang Hall.

The wine is rich, the spring night heady. Are you drunk?

Theme: Never stop striving to improve yourself.