Bang!
Inside the bedroom, a square stool was kicked over, hitting the green bricks with a loud thud.
The moment Xue Youli opened her eyes, a powerful sensation of suffocation seized her neck.
She looked up and found herself suspended in mid-air by a white silk sash.
The silk was pulled extremely tight, nearly snapping her neck. Her throat couldn’t produce even the slightest sound.
Good heavens, wasn’t I in the hospital performing an appendectomy on my best friend? Why am I hanging myself?
Where’s my friend? Where did my giant best friend go?
Could I be dreaming?
However, the sensation of suffocation on her neck was far too real! It was so real that she felt as if her great-grandmother was waving at her from the afterlife!
Xue Youli gripped the silk sash tightly with both hands, trying to pull her head out.
However, her body was dangling in the air with no point of leverage; she simply didn’t have the strength to save herself. In the midst of her struggle, she managed to knock the hairpin from her head.
Just then, a gentle and agitated female voice came from outside the bedroom.
“Li’er, good news! You don’t have to enter the palace—”
A dignified and elegant woman pushed open the door. Seeing Xue Youli hanging there, her face turned white with terror.
“Li’er!”
Her pupils shrank as she rushed over, grabbing Xue Youli’s legs and lifting her down. “Li’er, how are you? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Cough! Cough, cough, cough!”
Xue Youli collapsed onto the floor. Her brain was oxygen-deprived, and she coughed violently as she choked on the air, unable to open her mouth to answer.
She tried to crawl up, but the hand she used to brace herself on the floor tiles was pricked by something.
“Hiss!”
Xue Youli winced in pain. Looking down, she saw that her finger had been pricked, quite coincidentally, by the hairpin that had fallen from her head.
“Hiss!”
She pulled her hand back in pain, and a droplet of blood from her fingertip was flung into the air.
The next moment, an ancient thread-bound book appeared in mid-air, as large as a projection. On the blue cover were four large characters: ‘Book of Heavenly Secrets’.
Under Xue Youli’s watchful gaze, the ancient book flipped open, and a line of text appeared on a blank page: [Host, your Book of Heavenly Secrets has been bound.]
The Book of Heavenly Secrets? What on earth is that?
A circle of question marks virtually appeared over Xue Youli’s head.
Meanwhile, the beautiful woman checked her carefully from head to toe. Only after confirming she was alright did she speak with a choked sob, “Li’er, how could you be so foolish? To seek your own death over a man who doesn’t love you! If something were to happen to you, how would I go on living?”
“I didn’t…”
Xue Youli was about to speak when she noticed a line of subtitles appearing above the woman’s head.
[Name: Jiang Ruyun, 39 years old. Xue Youli’s mother, wife of Xue Huaiyuan, Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review.]
It couldn’t be that I’ve been staying up too late performing surgeries and have started hallucinating from exhaustion, right?
But—
The name Jiang Ruyun sounded so familiar!
Xue Youli frowned, trying hard to remember if this woman was a patient who had once made an appointment with her.
Seeing her dazed and silent, Jiang Ruyun became even more worried. “Li’er, say something to Mother. I know you don’t want to enter the palace. Don’t do anything rash; your elder sister, Xue Qingyao, has already agreed to enter the palace in your place!”
Xue Qingyao agreed to enter the palace in my place?
Xue Youli’s pupils constricted sharply.
Isn’t this the plot of the palace-fighting novel her best friend wrote, Destroy All Women in the Harem, I Want to Be the Empress Dowager?
And the character in the Xue family with the same name as her, Xue Youli, was a cannon-fodder character her friend had created as a prank.
Did I transmigrate into my best friend’s book as a minor cannon fodder?
Recalling the scene of her hanging from the white silk sash just now, she immediately confirmed her situation.
In the novel, Xue Youli was a total simp, obsessed with a pretty boy named Meng Xingzhi. She had almost successfully chased him down!
Who would have thought that a few days ago, at a poetry gathering, Meng Xingzhi would catch the eye of Song Jingsi—the granddaughter of Grand Preceptor Song, a veteran of the current court.
The scumbag immediately cut ties with Xue Youli and turned into a simp himself to chase Song Jingsi.
Xue Youli couldn’t take the insult. In a fit of rage, she submitted her name for the imperial consort selection. To her surprise, Song Jingsi also submitted her name. After being selected, Song Jingsi shut her doors to Meng Xingzhi.
Unable to climb the social ladder into the Song family, the scumbag Meng Xingzhi turned back to look for Xue Youli.
Xue Youli’s parents naturally disagreed, but the spineless “love-brain” Xue Youli, in order to be with Meng Xingzhi, intentionally used the hanging to scare her parents.
In the end, she botched the act and actually hanged herself to death.
With her dead and gone, the Xue family’s illegitimate daughter, Xue Qingyao, took over her identity. She not only fought her way through the palace to the throne of the Empress but, after giving birth to the eldest prince, she also secretly did away with the frail and short-lived Emperor, becoming the Empress Dowager and ruling from behind the curtain.
In truth, Xue Qingyao carried a world-shaking secret—
She wasn’t a daughter of the Xue family at all, and the eldest prince wasn’t the Emperor’s son!
To cover up her true origins, she framed the Xue family for treason, slaughtered the entire clan, and hung the heads of every member of the Xue family neatly on the city gates for public display.
The story should have ended there with a “perfect” conclusion, but after her best friend went through a breakup, her brain short-circuited. She had the Prince Regent kill off Xue Qingyao and the fake prince, and then become the Emperor himself.
Thus, a perfectly good “strong female lead” novel was completely ruined.
Xue Youli had almost died of anger while reading the ending late at night. After finishing her shift at the hospital, she had driven straight to her friend’s house, vowing to force her to rewrite the ending with a scalpel.
As it happened, her friend had a sudden bout of appendicitis. Xue Youli rushed her to the hospital. Because there weren’t enough staff in the operating room in the middle of the night, she, a Ph.D. in medicine who had been practicing surgery for three years, personally performed the operation.
Who would have known that the moment she stood at the operating table, her vision would go black? When she opened her eyes again, she was already here.
Could it be that my resentment toward the novel’s plot was so deep that the heavens sent me directly into the book?
Forget it, anyone can perform a minor surgery like an appendectomy; her dear best friend would surely be fine.
Right now, her mission was to rewrite the plot and win a happy ending for herself and her family!
Thinking this, Xue Youli’s fighting spirit ignited.
Indeed, rather than letting the plot unfold and leading to the execution of the entire Xue clan, it was better to strike first. She would fight her way into the palace and take her fate into her own hands.
After all, she had read hundreds of palace-fighting novels and watched dozens of palace-fighting dramas. The palace struggle wasn’t her comfort zone; it was her domain!
Since the Emperor was a short-lived ghost, she would work hard, outlive him, and become the Empress Dowager!
Thinking this, Xue Youli looked up into Jiang Ruyun’s eyes and announced with high spirits, “Mother, I am willing to enter the palace!”
[Ding!]
The Book of Heavenly Secrets appeared once more: [System activated. You can use the Book of Heavenly Secrets to look up information on characters who have already appeared, including their hidden secrets. Additionally, the Book of Heavenly Secrets provides search and retrieval services.]
Xue Youli understood. This Book of Heavenly Secrets was like a smartphone; as long as a character had appeared in the plot, she could use it to check their files.
It seemed her best friend hadn’t treated her too poorly after all, providing her with a Golden Finger.
Knock, knock, knock!
As Xue Youli was browsing through the Book of Heavenly Secrets, a knock suddenly came from the bedroom door.
“Mother, I have considered it carefully. I am willing to enter the palace in my younger sister’s place.” A submissive and sweet young girl’s voice drifted into the room.
Hearing the noise, Xue Youli turned her head toward the source.
When her gaze met the watery eyes of the girl at the door, she saw a profound look of shock in the other’s eyes.
Before she could think further, the other girl lowered her head to avoid her gaze.
Xue Youli felt suspicious and looked up at the identity card above the girl’s head.
[Name: Xue Qingyao, 15 years old. Nominally the illegitimate daughter of the Xue family. Her true identity is the wild child born to her mother, Yan Niang, and some random man.]
When Xue Youli was reading the novel, she had complained about Xue Qingyao’s background. Xue Huaiyuan wasn’t a fool; why would he let Yan Niang enter the Xue household while she was heavily pregnant?
Could there be some hidden plot that her friend hadn’t written down?
Just as she made this guess, the ancient book with the navy-blue cover appeared before her eyes again.
The answer to the confusion in Xue Youli’s heart automatically appeared on the pages.
It turned out that sixteen years ago, Yan Niang was the top courtesan of the Spring Breeze Pavilion. After an accidental pregnancy, she wanted to find a “cheap father” for the child.
By chance, Xue Huaiyuan was dragged to the Spring Breeze Pavilion by a colleague to listen to music. Yan Niang, who had seen countless men, took an interest in Xue Huaiyuan at first glance.
She directly got him drunk and played a “honey trap” on him.
Xue Huaiyuan woke up in her bed the next morning, nearly scared out of his wits.
Half a year later, Yan Niang, with a large belly, deceived Xue Huaiyuan into believing she was carrying his child.
Thinking he had done something foolish, Xue Huaiyuan knelt before Jiang Ruyun with thorns on his back to beg for forgiveness. In the end, Jiang Ruyun took charge and brought Yan Niang into the Xue manor as a concubine.
One had to admit, Yan Niang truly had nerves of steel. To get Xue Qingyao a capital city residency, she had even dared to play and deceive an imperial official.
According to the novel’s plot, only after Xue Qingyao entered the palace and became the Empress Dowager would she have the power to destroy the entire Xue family.
So, as long as she exposed Xue Qingyao’s true origin and kicked this mother-daughter pair out of the Xue family, would the Xue family be able to avoid the disaster?
But how was she supposed to let the Xue family know about the scandalous things Yan Niang had done?
As Xue Youli was racking her brains, the Book of Heavenly Secrets seemed to sense her thoughts and displayed a line of text directly on the page: [Plot triggered. A major secret regarding Yan Niang has been detected.]
Xue Youli became interested: [Oh? What secret?]
Book of Heavenly Secrets: [Yan Niang has flower-willow disease!]