Until Dusk Protocol - Chapter 17: Essence of the Void: Part 4

The journey of a generation’s male empress started because of four words.

“Send a dowry escort.”

During the 19th year of Yuanqing, Qi Yunruo boarded a carriage and entered through a corner door of the second prince’s estate. Then, across the watery corridor, he gazed at the prince from afar.

Notes:

For aristocratic women in imperial China to marry into a family part of the upper nobility, they must be of the legitimate line and must also have an escort/dowry maid that married into that family. That escort would be a “ying” (媵) and could be considered a concubine.

- Description from Novelupdates

In this world, there are people who, despite having both talent and luck, always fall a step short of happiness, and Lin Xiaoguai, unfortunately yet fortunately, is among them.Born in the sixties as the beloved youngest daughter in her family, Lin Xiaoguai was both beautiful and intelligent. However, she was burdened with four mediocre and weak older brothers and four formidable sisters-in-law. Her family background was initially poor, dimming her prospects, but just at the right age, she encountered the restoration of the college entrance examination and succeeded in entering university. Her father, overjoyed by the occasion, went to sleep never to wake again, leaving Lin Xiaoguai devastated and ill. During her high fever and delirium, her greedy in-laws married her off. Fortunately, she met a decent man, but his family proved to be a relentless headache, ultimately costing her the ability to become a mother.Disheartened, she divorced and moved far away. On her own, she carved out a new world in the city, living comfortably and leisurely with money and leisure, but unexpectedly, in her later years, she suddenly acquired a powerful ability that should have appeared decades earlier. Thankfully, her broad-mindedness prevented her from succumbing to depression.When calamity struck, she thought her end had come but woke to find herself back at the beginning.Considering her past, Lin Xiaoguai realized that if she wasted this second chance, she would truly be foolish.

She had a lifetime of fake virtue without receiving a virtuous ending. In the next lifetime, she controls fates with the flip of her hand. To the jerk who wasn’t faithful, she’ll draw a premature death talisman for him. For the poisonous step mother, she’ll send a death flower. For the step sister who is two faced, she’ll personally rip off that fake pretty face!

But when she personally offered up her body to her nemesis because of a child who she had no fate with, something unexpected happened. The night of the big wedding, the groom changed and a cold and luxurious man pushed her down. “You can marry whoever you like, but you can only give birth to my children!”

- Description from Novelupdates

I was nothing. A lowly omega, destined to live in the shadows of stronger wolves. But on the night of my eighteenth birthday, the moon had other plans for me. My mate was an Alpha’s son. The problem? He wasn’t the only one. The Blackwood triplets—Kael, Ronan, and Darian—each bore the same mark that bound them to me.To be Luna, I would have to survive the chaos of three powerful mates, a jealous rival who wanted my place, and a secret buried deep in my bloodline.Because being chosen by the moon was never a gift. It was a curse.