Title: The Emperor's Cunning Wife
Author: Realm_Spirit
Source: Wattpad (original)
Description:
With a billion dollars bounty on Ning Lou's head, she was the most notorious criminal pursued by federal agents who swindled her way throughout the four continents. Living as an anonymous magnate in an inconspicuous villa, she was at the peak of her life.
But who would have thought a trip to the bathroom ended it just like that.
The illogical part was, she transmigrated in the body of an unfavoured empress and in an era unknown in history.
Caught in a web of heinous schemes inside the Imperial Harem, she must swindle her way for survival, while maintaining her distance from the so-called 'Emperor'. However, this man was harder to trick than the old Buddhist monk.
"Your Highness, the emperor sealed and barricaded all the secret passages!"
"Your Highness, the emperor has replaced the eunuchs and maids!"
"Your Highness, all the concubines suddenly fell ill and the emperor said Your Highness will serve him tonight."
"Your Highness, the Phoenix Cloud Pavilion caught fire so the emperor proposed to sleep together tonight."
"Your Highness, where are you heading to?"
"Don't stop me, I'll swindle my way to be the Emperor instead!"
o o o
This book is probably one of the few out there where the MC's talent and skills in her new life are actually true to her role in her past life. So she's not some 21st-century assassin who forgets she ever was one, only for her to suddenly remember right when it's most convenient for her to have special skills. You can expect this to be a story where the MC carries all her spunk and skills with her when she transmigrates to ancient China and uses it throughout.
One of the best things about this story is the MC. I simply love her. She's not some emotionless ice block who can't decide whether she's a saint or a devil, nor is she that kind of MC that goes around looking to pick a fight with all the villain cannon fodders. She's sarcastic, sassy, and funny. Her personality remains pretty consistent throughout the story, and her emotions and feelings are actually pretty understandable, if not relatable, in a way that other MCs aren't.
If you've read many of my previous recommendations, you can probably tell by now that I'm not really a huge fan of OP. The main reason for this is that in most cases, it's too unbelievable and pulled out simply to deal with some plot devices in a super lazy way. But despite my dislike for them, I do, in fact, have some favorite books where the MC is pretty OP, but I've made an exception for those because they do everything else right. But Ning Lou, in this story, is far from OP. She'd been caught on the run from the authorities before and also had to rely on some of her other criminal friends to help her. I like that because it's more realistic and interesting than if she had some unbeatable record the entire time in the modern world like many other MCs, only to break it when she died for a very stupid reason and her soul transmigrated.
Another plus in this story is that the MC is not an assassin. Rather, she's a con artist. That alone takes out many possibilities for her to be OP because it limits her a little more to her specific profession (if being a con artist can be called a profession). And because the author chose just that one profession for the MC, she now gave it her all in making her the most realistic one she could in this genre.
You can definitely tell that she, the author, put a lot of heavy research into this book. There was this one scene in the book that involved the imperial physician and his diagnose, and the author didn't make up some random diagnosis or condition, which would have been much easier to do and not really terrible since most readers really don't care how scientifically accurate the book is—heck, sometimes I don't, I just want a good story. Instead, the author chose the harder route and actually added things that were the real deal, and I appreciate her and the story even more for that.
Because she took the time and effort to go above and beyond, the story itself is also better than many of the other ones that have a similar sounding plot (21st century assassin that transmigrates into the body of some good-for-nothing young miss); the reason is that when people use only their imagination when it comes to writing the scheming in palaces, they mostly reflect on past stuff that they've already heard of, read, or watched in dramas, so the schemes are usually pretty simple and common amongst the sea of other palace novels since there is only so much that they can think of on their own when trying to be a little more original. But when the author conducts extra research and uses her findings as inspiration for her own work...you discover that she ends up writing new things you've never seen before in other books.
Read this. All of you. It's for anyone who's tired of the generic number one assassin trope that fails to impress you with their made up assassin skills, and also for those who want to read palace intrigue and transmigration with some originality mixed in it.