Yujin WORKS for her flower reputation to the point its clearly an obsession. For example, even on her sister's return home she believes she cannot and will not be subdued by anyone. She has the desire to be the best daughter in law and legal wife. However she struggles the way ACTUAL ancient women do, instead of her sisters original tale. I also loved the way she found a way to adapt from pleasing mother in laws due to her destroyed engagement to pleasing men. All her life she's told she's boring and a stickler to rules. Now, she was twisting and turning to attract her perfect husband, all while still staying within a model role model girl in ancient china. Unlike Yumo, who although saved a life still got undressed and laid with a man the entire night. Which could have gotten her killed if the circumstances were slightly different. Yujin is using her people reading abilities and attention to details to lure and trap husbands. All while her future husband is boiling in rage, and fighting off his love rivals

the lack of skinship between the lead, this novel is spg13. We don't even get a kiss scenes, like it happened but wasn't described and even cdrama wasn't this censored, so it kinda ruined the excitement as I was looking forward for their intimate scenes

(As soon as he stops supporting them, he drops dead. Protagonist halo FTW.)

IDK why authors of regression (or in this case, "prophetic dream") stories can't suppress the urge to go muck about in the original timeline, but it sucks. The going assumption in a regression story is that the og timeline is gone, and now we get a happy ending. Whenever the author dips back into an og timeline, they undo all the work of resolving and avoiding the grievances of that timeline. It sucks! Plus, the "happy ending" turns out to be a SECOND regression (which implies we just created a THIRD timeline and thus didn't fix the first timeline at all). Worst of all, the author's creativity was all dried up so they just said that all the same events as in our main story happened in the og timeline, which means Cheng Yujin's existence and efforts don't matter at all to affairs of the court or inner palace, she's just a comfort doll for her hubby. :))) It sucks!! This is a very small part of the story but it's the very last part so it left a sour taste in my mouth. Skip it.

Cheng Yujin gets pregnant with twins and for some reason nobody seems to realize that twins can be a boy-girl pair prior to the birth. Fraternal twins are several times more likely than identical twins, and they have a 50-50 chance of being a boy-girl pair. In other words, boy-girl twins account for near-half of all twin births, but the author even calls boy-girl twins extremely rare. IDK if the author is misinformed or if they're misinforming others for the sake of drama, but it's reasonable to say they should've looked this up before stuffing inaccurate medical information into the mouths of ancient medical professionals who are otherwise treated as reliable sources.

Her story fizzles out like a wet firecracker as we get the unsatisfying and unconvincing revelation that actually, Huo Changyuan was in love with Cheng Yujin and just transferred that love to Cheng Yumo (??? Utter gibberish lmao). Then they get no more scenes.

Yujin (FL) and Yumo (2nd FL) were twins that live separately.

To me, deep down both of them actually have the same personality. Both of them were selfish, greedy, and manipulatives.

The difference was that Yujin had a high self-awareness, she knows her limit. Yujin would play victim if it's necessarry but unlike Yumo, she would never immerse herself in the act.

In one of the chapter Yumo's mother reminded her that the only thing she need to have a good life was her husband's love. With that love she can control her in-law, concubine, and servants, forgetting that there's no one set of rule for everyone.

Her mother simply raise her to be narrow minded and spoiled, while Yujin has to live on edge everyday with her adoptive mother.

Before Yujin married, the palace send female officials to teach her. Yujin was so graceful and elegant that they can't pick up any mistake. They keep waiting for Yujin's pretense to fall only to be dissapointed later.

The thing is she never pretend. She apply all those strict rules in her daily life for years. That is simply how she live her life so that nobody could bring her down.

It's a nice novel where the birth of twins from FL and ML could be justified because FL herself were twins xD

There's a pair of brother and sister that died because of empress's nephew. The brother die to protect his sister while the sister die to avenge her brother. Even thought that incident help to toppled them later, it's just left a bitter taste in my mouth.

The FL for example. I love that she is calculating, but that doesn't mean she can't have emotions, hidden wishes and desires. She's not the sentimental type, granted, but still, there were so many scenes especially with the ML where she showed emotion only for us readers to be told this was all fake, and then after the lake incident in the ML' secret residence the sudden outburst of emotion was supposed to be real? That scene felt so fake to me as a reader, I was honestly stunned. It felt like the author was unable to get a grip on her/his own character and often wrote her in a way that best suited the current plot but without different emotions and thoughts.

What is the purpose of the Huo guy remembering the past? Or for the FL, for that matter? Except for Yumo, I'm scratching my head why there's a need for the other two to remember. It doesn't seem to add anything worthwhile to the plot.

The FL's path to acquiring a husband plus the ML's journey to understanding his own feelings were way too draggy. That's when I first started losing interest. The author fails at developing characters properly or creating an engaging plot. All in all, there is unfortunately also too little intersting interaction between the FL and the ML - even though they live in the same residence! It feels like more than half the time it's the ML becoming unreasonably angry and jealous and the FL lying through her teeth to butter him up.

Another big con is that basically all side characters (except maybe the FL's servant girls) are unlikeable to some degree. There are no true sincere and good relationships without benefits anywhere to be found in this story. Even the Cheng aunt rushes over with her female juniors to capitalize on the fact that the FL has become the crown princess in order to curry favour with her own in laws. Disgusting.

Now I'm at the wedding night scene and the ML seems like the typical selfish and inconsiderate Chinese novel lover as well.

I've come so far and I wish I could pinpoint one plot arch that was truly interesting but I can't. And I think I will drop this soon.

Kudos to the translator's hard and dedicated work, though.

MC's personality was pretty nice. No one in her family truly loves her so she does all the loving for herself. She's smart and will always act rationally because she doesn't believe that others will treat her sincerely, so she hardly ever takes their hurtful actions to heart. Eventually, she does understand that ML loves and would never betray her for anything, not even to secure the throne by marrying a nominal concubine.

ML was calm and assertive. Very standard of this author's ML's in that he's tall, handsome, competent, a dead-mother-avenger, etc. He treats MC very well and doesn't act tsundere when he realizes the way he likes her. He doesn't mind her career-minded approach to marriage and life in general and just asks that she honors their relationship as husband and wife by being the one person he can love and trust unconditionally.

In the previous life epilogue, ML dreams up the events of our novel and realizes that the person that he could've married and loved was his former niece, the Cheng Clan's eldest daughter Cheng Yujin (nice name btw this killed her prudishness a bit). He inquires about her and learns that she's already married. He doesn't give up though, and continues to refer to her as Eldest Young Lady (very rude to do this I think. it ignores her status as a married woman and disregards her husband) when he asks about her, only to learn that she's dead. Just wanted to include this in the parts I liked cos wow love me a good male homewrecker. I can only assume that he meant to hint to his underlings to find a way to change her identity and have her enter the palace as his woman when he called her by her unmarried title.

MC's character was supposed to be selfish, egotistical, and interest-motivated, so imagine my shock and repulsion when at the turning point of the story (when ML restores his identity as the Eldest Imperial Son and Crown Prince), she rescues a random ass child who falls into the freezing river thanks to his parent's neglect and his own s*upidity. MC spent the whole story as this no-nonsense person who has no qualms teaching a tough lesson to annoying kids and all of a sudden she wants to save a random child??? Who might turn out to be a little b*tch??? I almost vomited blood. Thankfully it was all a misunderstanding and she actually jumped into the lake to force the man she wanted to marry to jump in and save her (blah blah... saving her from drowning = skin 2 skin contact = the gentleman must not be a villain and take responsibility for the lady's loss of innocence by marrying her) but surprise surprise ML got news immediately and was the one who jumped in instead to save her.

MC also apparently had some charm as a cold beauty prior to being married (hence the attention from some men like Cai Zhanlin) but her married life with ML was so... bland. Other than the strip chess, I can't remember anything that was particularly passionate. I really liked her openly close (inappropriately so) /coquettish interactions with ML when they were still uncle and niece but after they got married, it's like she doesn't understand that her lovey dovey actions arouse desire and would often act like the biggest f*cking prude when it comes to fornication. I personally really hate this whole reserved lady insincerely saying no when in reality she means 'i don't mind' thing. How are people supposed to know which no means no and which no means yes?!!? Ik MLs in these stories have magical powers that can distinguish between shy (???) consent and non consent but ew it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. bye.

I honestly don't really hate any of the 'villains' except Empress Dowager Yang and Old Madam Huo Xue-shi because wow those b*tches are stinkyyy. Even Cheng Yumo was just a little s*upid, not purely malicious and ill-intentioned. Ok let me rant about Huo Changyuan that s*upid whore.

What an absolutely piece of glorified cow dung. No matter how great (cough decent) he is, his relationship with his mother is an absolute red flag. Dude can't say no to his mom and will always defend her whiny ass. He even pushed his wife into a miscarriage for his mother and had the nerve to resent her when she became spiteful because of it. At this point in the story, HCY already had memories of his previous life where he was married to his beloved wife Cheng Yujin and lost her to dystocia because of his mentally handicapped mother. You'd think that with this example put out before him, he'd be a little more cautious with leaving her alone with his new wife Cheng Yumo but nah. Dude is forever stuck on the mentality of woe is me woohoohoo like damn my mom can never seem to get along with anyone I'm close to 🤔 surely there's a common denominator here somewhere damn I dont understand 😔