I like this series despite the male lead (love interest) being an irredeemable POS. The MC, Ji Man, is pretty awesome to start but then decided to go along with the ghost of the body she's inhabiting and trying to get the male lead to fall in love with her. Instead of being sensible and divorcing the sh*tty husband her body was married she stays with him. She could do this easily since she actually has a huge pile of money she earned selling non-toxic cosmetics. I can partially understand she's doing it because the body's ghost is holding her captive but after the 90th assassination attempt or plot to frame her for a crime, you think she would have noped out of there and cut her losses.

In the end, the ML only ends up with two women in his back house. The MC and a former prostitute. While the pair start off as enemies, the concubine ends up becoming the MC's ally and shares gossip with her. This doesn't happen until later on in the novel, after the concubine has lost her child and been sent to an outside estate where everyone says she lost her mind over it.

Such as the "accidental" death of one of his unborn children through a concubine. He arranged it so that she would be bumped by a maid and then prescribed the wrong medication so that she lost the child. The reason being was that she had been placed into his home as a gift from the Crown Prince and he did not want to be in that faction.

As the story progresses, it becomes very clear that he has been manipulating all the women in his house and deciding that they won't get pregnant unless he says otherwise. He almost sterilized the MC through the incense he had given to OG Nie Sangyu.

The ML has several concubines at the start of the story.

There is the foster daughter of the Empress' servant. At the start of the story, she was an untitled concubine who was only made one because she saved the ML's life. We never learn about the incident, just hear it mentioned whenever her background is discussed. She will eventually give birth to the ML's second son. Then there is the prostitute that was given to him by the Crown Prince. She would miscarry, "lose her mind" and then return to be the only remaining woman aside from the MC in the back house at the end of the story.

Another concubine is the friend's little sister. She was originally the person communicating between the ML and the 3rd Prince. And the final main one was.... the other one. I can't remember how she ended up in his harem but she's the one responsible for the downfall of the MC's family.

After that, he gains several more concubines. One being the MC's servant who wanted to climb higher (and cuckolded the ML). The second was a prostitute that he tried to use to hide his affection for the MC from the Crown Prince. The third was a woman he brought in to pretend that she was his outside mistress.

He also ends up marrying the OG FL and her rank keeps bouncing around throughout the story.

It turns out that his intelligence was perfectly fine. He was manipulating everything all along. From the pregnancy control to letting the women target one another. Everything was under his control. He just didn't want to have any one woman gain too much power as that would lead him to straying into different political camps.

There is actually a line in the novel where he thinks to himself that he needs to find out how to control the MC because otherwise, she would control him.

After she learns and deals with her servant who betrayed her, she makes zero contingency plans for what could possibly happen if others knew what the servant had known. This story has it with it being inappropriate for noble women to operate businesses but she never considers trying to find some way to avoid any fallout. Even though she knows that her servant had revealed all her secrets to another of the concubines. While it does showcase her as fairly human and not fully adjusted to the world, it just felt a little s*upid. Especially given that she had shown remarkable intelligence up to that point.

It makes it worse that this is the thing that results in Nie Sangyu's entire clan (other than her and her brother) being beheaded for the crime of bribery.

There is another s*upid moment when she knows the First Prince cannot be trusted but yet her and her brother wholeheartedly believe that he will allow them to get revenge for their family by killing the at-the-time Emperor (the story goes through 5 emperors just saying). Of course, this is a trap for them as it allows the First Prince to take over the throne with less problems (mu*dered Emperor is easier to replace than a deposed Emperor). It's like the MC forgot that the First Prince tried to seduce her repeatedly and then tried to kill her when it was clear she wasn't going to fall for it.

I suppose I could just say that the MC is smart unless the story needs her to be dumb as a box of rocks.

Despite being a "Modern" woman, she had no problems drugging the ML to allow her servant to sleep with him and become a concubine.

Then there is the punishment of that particular concubine later. If the MC had a moral dilemma about the punishment of the concubine, the concubine's lover and child all being executed by drowning, it only lasted a few sentences and then she moved on. Of course, it's sort of implied that she didn't drown the baby but she has zero chill when it comes to ordering rocks on the people's feet and drop them in the pond.

Sure, this servant had betrayed her repeatedly before then, it just felt out of character for a Modern person to be so non-chalant about ordering someone's death.

Weirdly enough, there are other things that she couldn't do despite it being very matching to the above. Such as using the slow acting poison on the OG FL. Instead, she tosses it into a pond.

Seriously. She tries to tell him that she's fine with him seeing other women and even sends him to the concubines. And then gets upset when he does so.

She plots against the other wives/concubines but doesn't realize she's being used by others in almost every scheme she commits. Especially her schemes against the MC.

One of her last schemes blows up spectacularly when she discovers the ML's Heir is actually the MC's son. So she reveals that to someone who then reveals it to the First Prince (who was the Emperor at that point). The kid gets taken into the palace as a hostage which totally destroys any hope she had of not being ignored and is one of the last nails in the coffin for her.

After everything the MC went through, she only learns that the ML's Heir is her actual son after he is already a toddler. The ML actually let her live in the same manor as the boy without telling her because he didn't believe she wouldn't be able to reveal it. She only learns this after she faked her death for 2 years and returned to the capital to get revenge.

And she doesn't even get to spend much time with her son after that because he gets poisoned and ends up having to become a monk's disciple. Something that we learn was a plot by the monk to gain the boy as the child had spirituality. It feels like the MC was cheated of her son but then she doesn't get to hung up on it anyway. Her reaction is kind of along the "my son is poisoned, I have to send him away to take care of him... anyway, did you see the weather today?"

I did like the ML reveal to the Emperor (former First Prince) that it was the Emperor's plot to have the child kidnapped that made the ML choose to leave his camp and support one of the other princes.

all of this. This is just ji man's dream 😭. Bitter sweet ending. Shes dreaming about the best life but in reality shes in a coma. Idk how to feel about this.

Forcing a marriage on a man who was r*ped by another woman. It turned out that the man was drugged with aphrodisiac and violated the woman unknowingly (FL does not know that).

Drugging her brother with aphrodisiac because he refuses to sleep with his wife. Turned out the brother knows that their family was in trouble and did not want to implicate his wife with a child