Ok, so the storyline for "Does the Emperor Love Me, or Does He Hate Me?" followed Liu Yuming. The book was set with the essence of the Tang Dynasty, but women were able to gain governmental positions to aid the current reigning emperor. Yuming was one of the lucky few people to pass the government official exam and was determined to help the kingdom's issues with famine and help the common people live better lives. Unfortunately, she caught the eye of the Crown Prince. In the novel, he was supposed to be the male lead while Yuming was the female lead, but Yanghua, and the rest of the fans of the novel, disliked the pairing. There's a time skip and Yuming would become one of the most trusted advisors for the Crown Prince. Soon the Crown Prince wins the succession war for the throne and becomes the new reigning emperor. He takes on a empress, but he has always longed for Yuming. Yuming could not care less for him, so that is when the twisted love between them occurs.
The emperor slowly isolates Yuming from the other government officials, and soon enough forces her career to ruin. Yuming's last option was to marry the emperor or risk prosecution for crimes she was framed for. Yuming relents so she marries the emperor. The last chapter that Yanghua read was when it was revealed that the empress was the emperor's first cousin. It was such a unexpected plot twist, but also what did I expect from a scum male lead, Yanghua thought.
In the novel, there were three key players. Yuming, the main character, the emperor Wang Yu Fen, the male lead, and the empress Meizhu, the villainess. Yanghua was relieved that the events of the novel had not taken place yet, as her older brother was about to go to the capital and become a the Crown Prince's aid. However, Yanghua never noticed a sickly concubine of the previous emperor before Wang Yu Fen. Hence, after racking her brain for the last bit of information she remembered from "Does the Emperor Love Me, or Does He Hate Me?" she quickly hid the pages of the novel underneath a loose board in her room. Yanghua desperately hoped that she was some random background character that never interacted with any of the main characters.
The sky quickly bled different shades of purple and orange when Yanghua glanced outside one of the windows in her room. That's strange, I haven't seen that snake stir since last night. Yanghua peeked into the bowl where she last saw the snake and gasped. Hell, the snakes gone?? Yanghua panicked as she searched the room for the little brown snake she had saved.
Ugh, this is just like the story my mom told me when I was young, when it was dead of winter and a farmer pitied a snake, so he picked it up and held it close to his body. Instead of being met with gratitude, the farmer was bit by the snake and both the snake and farmer died that day. This was what was about to happen to Yanghua. She willingly let in a, perhaps venomous, snake into her home and she was about to pay the price for letting the little bastard into her home.