White Lotus starts out like a parody of
Rebirth of an Ill-Fated Consort (written by
Malicious Empress's author). Check the similarities in the base story (and pardon me, it's been a while since I started both of these) : The MC, who is the
di daughter of a well-to-do official of a dad and royalty of a mom, finds herself sent out to the countryside after her mother's death, supposedly to pray for the family when a Taoist giving false prophecy/statement on the MC. Dad never cared about Mom and doesn't really care about her; it's really the favored concubine's plot to send her away and she lives like an abandoned daughter, becoming sickly due to neglect. Concubine's children are then the favored children. At the age of about 13/14, they somehow get themselves sent back to the capital to start wreaking revenge. As with revenge-rebirth stories, the favored concubine and her eldest daughter get pitted against the MC, where the MC pretty much wins the battle of wits.
White Lotus then takes on all of the other extremes of rebirth-revenge stories (though it won't ever be as gory as
Ill-Fated Consort Chapter 1)... One thing I really have to stress is that you cannot take this story seriously. Nothing about this story is serious. I would have probably dropped this already, but I've taken this as an extreme parody... where I've crossed over the land of WTF-ery to appreciating this for what it is.
Btw, here's a funny snippet from Chapter 7 about the MC's effect on the men (that she likes to "collect") :
Spoiler
That soft voice made Cheng Tao's heart beat faster and faster, and she couldn't help but say, "Miss, the gentlemen you had your eyes on before are all kept in the manor, they are so bored that they have learned all eighteen martial arts, and as long as they have bullied you, they have all been punished to the point of mental breakdown. Miss, these people are getting scarier and scarier, if you let Imperial Doctor Shi also enter the group, I'm afraid..... that I..... "
"What are you afraid of?" Su Mo Li looked at Cheng Tao in confusion.
Cheng Tao's eyes closed and she said as if she were dead, " Gongzi Chen was a painter before, but now he likes to paint on corpses. Gongzi Li liked to embroider work, but now he likes to sew on corpses. Gongzi Ma liked to carve, but now he only likes to carve things on corpses. Miss, Gongzi Shi is an Imperial Doctor and saves lives, I'm afraid he'll become a homicidal man in the future!"
[collapse]
This is probably somewhere between a 3/4 for me... but I'll round up for now.
