All that we see or seem is nothing but a dream within a dream - Edgar Allan Poe
This is a revenge story of a dream within a dream. The story starts with a rescue mission where the heroine, Huang Rang, the wife of Xie Honchen, leader of the Immortal Sect, is found after missing for the past 10 years. She has been trapped as a living corpse in an underground, secret chamber, completely immobile because of the two magic needles inserted into her head. Leading the rescue is Di Yiqiu of the Celestial Court, a man whose proposal Huang Rang had rejected before her marriage. She is then taken to his house where he meticulously cares for her prompting her to wonder if he is still in love with her.
Huang Rang cannot move or speak. But in her mind she dreams of revenge against those who have hurt her. What happened in these past years? Why has her esteemed husband, a man she is said to have a loving relationship with, not looked for her? While these questions build up. Huang Tang is given the chance to relive the past through her dreams by a mysterious figure. Taking advantage of these dreams, Huang Rang is able to change the past, traveling back a total of 3 times to 3 different timelines in the past, subtly influencing the world outside the dreams, in order to take her revenge.
Huang Rang is my favourite type of heroine: a beautiful coquettish flirt on the outside that can play men like a fiddle, but cold, cunning, and calculating on the inside; someone who is willing to do anything to be able to climb out of the filth she was born into. She is a product of her environment, but despite the lowness of her origins she has the ambition, brilliance, and work ethic needed to make something of herself. It was fun to peel back her layers and figure out why things turned out the way it did or to uncover her tumultuous relationship with her husband Xie Honchen. The dream travel also allowed her to play out different scenarios which is where we get to see her relationship and love with the quirky Di Yiqiu blossom (he is really something!).
The pacing is a little slow and meandering and it takes a while for things to really pick up. Despite being a xianxia novel, it is not very focused on cultivation or world building, reading more like a fantasy farming romance with a mystery element. It can be a little slow and dry at times, but I genuinely enjoyed the mystery and the romance was a hoot! It is HE even though some parts will have you questioning things. But if you want to sink into a story about a woman who has been pushed into an impossible situation, refusing to give up and doing anything possible to take her revenge and change her destiny this might be the one for you. 4 stars.
Unconscious, as the title suggests, is not the state Huang Rang spends most of the book in, but she might as well be. Paralysed by needles in her head, she has been "missing" from her sect for a decade, hidden in the dungeons under her husband's master's peak, a place her filial husband will never check. A hundred years of marriage, and Xie Hongchen is barely affected by her absence.
Enter Di Yiqiu, a man who has no relation to her, except for once proposing marriage that she had turned down. She did not regret it then, nor regrets it now when he and four other cultivation sect masters find and break her out of her solitary prison. All she wants is revenge, but mute and paralysed, she can hardly achieve it.
Until, suddenly, she is cast back into a dream, ten years ago, before her abduction.
I loved Huang Rang as a character. Bold, cunning, utterly sure of what she wants—mainly revenge at the moment—she spends every single moment in this dream-space to harm Xie Lingbi, her husband's master. And succeeds! Only, as dreams do, it comes to an end, and she finds herself back in the still body of her current self.
Except, for some strange reason, people now can remember the changes she made in her dream, and are even affected by it. I liked how she does a couple of different things each dream—the first is her revenge, but it is short lived.
The second is also revenge, but this time she wishes to do it by her own hand, and learns the sword as a disciple under her own husband, thoroughly changing their relationship, and thus, for the first time, entangling with Di Yiqiu instead.
The third time... she lets go and finally simply lives a good life, but certain events always come to pass, like her enmity with Xie Lingbi. There was a decent amount of mystery in how she is able to enter dreams and change things, and why her, specifically. The romance between Huang Rang and Di Yiqiu was also quite realistic.
If there's one gripe, it's the quality of translation. But well, the content in itself was fascinating enough for me to ignore it.