Drama

On the day we got divorced, Song Zhiyuan and I nearly came to blows right there in the Civil Affairs Bureau. When the clerk asked for the reason behind the split, he had the audacity to claim he had seven girlfriends on the side. I laughed out of sheer frustration. Seven girlfriends? So you really don’t get a single day off all week, huh? I shot him a sideways glare. “Working seven days a week without a break-can your body even handle that?” Song Zhiyuan sneered. “You’re not my wife anymore. It’s none of your business whether I can handle it or not.” Beside us, the clerk actually gave him a thumbs-up. “A real man. Impressive!”

My husband is wonderful to me.

He is incredibly considerate and gentle in bed, too.

After several failed attempts to actually make him angry, I finally resorted to posting a plea for help online: [How can I get my husband to be a bit more aggressive?]

[Sweet talk is all well and good, but I really want to try dirty talk.]

[Angry sex? Never tried that either.]

There were plenty of helpful netizens, but unfortunately, their suggestions were underwhelming.

That was until the day I came home drunk after a class reunion.

The living room was shrouded in darkness.

In the fragmented Moonlight, my husband did something rare-he called me by my full name. “Lin Sui, come here and kneel.”

When the Crown Prince ascended the throne, he installed his Crown Prince’s Secondary Consort as the Empress.

The reason was simple.

It was written in the Destiny Book that his first Empress would die from a hail of arrows piercing her heart.

On the day the imperial decree for the installation was issued, my elder sister-the Crown Princess Shen Chengyun-entered my palace with a beaming smile and gave a rather sloppy bow.

“This consort offers her congratulations to the Empress.”

She leaned in close, her bright red lips curling into a venomous sneer.

“Shen Ruoruo, you’d better cherish these few days of luxury. Don’t get too ahead of yourself, though. If you do anything to upset me… well, whether you receive an honorable posthumous title after you die will be entirely up to me.”

“Is that so?”

I took a step back and spoke in a low, steady voice.

“Then Sister had better make sure she doesn’t die before I do.”

The Crown Prince’s White Moonlight, the woman he’d pined after for ten years, had finally returned.

She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “You. Go back to where you came from.”

I lifted my skirts and stepped into the carriage, then turned back to smile at her. “Sorry,” I said lightly, “but this seat? You’re never getting it back.”

I am the dowry maid for the legitimate daughter of the Shen Manor.

Last night, I woke up in the Heir’s bed.

Now, the servants of the entire manor are pointing and whispering at me: “A lowly wench like this deserves to be beaten to death with clubs!”

Shen Yujiao sat regally at the head of the hall. “In that case, let’s just promote her to a Concubine.”

She watched with a smile as I knelt and kowtowed to thank her for her mercy.

Yet, I caught the scent of Hehuan Powder in the air.

That was the very incense I had blended with my own hands for her husband’s use.

Unwilling to spend my life as a slave, I set my sights on Yun Jian, the young master of a local wealthy family.

Through countless schemes and every trick in the book, I managed to enter the Yun Manor to serve him.

I deceived him for his heart, gathered his wealth, and coaxed him into supporting me so I could travel to the capital for the imperial examinations and become an official.

“I, Jiang Rui, swear to the heavens that when I become a Female Chancellor or a high-ranking minister, I will personally petition His Majesty to grant us a marriage.”

Later, as I navigated the shifting tides of the imperial court, my career soared. I had long since forgotten the son of a mere local merchant.

While playing chess with me, the Seventh Prince would drop subtle hints, asking whether I was already betrothed.

Meanwhile, the Chief Censor-whom I had outperformed in every possible way-caught wind of this. He grabbed the sleeve of my official robes after the morning court session, refusing to let go.

Gritting his teeth, he hissed, “The sons of my Shen Family do not marry unless they are the primary spouse.”

In the midst of this overwhelming headache, His Majesty summoned me.

When I entered for the audience, a familiar figure was standing by his side.

“My dear minister, the Empress’s nephew wishes to file a complaint against you for abandoning your husband and breaking your promise.”

When I was six years old, I first discovered I could see things that didn’t belong to this world.

My grandfather passed away that year, and we moved into his home in the Grain Bureau Residential Compound.

A week after he died, I saw him at home again. He was leaning on a dragon-head cane, tottering toward the bathroom all by himself.

I followed him, only to find the bathroom completely empty.

I told my dad about it, and he slapped me hard across the face.

Grandma said I was seeing “unclean things.”

But later, I realized I could see more than just the dead; I could see the living, too.

For instance, Aunt Chen from the compound had been away on a business trip to Beijing for several days. Yet one afternoon, I ran into her in the stairwell-just a fleeting glimpse.

I ran off to tell the adults who were outside enjoying the cool air. As a result, when Aunt Chen finally did come home, she and her husband had a massive row.

I lost my mother at seven and my father at ten, leaving me with only Grandma to depend on.

Grandma made a living sewing and doing laundry for others, while I spent my summers farming and my winters heading into the mountains.

We managed to scrape by.

When I was fourteen, I had a dream.

In that dream, I was a princess.

After being brought into the palace, I engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the Impostor Princess.

In the end, we were both killed by the transmigrator, becoming nothing more than stepping stones on her path to power.

Do you know what it feels like to be diagnosed with a terminal illness at such a young age?

In the second year of the famine, just before my father was about to sell me at the human market, my mother secretly ran back to her maiden home.

The night she returned, she was covered in blood.

There was a hole in her belly, and one of her legs was gone.

She handed my father the tripod cauldron she had carried on her back.

“Take it. With this, you won’t go hungry. Don’t sell Ah Yu.”

The tripod cauldron was not very large, but it was packed full inside.

With one tug, a snow-white leg came out.

If you threw in a piece of cloth, an identical piece of cloth would come out.

If you threw in a chicken, another chicken would come out too.

My father was so overjoyed he nearly went mad.

He never noticed that, before my mother breathed her last, she said one final sentence to me.