Drama

My husband—an arranged match—and my boyfriend had swapped bodies.

But I didn’t know.

All I knew was that my husband had been very happy lately.

Something about finally being official.

My boyfriend wasn’t nearly so brooding anymore, either.

He kept saying things like, “As long as it’s the man I am now that you love.”

Until one day.

My boyfriend asked me when I was getting divorced.

During the autumn hunt, my fiancé’s precious first love deliberately shot an arrow through my hair.

The ladies around us went white with shock.

But her eyes reddened, and she shrank behind my fiancé.

“My arrow went astray.

I didn’t mean to hurt her.

But she stood in front of my quarry and wouldn’t move.

Surely she bears some of the blame?”

My fiancé shielded her and shouted at me: “Weapons don’t have eyes.

If you can’t dodge them on a hunting ground, that’s your own incompetence.”

I merely murmured assent.

Then I raised my bow.

Three arrows whistled from it at once.

They pierced the left sides of the pair’s chests and the venomous snake behind them.

The two collapsed into pools of blood, their faces paper-white.

I picked up the snake and gave them a cold smile.

“Why didn’t you dodge?

Didn’t feel like it?”

My mother taught me never to trust a man’s affection.

When a marquis’s family chose me to marry their reckless third son, I saw my chance to rise.

He already kept a pregnant mistress, but I had no intention of fighting her for his love.

I would save her, secure my place, and make myself indispensable.

In a house full of secrets, every crisis could become a rung on my ladder.

After a fight with my husband, I went to my boyfriend for comfort.

Then we got caught.

My boyfriend stepped in front of me and told my husband, “The one she doesn’t love is the other man!”

I said, “Keep your voice down!

Is this something to be proud of?”

I was the late emperor’s younger sister, the reigning emperor’s own aunt, and the only Grand Princess of Great Jin.

On my sixtieth birthday, my husband’s supposedly dead first wife appeared at my door with the daughter she had borne late in life.

“The first wife is the lawful wife; her successor must take a concubine’s place.

But Your Highness is far too exalted for me to ask that of you.

I am willing to become a concubine myself.

I ask only that you show mercy and allow Mian to be entered in her father’s clan register, so that father and daughter may be reunited.”

Only then did I learn that the husband who had shown me such love and devotion had been keeping her in another household for forty years.

Seven years into my marriage, I met the woman I wanted to protect for the rest of my life.

She was gentle.

Romantic.

Her smile lit up my stagnant life.

Beside her, my wife seemed so much less.

All she ever talked about was our child and the endless petty details of daily life.

So, on our anniversary, I asked for a divorce.

But the tears, the accusations, the desperate struggle I expected never came.

Her hands merely paused over the food she was preparing.

She turned to me calmly.

“Fine.

I have just one condition.”

“Sell this apartment, and I’ll sign.”

An accident while tasting medicine for the Noble Consort left me disfigured.

She arranged for me to marry the Fifth Prince, who had been stripped of his rank and reduced to a commoner.

The Fifth Prince did not like me.

He despised my ugliness and the shame it brought him. He never acknowledged me as his wife.

I knew better than to press myself on him, so I stayed out of his sight as much as possible.

Other people treated my disfigurement as an insult to him.

But I could not think of myself as something filthy.

Later, after painstaking effort, the Fifth Prince regained his rank and gradually won the emperor’s favor.

Everyone came to congratulate him.

Even my parents arrived with my younger sister, hoping to secure her a place among his women.

“Aqiao, you can’t possibly attend to His Highness looking like that.”

“If someone is going to benefit, it might as well be one of our own family.”

“His Highness likes your sister, too. Look for yourself if you don’t believe us.”

The Fifth Prince really did like her.

He allowed her to stay by his side, grinding ink, cleaning his inkstone, and keeping him company in his study.

Whenever he brought gifts home, there was always something for her.

He even let her choose first from the gifts bestowed by the palace.

Everyone said she was certain to become his secondary consort one day.

She thought so, too.

Yet he never formally took her as a concubine.

I no longer wanted to wait, either. I asked for a divorce.

For a moment, the Fifth Prince looked distracted. Then he asked quietly:

“Are you serious?”

After they discovered I was not their real daughter, they began withholding everything—my food, my clothes, even the charcoal for my fire.

My betrothal to the Pei family became the only thing I could rely on.

But Pei Xuan’s moods were impossible to predict.

A single word from me would often anger him enough to send a letter breaking off our engagement.

I spent my days in fear and my nights in worry.

At last, I fell gravely ill.

When I woke, the lady of the household stood before me.

“A captain serving under my uncle commands a hundred men.”

“His birth is humble, but he is young and brave.

He has distinguished himself in battle again and again.”

Holding the letter of repudiation, she looked pained.

“The Peis may be an excellent family, but your present standing makes you an unsuitable match.

You live in constant fear.”

“What are wealth and glory worth beside your life?”

“We were mother and daughter once.

I truly want to find you a good husband.”

I pressed a hand to my chest and nodded through my tears.

“I understand, my lady.”

“I will marry him.”

When I was still a little fox, the crown prince rescued me from a trap.

He took me home and raised me for nine years.

Then, at fifteen, he fell in love with a girl.

The imperial family said her birth was beneath him.

So I found him a divine herb that could summon the image of a phoenix in the sky.

On their wedding day, I happily went off to the feast to sneak a bite of pork knuckle.

Before I could get any, he came to feed me a bowl of meat broth, just as he always did.

I drank it and passed out as though drunk.

When I woke, my inner core was gone.

I sacrificed three tails just to cling to life.

Taking human form, I returned to his side.

And saw my inner core hanging around the neck of his beloved wife.

I have a temple in the human world.

Hardly anyone visits, but one girl came to pray three times.

The first time, she offered ten years of her life in exchange for her grandmother’s recovery.

The second time, she raised the offer to twenty.

The third time, she muttered, “Why won’t it work?”

“Because you’ve come to the wrong temple,” I said.

“I bury people.

I don’t save them.”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t hear me.

She still knelt and bowed, three times to her knees and nine times to the ground, then took five yuan from her pocket and put it in the offering box.

Who had lied to her?

I followed her out, back to a cramped, dilapidated alley.

A group of children crowded around her, laughing.

“The idiot’s here!

Come look at the idiot!”

She clutched her sleeves and said quietly, “I’m not an idiot.

“I’m just a little slow to react.”