Drama

I’d finally scraped together enough money for an immortal sword.

Then some godforsaken sword cultivator used Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Source and summoned mine away.

When it flew back, it had thirteen notches in its blade.

Damn you!

Give me my sword back the way it was!

My husband, Xiao Ji, is the realm’s celebrated Grand Chancellor.

My elder sister, the Empress Dowager, commands the inner palace.

For years, they have put each other—and the empire—before me.

When they cancel the birthday fireworks I have long awaited, I finally stop asking to be chosen.

I leave the capital with a divorce agreement and build the life I always wanted as a physician in Jiangnan.

Only after I am gone do they realize that devotion cannot excuse neglect.

But regret may have come too late, because I have no intention of returning to the game that broke me.

On his deathbed, the late emperor entrusted me with his heir—and had me bound and dragged back overnight to assist the new emperor.

Isolated and alone, the new emperor glared through bloodshot eyes, snapping at anyone who came near like a wolf cub.

“Better that I betray the world than let the world betray me!”

My eyes lit up.

The new emperor, later: “On second thought, the world hasn’t wronged me quite that badly.”

I had been married to Shen Shi’an for eight years, but he still cherished the woman he had never forgotten.

He had grown tired of me, sick of me, finding me dull and vulgar.

When I cooked porridge or simmered soup, I was a woman with no ambition, forever fussing over a stove.

When his beloved washed her hands and made a bowl of soup, she was gentle, considerate, and understanding.

Later, after I had written our divorce agreement, Shen Shi’an traveled all the way to Jiangling to ask me for a bowl of jujube porridge.

I smiled and told him, “We don’t grow jujubes in Jiangling.

I haven’t made it in years.

I’ve quite forgotten how.”

I was so fond of writhing around in the shadows that the System made me a snake spirit.

A snake spirit in Journey to the West.

I stared at Tang Sanzang being lowered into a cooking pot.

Words failed me.

To stay alive, I had no choice but to become his disciple.

Sun Wukong: “Huh?

We’ve already survived fifty-four of the eighty-one trials, and you’re joining us now?”

Me: “Fate works in mysterious ways.”

My father was an imperial censor, and nothing mattered to him more than his reputation.

He had fathered me on a prostitute.

Mother and I were the greatest stains on his life, and he would have liked nothing better than to be rid of us.

A transmigrated woman wanted my husband to love her—and only her—for the rest of their lives.

To prove his devotion, my husband swore never to set foot in my courtyard again.

Everyone thought I would be devastated.

Even the transmigrated woman mocked me for being old and faded, accusing me of standing in the way of their love.

I looked at the bright son and daughter beside me.

Then I smiled and thanked her.

“From this day on, may the two of you be blessed with a house full of children.”

She did not understand what I meant.

She said I was merely hiding my heartbreak.

Then, five years later— After giving birth to four children, she learned she was pregnant yet again.

That was when she finally panicked.

After nearly six months of being bullied by the other four girls in our dorm, my roommate He Xiaorui finally snapped.

That night, she and I were alone in the room.

She suddenly climbed into my bed and kept telling me she was Noble Consort Xi of the Great Qing, of the Niohuru clan.

I was so frightened I had no idea what to do.

Then she suddenly smiled.

“Listen well.

Her Highness is about to take her revenge!”

After the college entrance exams, my brother and I got thrown out by our parents.

“I’ve put up with you two long enough.

Go stay with your uncle!”

Uncle was lovely.

He let us run wild in his mansion, though he did seem a little dead inside.

We thought we’d driven him to it.

Then we discovered he was heartbroken: the woman he’d adored for years had chosen someone else.

Looking at our mature, wealthy uncle, with his impossibly perfect looks and that vulnerable older-man appeal, my brother and I couldn’t understand what the other guy had on him.

“Uncle, want to take his place?”

I was sent into the palace because I wasn’t clever.

Before I left, Mother warned me never to fall for the emperor.

I asked her what falling for someone meant.

“It means seeing him makes you happy.”

Puzzled, I tilted my head and asked: “Happier than eating braised pork?”

“A hundred times happier.”

I immediately thumped my chest and promised I would never fall for anyone as long as I lived.

After all, nothing in the world tasted better than braised pork.

Then one day, the noble consort everyone called arrogant and overbearing smiled and pressed a sweet cake into my hand.