Drama

After my sworn enemy and I both lost our memories, we lost control and ended up in bed together.

He was “gifted beyond measure,” and I was “shamelessly uninhibited.”

Physical desire and psychological disgust tore viciously at each other.

When my memories returned, I stared at my longtime nemesis, bare from the waist up, loving him and hating him all at once.

While enjoying his top-tier stamina, I maliciously recorded a video of him acting like my dog.

The shock brought his memories back.

After a brutal fight, we went our separate ways.

When we met again,

the wedding convoys of Hua Kingdom’s two great families ran into each other on a narrow road.

Song Jinbie and I regarded each other coldly, then brushed past without a word.

But late that night,

my newlywed husband was hanging upside down from the ceiling. Song Jinbie’s tone was lazy as he said,

“Become a widow, or marry me. Pick one.”

I likewise handed a hemp rope to his newlywed wife.

“Either tie it around yourself, or loop it around your husband’s neck.”

The night I married Pei Guanli, I cried so hard I soaked half my bridal veil.

Not because I didn’t want to marry him, but because everyone in the capital knew that Pei Guanli was more upright and proper than the ancestral tablets in a shrine.

He oversaw ceremonial protocols at the Ministry of Rites and revised the dynasty’s statutes and rites.

If a family used the wrong ritual vessels at a wedding, he could remember it for three years.

If someone wailed one time too many at a funeral, he could submit a memorial impeaching them straight to the emperor.

As the daughter of a merchant family from Jiangnan, this was exactly the sort of man I feared most.

Before my mother sent me into the bridal sedan, she clutched my hands and cried even harder than I did.

“Ah Ning, once you reach the Pei Family, speak less, smile less, and eat less.”

I asked, “Why eat less?”

Choking back sobs, my mother said, “Noble young ladies in the capital eat as delicately as if they’re painting flowers. You eat three bowls in one sitting. You’ll give yourself away too easily.”

I paused, suddenly feeling that before this marriage had even reached the bridal chamber, I had already lost on appetite alone.

I was the quietest, shyest girl in the village.

And yet, every night, I went to the ruined temple to seduce the village’s only scholar.

The scholar never took the bait. Disheartened, I decided to steal all the money from home and run away.

He stopped me. “We agreed. When I make something of myself one day, you have to leave on your own.”

I nodded as fast as I could.

Later, he really did pass the imperial examinations with honors, and I finally gained the ability to support myself. So I asked him to sign the divorce papers.

His eyes were bloodshot. “You want to leave me?”

Jiang Yerao is young, beautiful, naïve, and proud. Even though she knows Ruan Pingshan is only willing to give her money and affection, not an official place by his side, she stays with him because she likes him too much. While enjoying the sweetness of being spoiled, she is also stung by the realities of class differences, marriage, and her own self-respect. Little by little, she realizes that being nothing more than a pampered canary can never truly put her at his side.

With the encouragement of her friends and the push of her career, Jiang Yerao goes from relying on Ruan Pingshan to running her own buyer’s boutique. She learns how to judge people’s intentions, protect herself, and rethink both love and independence. Meanwhile, through her transformation, Ruan Pingshan gradually lets go of his fear of marriage and family relationships and begins to face his own feelings. The two of them pull against each other, misunderstand each other, and test each other along the way, until in the end, they choose each other in a more equal and open-hearted way.

Chapter 0

Liang Ling shot to unexpected fame thanks to a fleeting “white moonlight” scene in a xianxia drama, and through it, she met Tang Chen, the calm and self-restrained heir to a wealthy family. During their five-year relationship, she thought she had finally found the stable love and family she had always wanted. Instead, time and again, Tang Chen’s practical calculations, family obligations, and views on marriage pushed her into second place.

Career scandals, breakups and reconciliations, and his belated attempts to make her stay finally made Liang Ling see the truth: this relationship had long since become a burden neither of them could afford to carry. In the end, she dragged her luggage away from Tang Chen and gave her five years of youth a proper goodbye as well.

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.

My elder sister and I were twins, born of the same womb.

But an eminent monk declared that I was the reincarnation of a fox demon, and that one day I would become a Wicked Concubine who bewitched the sovereign.

My family concealed my identity and sent me to Fahua Temple to cultivate a pure heart in seclusion.

In the sixteenth year of my quiet practice,

I had almost forgotten I was a demon. I only wanted to be a good person.

But then the Empress, favored above all in the six palaces, had a dream. She dreamed that one day, a woman of the Shen Clan would steal her phoenix throne.

And so my elder sister, who was soon to be married, was taken by bandits and violated again and again before dying an innocent, miserable death.

I held her body in my arms and wept until I had no tears left.

Three months later, the emperor came up the mountain to pray for blessings. The moment he saw me, he fell in love.

He asked if I was willing to follow him back to the palace.

I thought,

That title of Calamitous Demon Concubine… I suppose I ought to make it true.

The man I secretly loved was the legitimate princess’s fiancé.

I was the unfavored Seventh Princess, and the fiancé bestowed upon me was a drunken libertine who gambled, kept concubines, and maintained a mistress outside his estate.

But that was all right.

My best friend had the ultimate cheat code.

I had been an unfavored princess since childhood.

My mother was the daughter of the Defender-General, and since no man in the entire realm dared marry her, entering the palace had been her only choice.

She had not even become empress.

She was merely a consort—not even a Noble Consort.

That was because her personality was simply too fierce.

Without the title “daughter of the Defender-General,” I reckoned she would have died eight times over by now.

By rights, with the might of her family behind her, my imperial father should at least have pretended to dote on me.

I was wrong, for he had dozens of pretty, obedient, clever, adorable, lively, cheerful, and mischievous princesses of every conceivable kind.

As for me, when I was born, fate had randomly assigned me the role of “the slow one.”

The auspicious hour had arrived. The wedding rites were complete, yet the bride remained kneeling in her blood-red wedding dress.

A gust of wind lifted her bridal veil, revealing a woman’s half-rotted head. Her lifeless eyes stared straight at me.

I tried to flee, but an icy hand clamped tightly around my wrist.

“Where are you going, my lady?” the wedding attendant asked with a smile. “It’s time for the banquet.”

Dark purple corpse spots stood out starkly on his powder-caked wrist.

So none of the guests at the wedding banquet were alive.

Myself included.