Drama

The first time I killed someone, the blade was dull.

I was fourteen that year. It was winter, and the north wind whipped against my face with a stinging bite.

Three bandits had scaled the wall of my grandfather’s courtyard, intent on stealing the last half-sack of millet he had hidden in the cellar.

My grandfather was blind. Hearing the commotion, he called out my name: “Shen He, Shen He!” He was using my alias.

My real name is Shen Heyi, and I am a girl. But the bandits didn’t know that, and Grandfather pretended not to know either.

He just kept calling, his voice urgent and hoarse, sounding like an old crow being strangled by the neck.

I fished out that Bone-Cleaver from beneath the stove.

Its edge was curled and nicked, so dull it couldn’t even slice through sheepskin cleanly.

But a human neck is softer than sheepskin.

I didn’t think about that day again for a very long time-not until I met Xie Changgeng.

My husband jumped from a building and died in a pool of blood.

The police quickly cordoned off the scene.

A few days later, the autopsy report came back: the cause of death was a massive intracranial hemorrhage, and his body bore numerous signs of a struggle.

The police told me he had committed suicide and that there was no killer. I didn’t believe them.

I was married to Chi Ni for three years.

It wasn’t until after his death that I discovered his morbid, obsessive longing for me through his diary.

“I’m so jealous of the Young Lady’s dog. I want her to put a collar on me, too.”

“I dreamed of the Young Lady. When I woke up… I was wet again. I am a sinner.”

Clutching that diary, I was reborn into a time ten years in the past.

These were Chi Ni’s most wretched, downtrodden days.

He looked at me with a cold, detached gaze, like a wild dog that couldn’t be tamed.

I curled my finger at him with a beaming smile. “Smile for me, or I’ll kiss you until your lips are raw.”

The cold indifference he had fought so hard to maintain instantly crumbled.

Fu Qiu had always accepted her lot in life.

When she was a child, a blind man read her fortune through bone-weighing and said her bones were light, her fate was lowly, and that in this life she could only sell her body.

As it happened, her family was going through hard times, so her father simply sold her to a brothel.

When she was still young and first put on display, the madam said that although she was beautiful, her face carried a pitiful, sorrowful look, and the customers she attracted would never be decent men.

Sure enough, every few days, she suffered another bout of abuse.

By middle age, her looks had withered, and she married a merchant. The neighbors said her thin lips and fox-like eyes meant she would never be the faithful sort.

Before long, rumors were flying everywhere. The merchant could not bear it, and on a rainy night, he drove her out of the house.

Even so, she never hated anyone. She only hated that her own fate was so poor.

As she lay on the verge of death, the Old Blind Man happened to pass by drunk, bragging to the crowd.

“Twenty years ago, I saw a little girl in another town. She was so young, but she already had the looks to topple a kingdom.

“So I pretended to be blind, did a bone-weighing for her, and told her she had a lowly fate-that in this life, she could only become a whore.

“And guess what? Her whole family believed me!”

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!”

When I was thirteen, in order to serve the distinguished guest who had come from afar, I smeared lard on the soles of the lead dancer’s shoes, making her slip and embarrass herself on the spot.

After that, the beauty sent to his room became me, just as I had wished.

Yet that impossibly refined nobleman merely looked me over twice, then said a single sentence that left me chilled from head to toe, as if a basin of ice water had been poured over me.

“I saw everything just now.”

Because of a bet, Jing Shaochuan lost me to his twin brother.

I acted as if I knew nothing and spent a night of reckless entanglement with his brother.

The next day, I blushed and asked Jing Shaochuan to buy some ointment for me.

“Where are you feeling unwell?” He frowned slightly, his voice deep and cold.

I murmured softly, “You were too rough last night. You hurt me.”

Jing Shaochuan froze visibly.

I took a step forward, hugging him gently and intentionally acting sweet and spoiled.

“But, you were so different last night compared to how you usually are… I really liked it, though.”

My wife and I were a couple of influencers with over a million followers.

After she passed away, the account stopped updating.

Until one day, a stranger sent me a private message.

“I look a lot like her.

“I can be her double.”

To scrape together the money for my younger brother’s treatment, my father sold me to Yihong Tower.

On the eve of the day I was going to be forced to receive clients, Miss Zhao bought me.

Miss Zhao is my benefactor.

If she tells me to stab someone, I immediately sharpen the knife first.

If she tells me to set a fire, I ask her whether ten barrels of lamp oil will be enough.

If she tells me to go on a matchmaking date in her place…

Huh??

My eyes went as wide as bronze bells, and I asked Miss Zhao in horror, “What if Young Master Pei takes a liking to me?”

I got bitten by a dog, went to get a rabies shot, and ran into my ex-boyfriend. On my inner thigh, there wasn’t just a bite mark; there was also a tattoo of his name. He let out a derisive snicker. “Still haven’t had it removed?” “Is my name really that unforgettable to you?”