Drama

That morning, I was still a filthy beggar.

By nightfall, I had been scrubbed clean and smelled sweet.

I had sold myself to a brothel.

The madam looked me up and down, a smile spreading through the creases of her forehead.

“The Mid-Autumn Festival is in five days.

You’ll start taking clients then.”

I didn’t look at her.

The money was in my pocket.

Did she really think she still had a say?

All I wanted now was a good night’s sleep.

The room was lovely in every way, except that the fragrance made my head swim.

I shut the door and pushed open a small, carved window.

A streak of white light squeezed through the gap.

It widened until it filled my vision.

Why was there a luxurious room outside my window?

A man sat straight-backed at a writing desk, his head bent over the bow he was polishing.

He looked up and saw me too.

He wasn’t surprised, but he was very angry.

“I asked for nothing in return.

Who brought you into my residence?

This is absurd!”

Only then did I see his face clearly.

He was extraordinarily handsome.

It was Song Shan.

Wait.

Song Shan?

Hadn’t he been put to death by slow slicing at the third quarter of the noon watch that very day?

I had watched it myself.

Li Furong spends three years saving Xie Qingheng through exile, only to be dismissed before his powerful friends as nothing more than a loyal servant.

When the man who promised her a future breaks his word and forces her into a nameless place in his household, she turns every lesson in survival against him.

Trapped among noblewomen as dangerous as the men who command them, Furong must decide how much of herself she will sacrifice to win the one thing she has always wanted: a life that belongs to her.

I am the Deity of Marriage. One day, without warning, I fell into darkness.

On the day I became a fallen god, thirty-six phoenixes danced in unison above the Nine Heavens. Within Yuze Palace, divine light blazed, and auspicious homage arrived from every direction.

Li Lan was taking his Heavenly Consort as his bride.

Everyone said I was blessed by fate.

Born behind vermilion gates, I rested my head on jade and wrapped myself in brocade.

At three, I began my education, studying essays on how to govern the realm.

At five, I held an abacus, calculating the empire’s grain and coin.

At twelve, I debated the scholars in the clan school and, though I was a girl, took first place above them all.

At fifteen, during my coming-of-age banquet, warlords from three regions offered mountains and rivers as my betrothal gifts.

And yet, I chose the hardest road of all.

The day I eloped with a lowly soldier who guarded the city gate, the entire city laughed at me for debasing myself.

After one night of passion, I was stricken from the Yin Clan’s rolls, my spotless reputation ruined.

No one knew that the soldier was the last surviving bloodline of the imperial house.

They were fighting for the realm.

What I was fighting for was the right to take history’s iron brush in hand and rewrite the world with a name that could not be questioned.

I am the most ferocious, terrifying entity in the horror movie world.

I had finally saved up enough points to visit the daughter I once had.

But when I found her, she had already been adopted into a wealthy family.

Bullet comments drifted across the air:

“Just a few of them, and the female lead takes them all with a smile.”

“What have they turned her into? She went from fighting for her life to crying and begging for it.”

“To be fair, she’s pretty unlucky. She ended up crossing these rich brats who aren’t afraid of anything.”

I looked at my daughter, clutching her backpack and trembling slightly, and the group of boys surrounding her.

They aren’t afraid of anything? I wonder if that includes ghosts.

Nan Tao, an enslaved maid in a wealthy household, discovers that the baby-shaped ginseng fruit her mistress orders buried is alive.

As the fruit reveals the truth behind the household’s miracle heir, Nan Tao uncovers a cycle of trafficking, forced pregnancy, and women transformed into trees harvested for profit.

With a holy monk and his three disciples, she must uproot the dead tree that holds her soul—even though destroying it will erase her forever.

A dark feminist reimagining of a mythic delicacy, Ginseng Fruit turns supernatural horror into a haunting story of inherited violence, motherhood, and liberation.

Every night, I travel ten years into the future along with my classmate, the school’s most popular guy.

I never would have imagined that ten years from now, we’d be married with a baby of our own!

So, the moment I saw him lying there on my pillow, I didn’t hesitate for a second-I pounced right on him.

My parents sent me into the deep sea to work as a housekeeper for an octopus.

Before I left, I asked Mom: “You have five children.

Why send me away?”

Mom sobbed so hard she could barely speak.

“Business class on the interplanetary flights only has six seats, but there are seven of us.”

“Because of you, our family can’t all sit together whenever we travel to Mars!”

Me: “?”

But I was the middle child.

In the year of severe famine, Mother took me to Prince Zhong’s Mansion, a place so distantly related it could hardly be called kin, to seek charity.

We came back with eighty taels of silver and a cart of grain, which we shared with the villagers.

In exchange, the whole village was abuzz with rumors.

The villagers gossiped that she had traded her chastity for grain. After my father divorced her, she hanged herself with a hemp rope, swaying there with her eyes open.

Later, after Prince Zhong’s Mansion fell, the Little Commandery Princess from the mansion, who had once given me a Golden Phoenix, was kidnapped and sold into the brothels.

I pretended to redeem her, then robbed her of her last few pieces of silver.

People-aren’t they all like that?

After Mom died, I began using the same manipulative tactics that the mistress once used to frame her, turning them against my father.

I watched as he was torn apart by public outcry. I watched him struggle to find words, his voice failing him. I watched as his eyes widened in shock, as if he no longer recognized me.

My heart felt heavy, yet I felt a surge of vindication. He doesn’t realize that without Mom, the Female Lead, his own halo as the Male Lead will eventually fade away.

We are both about to enter the world of ordinary people, a world full of stumbles and hardships.