Drama

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?”

While packing my mom’s things, a receipt suddenly slipped out of an old cardboard box.

It read: April 8, 2006. Aigo MP3 player returned and refunded. Goods and payment settled in full. Total: 498 yuan.

I felt as if I’d been plunged into an ice cellar.

The MP3 player I had thought had been lost for twenty years, the MP3 player that became the trigger every time my mom and I fought, had appeared out of nowhere, just like that.

Clutching the receipt, I asked her numbly, “Back then… did you return that MP3 player?”

I was the adopted daughter of the most beautiful widow in Jiangcheng.

When I was twelve, the Yellow River burst its banks and Jiangcheng was swallowed by the flood.

As we fled, the beautiful widow fell gravely ill.

Before she died, she clutched my hand and, after a long hesitation, told me to go to the capital and find her lover once she was gone.

I followed the refugees for half a month.

At last, in Prince Hongyang’s Manor, I met Prince Hongyang-a man who looked half like me.

I became a simpleton while saving my childhood friend.

He promised to repay me by finding me a good husband.

“Tonight, a man will collapse at your doorstep,” he told me. “That is the husband I have chosen for you.”

I followed his instructions to the letter.

Half a year later, my childhood friend returned from the borderlands.

I excitedly introduced my husband to him:

“This is the husband you picked for me back then. He’s a wonderful man, and he even said he wants to make me his Crown Princess.”

He froze in his tracks, his face turning deathly pale.

“It was supposed to be a beggar… How could it be the… Crown Prince?!”

I was never born to be harmless.

At three, I stabbed the young master next door in the eye with a hairpin, simply because he had peeped at my mother while she was bathing.

At five, I set fire to a theater, merely because I saw the troupe buying and selling children.

At ten, I secretly brought people with me and crippled the censor’s grandson.

Who told him to harass my elder sister in the street?

There were countless incidents like these… Later, I married a good man.

Everyone in his family was kind and decent, and I nearly died of boredom in the inner household.

When I was reborn on the day the Emperor granted marriages to my elder sister and me, I decisively swapped marriages with her.

In my previous life, less than two years after my sister married into the Duke’s Mansion, she passed away like a withered flower.

My sister had been reborn too.

With tears in her eyes, she said, “Second Sister, the Duke’s Mansion is a death trap! You can’t marry into it!” I was thrilled. “But… Sister, I was born a bad seed.”

The year I turned eighteen, my mother took five taels of silver and married me off to Ji Songzhu, a man infamous far and wide for bringing death to his wives.

Before me, both of his previous wives had died of sudden illness three days before the wedding.

To catch the School Bully’s attention,

the School Beauty gave me 660,000 to publicly bully her.

“If you bully me, he’ll feel so sorry for me and come to protect me on his own!”

So I blocked the School Beauty at the school gate and shouted,

“So what if you’re a little prettier, your family’s a little richer, and your grades are a little better? What are you acting so smug about!”

The School Beauty cried pitifully, drawing a crowd of onlookers from the whole school.

On the way home, the School Bully’s Bentley cut me off.

Just as I was about to kneel and apologize, the School Bully handed me a bank card.

“Well done. I’ve been sick of that Little Green Tea for a while now.”

“There’s 880,000 in the card. I’m hiring you as my girlfriend, keep messing with her!”

There is no spring in the Sea of No Return.

On the eve of our wedding, Shang Wujiu personally gouged out my Heart Lamp and sealed me within the Sea of No Return.

Three hundred years later, he knelt by the shore, begging me to return.

But he didn’t know that the lamp-the very thing that had extended his life-had long since burned into ash at the bottom of the sea.

When the matchmaker came to propose the marriage, she said Cen Dalang (Eldest Master Cen) of the Cen family had talent, while Erlang (Second Master) had looks.

“A perfect match for your two young ladies.”

“The eldest son for the eldest daughter, the second son for the second daughter.”

“With their older brother and sister looking after them, how could the younger ones ever have a bad life?”

In my last life, things were indeed just as the matchmaker had said.

I married Dalang, and my younger sister married Erlang (Second Master).

Dalang and I spent years cleaning up mess after mess for our younger siblings.

Until Dalang died saving Erlang (Second Master).

I thought he would resent them.

But instead, he looked at my plain, unremarkable face, tears in his eyes, and sighed bitterly.

“This life was far too worthless.”

“Was I not even worthy of having a beautiful wife?”

He passed away with that regret.

It struck me like a bolt from the blue.

So all those messes he had cleaned up-he had done it willingly.

Not only for his younger brother, but for my younger sister as well.

Now, reborn into this life,

as I listened to the matchmaker say those same words,

I merely replied calmly,

“Let’s forget it. Dalang has no looks, and Erlang (Second Master) has no talent. Neither of them is a good match.”

I transmigrated into the mistress of the Marquis’s Mansion, and my stepson was the devoted second male lead.

When he grew up, he would try to take the female lead by force and spend fortunes on her without blinking.

As for the male lead, he would sow discord, frame him, and set him up at every turn.

In the end, the male and female leads would join forces to defeat him.

He would flee into monastic life and never marry.

And the Marquis’s Mansion, implicated because of him, would be raided, stripped of its title, and tragically exiled.

After transmigrating, I looked at the tiny little thing in front of me, pretending to be obedient.

He wanted to grow gloomy and brooding? Absolutely not.

He was going to become sunny if it killed me. He wanted to squander money?

Absolutely not. I had to raise him into a stingy, family-minded model of virtue.

I was definitely going to protect the vast fortune of the Marquis’s Mansion.

Later, everyone said I threw money around like dirt and lived in arrogant, extravagant luxury.

My stepson refuted them.

“Nonsense. My mother is the most frugal, capable, virtuous, and dignified woman there is. She sponsored so many scholars with money she saved up herself. Could you do that?”

Someone said my methods were ruthless and that I acted like a man.

My stepson’s face turned cold.

“My mother is gentle, virtuous, and the very soul of benevolence. She clearly could have just robbed you outright, yet she still gave you a chance to compete fairly. You’re the one who was useless. Utter trash.”

Even his father couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Son, open your eyes and take a good look. Your mother is not the kind of person who lets herself be wronged.”

My stepson flew into a rage.

“Father, don’t force me to turn against you. You can say whatever you want about me, but you absolutely cannot say that about my mother.”