Fantasy

Changhui came here on a mission to save me.

When my grandmother passed away and the Crown Prince came to take me into the palace, I heard Xie Changhui’s inner thoughts.

[Don’t go. If you go, you will eventually fall in love with the Crown Prince and become a villain. You’ll commit heinous crimes and meet a miserable end.]

So, I refused the Crown Prince.

Later, when I encountered a sick youth on the road, I heard Xie Changhui’s voice in my head again.

[He is the blade you will use to kill. You love the Crown Prince, but he loves you. For your sake, he will slaughter countless people, only to die at the hands of the female lead.]

I picked up the boy and took him in as my younger brother.

Even later, when I finally met the female lead, I felt an unavoidable, murderous intent the moment I saw her.

Xie Changhui took my hand. “Shaohua, wake up. Think about who you are.”

Who am I? I am a daughter of the Song Family, the child of a founding official, and a future female general. I am certainly not some tool meant to spend my life plotting and fighting against others.

I was the founding Imperial Tutor of a dynasty.

I came here burdened with a mission from the System: to save a collapsing, chaotic realm.

In the end, all I earned was the hatred of countless people.

The young chief minister I had known since our youth became a stranger to me, standing against me at every turn.

The Guardian General I had personally promoted despised me for monopolizing power and ruling the court as a dictator.

And the Young Emperor, the boy I had raised with my own hands… He hated me most of all for tearing him away from the one he loved.

So they laid a trap for me and forced me to drink poisoned wine, driving me to take my own life.

Then, after my death… They summoned a shaman to call forth my memories.

They wanted to expose every evil deed I had ever committed to the world.

But later, after each of them had seen my memories… Every last one of them went mad.

I am a mushroom. But my master doesn’t see it that way.

Whenever I tell him I’m a mushroom that gained sentience, he just lets out a long, heavy sigh.

Aside from that, he’s very good to me. He cooks for me, buys me clothes, watches boring arthouse movies with me…

On every late night I spend curled up in the corner, after he gets home from working overtime, he quietly carries me back to bed.

He even told me he wanted to have a child with me. At that, I clutched my stomach and burst out laughing.

“Please. How could a human and a mushroom possibly have a baby?”

We reproduce by spores. Have you never heard of reproductive isolation?

…

Until one day, I stared at the pregnancy test with two bright lines on it and completely short-circuited.

I was a Little Blind One, and I met an Old Swindler.

To keep ourselves fed, the two of us pretended to be Daoist priests, making a living by conning our way into wealthy households.

That day, the General’s Mansion put up a notice seeking someone with profound magical power to enter the estate and catch a ghost.

The two of us gritted our teeth and immediately decided to go big or go home!

Who would have thought that, inside the General’s Mansion, more people died with each passing day?

Oh my god. There really was a ghost.

The Old Swindler trembled as he shielded me behind him.

The malicious ghost’s shriek pierced our eardrums.

Silently, I formed a hand seal. “Gather the baleful qi of heaven and earth, thunder descend!!”

Old Swindler: “??? Wait, you actually know how?!”

To serve as the Sword Sect’s Chief Disciple’s cauldron.

Wei Xun warned me coldly, “On the bed, don’t make a sound.”

I was too talkative, too noisy, too irritating. The moment I opened my mouth, I stopped sounding like the woman he loved.

But if I stayed silent, he would pinch my waist and say hoarsely, “You have no spiritual root, but you do have a gift for being a cauldron.”

“One round of dual cultivation can raise my cultivation by thirty percent.”

He did not know it was not because I had any gift.

It was because cauldrons like him…

I had two more.

I transmigrated into a Merfolk Princess who burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

The System wanted me to bully the brooding villain before his Dragon Transformation.

I swam up to him and, trembling all over, slapped his face with my fishtail.

“B-bas… bastard.”

The System lectured me, “Own it! Put your back into it!”

Later, the villain completed his Dragon Transformation and became the Lord of the Four Seas.

He pinned my fishtail beneath the dragon claw of his lower body, his voice hoarse.

“Not enough. Again.”

While I was playing with my cat’s tail, the B-king school heartthrob suddenly video-called me.

“Stop touching him.”

“That part of me… I think it has an Empathy Link with your cat’s tail.”

I didn’t understand, so I asked him, “What part?”

His face flushed scarlet. Abandoning all dignity, he simply tilted the camera downward.

Holy crap. Was I even allowed to see this for free?

Was he hiding a bottle of mineral water in his pants?

My elder sister once saved Prince Cheng in Yangzhou, back when he was afflicted with muteness.

When he recovered, he personally came to our door to ask for her hand.

But by then, my elder sister was already married and had borne a child. Holding her newborn in her arms, she smiled warmly.

“I am five years older than you, and I only gave birth to this child a few days ago.”

“My younger sister, however, is only a year apart from you. Perhaps she would be a better match.”

Later, Prince Cheng truly did ask to marry me.

But after our wedding, he treated me with the utmost cruelty, forever complaining that my temperament was worlds apart from my sister’s.

“I was wrong. For the bright moon in my heart, I settled for second best and made do by marrying you.”

“And because of that, I have spent my entire life making do.”

Now that I had been reborn, it was once again the day Prince Cheng came to our door.

My elder sister was just about to bring me up.

I spoke first, smiling calmly.

“Sister, I don’t like older men either.”

I have been able to breathe underwater since I was little, and I often hide at the bottom of the river to play with the fish and shrimp.

When I am seven, the county magistrate begins sacrificing young girls to the River God in exchange for favorable weather.

The family of each chosen girl receives five taels of silver and two sacks of rice.

Every time, I rescue the girl and secretly hide her in the mountains beside the river.

When I am sixteen, my parents bind my hands and feet while I sleep.

“Yuniang, your brother is old enough to take a wife.”

“This year, it is your turn to be sacrificed to the River God!”

I transmigrated into a novel, but there was no such character as me in the story.

For seventeen years, I lived as a wealthy and beautiful heiress in the book.

Just when I was about to forget that I was someone who had transmigrated into a novel, the Story Management Bureau finally assigned me a task.