Gender Bender

The day His Majesty bestowed a marriage upon me, my entire household wept like we were holding a funeral.

Mainly because I was a woman disguised as a man attending court, and even my Adam’s apple was drawn on.

There was no way I could make the princess happy!

But the princess who bowed with me to Heaven and Earth was a full head taller than I was.

Tentatively, I reached toward a place I really should not be touching.

In a rough voice, the princess confirmed, “Yes, I have a peepee.”

I entered the palace to plead guilty, but His Majesty said that spending one son to make four generations of my family work loyally for him was an excellent bargain. Me: ?

You are a village girl from the mountains.

By a twist of fate, you save the Crown Prince from an assassination, and you leverage that debt to demand he marry you.

But he disdains your plain looks and gently refuses many times.

You settle for the next best thing and ask him to appoint you as an official.

Since you were five, you’ve decided you will rise above your station in this life.

If you become a consort, you’ll be like Wu Zetian.

If you become an official, you’ll be like Sima Yi.

“Miaoren, this beauty mark of yours is truly lovely.”

Xuan Changjun lifted my bridal veil. By the light of a small lamp, he reached out and gently brushed the tiny mark at the corner of my eye.

I smiled at him. “Husband, is this beauty mark the only lovely thing about me?”

He did not answer. Instead, he said, “Xuan’er has a beauty mark just like it. It makes her look especially lively.”

I nodded and told him, “Wait a moment.”

Turning around, I fetched paper, brush, and ink from the writing desk and spread them out before him. “Go on. Write it.”

He looked up at me. “Write what?”

I straightened the tinkling jeweled flower in my hair and said unhurriedly, “A divorce letter.”

Xuan Changjun chuckled softly. “Miaoren, there are seven grounds upon which a man may divorce his wife. You have committed none of them, so how could I write such a letter?”

“Oh?” I lazily propped my chin on one hand while scraping the lid of my teacup with the other. “And what are these seven grounds?”

“A wife may be cast out for seven reasons: disobedience to her parents-in-law, childlessness, adultery, jealousy, serious illness, excessive talkativeness, or theft.”

I nodded, rose to my feet, and stood across from him.

“Go fuck yourself!”

I kicked him over. He toppled backward onto the bed and sank into the red silk wedding quilt embroidered with mandarin ducks.

“Y-you… Miaoren! You, you…” Struggling upright, he clutched his chest and stared at me in shock.

Taking up the brush, I neatly drafted the divorce letter for him:

There is now a wicked woman in this household. She is unfilial to her parents-in-law, disobedient to her husband, and disrespectful to her elder brother- and sister-in-law. She is therefore cast out.

“All you need to do is press your thumbprint onto it,” I said. “Otherwise, I’ll turn the entire Xuan Family upside down. Today I kicked you over. Tomorrow, I’ll dare to beat your father, curse your mother, ruin your family’s reputation, and squander your fortune. Changjun, you should simply accept your fate.”

“Miaoren, why are you doing this?” Xuan Changjun had been a scholar before entering officialdom, so he did not panic when trouble arose. Once he had caught his breath, he said, “I only married you because you liked me.”

“Oh, Changjun, that may be the most absurd joke under heaven!” I clapped my hands, sat down in the armchair, and lowered my head to peel a grape. “Do you know who I am? I am the Grand Tutor, an official of the first rank. Even His Majesty must courteously address me as his teacher. And what are you? A newly crowned Literary Champion. What official rank can you even expect to receive? I lowered myself to marry beneath my station, yet you somehow have the nerve to claim I married you because I liked you?”

Xuan Changjun’s face alternated between red and white. After a long silence, he finally managed to say, “Since we are both scholars, you should not use your official rank to lord it over others.”

“You’re a scholar, my ass. You’re clearly a lecherous creep pretending to be some charming libertine. What a joke!” I sneered, then continued, “I’ll tell you the truth. I chose you reluctantly because I thought you were devoted and faithful, which would spare me plenty of jealous squabbles in the future. If I’d known that a beast like you was lusting after his own younger sister, I would have refused even if the emperor himself arranged the marriage. I’d have gone and beaten the emperor too!”

“You… Miaoren!”

“What? Did I say anything wrong? I’d long heard that your younger sister Changxuan looked seventy percent like me-even the beauty mark at the corner of her eye was identical to mine. I didn’t believe it at first, but after seeing her in person, I realized she truly does resemble me.”

“How could you say Xuan’er resembles you? You’re clearly the one who resembles Xuan’er!” His face flushed red with agitation.

“Say whatever you like. The divorce letter is right here. Hurry up and press your thumbprint onto it. I’ll return to my residence at once, and from this day forward, we’ll each go our separate ways.” I gave the flimsy sheet of paper a shake. “Hurry. You’re a grown man, so why are you being so indecisive?”

Even as I was leaving, he still called me Miaoren.

I told him, “Lord Xuan, I happen to love throwing my rank around. You’d better address me as Grand Tutor Yu.”

Zhou Qiongyue once believed marrying General Xu Ziyi would bring her happiness.

Instead, she finds herself trapped in a household that treats her devotion as a weakness.

Then she wakes in her husband’s body—and he in hers.

Sent to the northern frontier in his place, she discovers a life beyond the walls of their marriage, and a young officer who sees her more clearly than her husband ever did.

But borrowed freedom cannot last forever.

When the time comes to reclaim her own body, Qiongyue must decide what she is willing to return to—and what she will finally leave behind.

After my elder sister learned she was a false heiress,

she disguised herself as a man and went out drinking at a pleasure house to drown her sorrows.

Who could have known she would accidentally enter the wrong room?

There, she spent a night of passion with Zhou Huaixu, who had come to investigate a case.

Zhou Huaixu had been drugged. His mind was hazy, and he did not know who the woman from the night before had been.

He only remembered that she said she came from the Qinghe Cui Clan.

The Zhou Family was known for its upright traditions, and Zhou Huaixu soon came to propose marriage.

But by then, my elder sister had already left.

As it happened, I had gone looking for her that night and did not return to the estate until dawn.

He mistook me for my elder sister and married me.

It was not until our wedding night that he realized he had the wrong person.

Filled with regret, he blamed me. “If you hadn’t been so vague, how could I have married you?”

Zhou Huaixu treated me with the utmost coldness, yet in bed, he showed me no mercy at all.

When I cried and begged him, he only covered my face and sneered, “She would never be as frivolous and lowly as you.”

Then I was reborn on the day Zhou Huaixu came to propose.

I spoke softly. “That night, I went to bed early and never left the estate.”

I got close to the Crown Prince so I could kill him.

I confessed everything in a dark, dank dungeon.

The princess went out in search of amusement and was captured by the enemy.

On the battlefield, they demanded a hostage in exchange.

Lu Wei, our commanding general, turned to me—the woman standing beside him disguised as a man.

I had spent more than ten years at his side, risking my life with him and helping him win battle after battle.

Only he knew I was a woman.

He had even promised to spend his life with me.

But when he saw the enemy’s blade against the princess’s throat, his anguish was plain.

“Once we’ve brought her back, I’ll come for you.”

He handed me over himself.

By the time that blade reached my neck, he already had the rescued princess in his arms.

Dragged into the enemy camp, I waited day and night for him.

Instead, the news arrived that he was about to marry her.

That evening, I revealed to Xie Lin, the enemy emperor, that I was a woman—and chose to be with him.

Later, Lu Wei finally declared war, announcing that he was coming to rescue me.

Watching Xie Lin make our baby laugh, I sent back a languid reply: “Today is my son’s one-month celebration.

Don’t spoil it.”

Lu Wei lost his mind.

My father was a philanderer.

His mistress had borne him a son, and he doted on the boy.

Desperate to win back his affection, my mother prayed day and night for a son—only to give birth to me, a girl.

Six years later, the mistress’s son passed the entry-level civil service examinations.

He arrived at our door with a whole entourage, demanding that his mother be made a wife of equal standing and that he be entered in the family genealogy.

No one knew he was the male lead of this novel.

And I had transmigrated into it.

When I was eight, a lame Daoist wandered into our village.

Mother took pity on him and poured him a cup of water.

He declared that of the three of us siblings, one would become the supreme sovereign, one would become the mother of the realm, and one would stand in a doorway and sell her smiles.

My elder brother had studied since childhood, so naturally he was destined to become the supreme sovereign.

My little sister was beautiful, so naturally she would become the mother of the realm.

And naturally, the one fated to sell her smiles from a doorway had to be me.

Lin Wanrou was twenty-four this year, an old maiden who still had not married.

Madam Lin’s standards for a son-in-law had fallen from imperial kin to any promising young talent with ambition.

She refused to believe that, with the Grand General’s influence, she could not raise up one dragon among men as her son-in-law.

Lin Wanrou did not want to marry. She would rather stay at home for the rest of her life.