Mature

In my last life, I sold myself and sacrificed my dignity to keep my mother and younger sister alive.

Once my sister grew up, she despised me for it.

“If you hadn’t been involved with Master Su, how could such a wonderful marriage have fallen through?

Young Master Su liked me so much.

He was going to marry me.”

She had forgotten that Master Su was my first patron.

That night, I had swallowed my shame and gone to him only to pay for a doctor when she was burning with fever.

I, too, had a childhood sweetheart who had promised to marry me.

Later, Mother helped my sister poison me.

I died in agony in our own home.

Their tears fell on my face.

“The rest of us have to live.

We had no choice.”

When I was given another life, I woke on the very day of my sister’s fever.

I divorced my ex-husband because he never knew when to stop talking.

Afterward, I decided to date a mute.

My sweet young boyfriend was obedient, attentive, and exactly my type.

One day, I went to pick him up from his university.

Outside his dorm room, however, I heard him talking to his roommate.

“Yu, how long are you planning to keep pretending?”

“Until I get bored.”

A high fever left my sister intellectually disabled.

But she’d been beautiful since she was little.

After I got into university, I sold her first time to my rich roommate, and her second to the student council president.

Both came away looking thoroughly satisfied.

“She’s an idiot, but she’s something else.”

Thanks to those two, I sailed through university and found a way to stay in the big city after graduation.

As for my sister, she couldn’t even speak properly.

Sacrificing herself for me was only right.

Just as I was making a push for an even better position, my parents called.

“Good news.

Your sister’s recovered.”

Men with big butts are good at bearing children. That’s what my mom always taught me.

She said that no matter how disobedient a man was, once you got him pregnant, he’d do whatever you said.

As luck would have it, my boyfriend abducted me and took me deep into the mountains, demanding that I bear children for his bachelor buddies.

“You’re not allowed to stop until you’ve had eight sons!”

Eight? I passed out from sheer delight.

Well, in that case, don’t mind if I do…

My elder half-sister was dying of an incurable illness.

My fiancé had just placed first in the imperial examinations.

She invited me to her house to entrust her children to my care.

After dinner, I lost consciousness.

When I woke, I was in her husband’s bed.

He slapped me several times, accusing me of scheming against him and drugging him.

My father’s wife held my grief-stricken sister and called me shameless.

I watched the three of them act out their little drama, coldly.

Fine.

Wonderful.

You could all go and die.

The princess had set a trap for me.

I had been drugged.

The man on the bed had a face as flawless as jade, his eyes clouded by the drug.

I recognized him as one of her favorite male companions.

Clearly, she was determined to ruin me.

But what did she know?

I had worked on a pleasure boat and slept with countless men.

This was hardly enough to frighten me.

I leaned close and murmured in his ear, “The princess has never treated you as a person.

Don’t you want revenge?”

The man’s eyes turned abruptly cold.

I was a virtuous woman, particularly skilled at repaying malice with kindness.

After years of marriage, I had little to complain of.

Except for one thing.

Whenever my husband and I retired a little early, my mother-in-law would bring her maids and serving women to pound on our courtyard gate.

Sometimes it was, “My boy, it’s cold tonight.

Be careful you don’t catch a chill in bed.”

Other times, “Son, you ate rather well at supper.

Your food hasn’t settled yet.

Don’t let it sit in your stomach and make you ill.”

After a while, I understood.

We were both women.

It wouldn’t do for me to be the only one getting her fill.

The thought was keeping Mother awake, tossing and turning all night.

So while my husband was away on business, I took three husbands for her in one go.

My father was an imperial censor, and nothing mattered to him more than his reputation.

He had fathered me on a prostitute.

Mother and I were the greatest stains on his life, and he would have liked nothing better than to be rid of us.

Emperor Yuanzhen has ruled Jing for sixty years, while Empress Dowager Xue governed from behind the curtain for thirty-three.

I served as the empress dowager’s personal maid for seventy years—and I know a secret that could overturn the dynasty.

The emperor is not the late sovereign’s son, but a bastard born to the empress dowager and a Sumo barbarian.

Dad brought home a golden retriever especially to keep Mom from getting lonely.

I turned around and sold it to a dog dealer to be bred for twelve litters in a row, until giving birth left it paralyzed.

Because in my last life, Mom had given that dog everything.

She took it everywhere and even held it while she slept.

In just two months, she seemed to age fifty years.

Then she died right in front of me.

The doctor called it sudden-onset premature aging.

Less than a month after we buried Mom, Dad moved her best friend into our house.

The woman who should have been lying in intensive care waiting to die had suddenly recovered.

Wearing Mom’s necklace and sleeping in Mom’s bed, she stroked my head and said, “Niannian, I’m your mommy now.”

Only later did I learn the truth.

Her soul was living inside the golden retriever Dad had brought home.

She was bound to a Life-Swapping System.

All she had to do was stay close to Mom in that dog’s body for forty-nine days straight, and she could steal Mom’s health and lifespan little by little.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the golden retriever arrived.

I looked down at it and smiled sweetly.

Send them to prison?

I didn’t have enough evidence.

But it was only a female dog in heat.

Sending it off to have eight or ten litters was perfectly reasonable, wasn’t it?