Romance

The Minister of the Court of Judicial Review withstood enormous pressure, uncovered the true culprit, and cleared my father’s name, sparing our entire family from exile to Lingnan.

My father was immeasurably grateful and swore he would give his life to repay the minister’s kindness.

After a little polite hesitation, Lord Fu said, “My son has reached marriageable age, and I hear the vice minister’s household has several fine young ladies.”

My father understood.

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.

I had lived with the Shen family for eighteen years when they suddenly told me I was a fake heiress.

The real heiress wept and begged my adoptive parents to throw me out because the mere sight of me upset her.

My biological mother grabbed my hand and ran, terrified that my adoptive parents might try to stop us.

After all, we both knew the apocalypse was coming.

My mother had farmland, a house, a little grocery store, and even a storage dimension in the countryside—not a pile of useless numbers in a bank account.

I married Prince Shu in my elder sister’s place, figuring that if he discovered the truth, the worst that could happen was a fight between us.

Little did I know that Prince Shu was not only blind, but also determined to pamper the “wife” he had brought home.

Now he is knocking outside my door. “Little Qiao, we have been married for half a month. May I sleep in the bed tonight?”

Er… How am I supposed to tell him that his bride is actually his male, cross-dressed nemesis?

After years away from the capital, I returned to find a female study attendant at my fiancé’s side.

I stormed over to demand an explanation, only to drink a cup of drugged tea by mistake.

When I opened my eyes again, I was pinning my fiancé’s stern, old-fashioned, rule-bound elder brother beneath me, his body covered in scandalous red marks.

Our eyes met.

Silence filled the room.

I forced a smile and searched for something—anything—to ease the mortifying tension.

Without a word, he rose, found a length of white silk, and expressionlessly began to—

My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll take responsibility!”

“I said I’ll take responsibility!”

When the war ended, the army prostitutes did everything they could to persuade soldiers to take them home, because the alternative was being sold to a brothel.

By the time the dark-skinned, taciturn centurion came looking for me, only an old dying woman and I remained in the camp.

She laughed and asked why I was still waiting for Young General Pei when he was about to marry a princess in a blaze of glory.

That night, Pei Qingfeng pinned me to the bed and ordered me to wait for him at the house he had bought outside the city.

Not once did he ask about the man who had visited me that day.

He seemed certain I would never leave with anyone else.

What he did not know was that I had already accepted the centurion named Zheng Yuan.

On the day Pei Qingfeng married his princess, Zheng Yuan and I would be married too.

The day the bandages came off my eyes, he never showed up; instead, I received a message from his childhood sweetheart.

“You may have saved him, but don’t try to hold it over his head. He doesn’t have time to pick you up, so make your own way home.”

I called him, only for him to hang up the instant his phone rang.

When I finally saw him again three days later, he demanded to know why I had sent such a message to slander his precious childhood sweetheart.

I watched the aura of fortune above his head hemorrhage away.

Suddenly, accepting that I was the heroine of a melodramatic angst novel did not seem so difficult after all.

On the day my only daughter was born, the Marchioness of Zhenbei gave birth to a son in the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

At dawn, Shen Chizhou brought me her child and exchanged him for mine.

When I caught him, he merely raised his eyes and said, “The child born of Wan and me must be raised in the palace.”

Song Wan was the great love he had lost in his youth.

Now that she had borne him a child, he meant to make amends to mother and son at any cost.

The cost was my daughter becoming the young lady of the Marquis of Zhenbei’s household.

She went from an exalted imperial princess to the daughter of a mere court official.

After a long silence, I neither wept nor protested.

Instead, I lifted my face and smiled in approval.

“As it should be.”

After all, a child ought to be raised beside her real father.

In college, I once “bought” myself a girlfriend.

If she agreed to be with me, I would cover her family’s medical bills.

Humiliated, the brilliant scholarship student from a poor family stayed with me for four years.

Then my family went bankrupt.

When I broke up with her, she was as cold as ever. She did not ask me to stay—not even once.

Years later, I was serving fruit platters at a karaoke club to pay off my family’s debts. She had become a CEO and was dating the handsome star from our class.

She asked me, “Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“Well, I do.”

I fell for the beautiful, powerful, tragic second male lead.

For his sake, I shattered my spirit meridians and lost every trace of my cultivation.

Yet when the heroine burst into our wedding hall, he still abandoned me for her.

I called after him, “Xie Qingxing, take one step beyond that door, and I’m done with you.”

He merely held the girl in his arms and showed me the cool, aloof line of his profile.

“She needs me. How can I stand by and do nothing?”

But he had forgotten that Meng Zhiyuan was not the only person who needed him.

My spirit meridians were completely severed, and without pure-yang spiritual energy to sustain them, they would wither within half a month and take my life with them.

But that was all right.

Xie Qingxing was hardly the only cultivator in the world who practiced the Formless Sword.