Romance

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.

I run a brothel staffed by men.

But my courtesans don’t cater to men with a taste for other men.

They serve women with perfectly ordinary needs.

I named the place the Hundred Stallions House.

I don’t actually have a hundred male courtesans, of course, but I do have quite a few.

Gentle, aloof, strapping, dangerously obsessive—we have every type imaginable.

Our clients range from widowed officials’ wives to farm women who have lost their husbands, and even wandering swordswomen.

Now and then, a noble young lady sneaks out to satisfy her curiosity.

All in all, business is booming.

But there are complications.

Take that judicial officer from the Capital Prefecture, for example.

He has tried every trick in the book to shut down my Hundred Stallions House.

So when the opportunity presented itself, I drugged him.

Then I locked him in the woodshed out back.

To surprise my online boyfriend, I secretly traveled thousands of miles to his university.

When I arrived, I happened to see him coming back to campus from outside.

I was just about to go up and say hi when he walked right past me without so much as a glance.

?

A moment later, my phone buzzed.

“Holy crap, babe. I just saw someone who looked exactly like you.”

“But you’re the only one in my heart, so I didn’t even spare another woman a second look.”

I was so mad I laughed. Right then and there, I snapped a selfie in front of the school gate and sent it to him.

“Maybe try taking another look?”

After rescuing my young nephew from the water, I went to the east wing to change my clothes.

But my brother-in-law, Zhao Hong, chose that exact moment to shove the door open and barge in, forcing me into a marriage with him as his second wife.

On the night before the wedding, my legitimate mother personally brought me a bowl of Sterilization Decoction.

I pushed the bowl away and looked up at her. “If you dare force me to drink it, the first thing I’ll do is make sure the Zhao Family has no descendants. Do you believe me?”

My legitimate mother flew into a rage and immediately went to complain to Zhao Hong.

Zhao Hong sneered. “Scheming women like her aren’t fit to bear my children.”

My eight-year-old nephew shouted too,

“Bad woman! You’re not fit to be my mother!”

I looked at Zhao Hong. “Since I’m not fit to bear your children, then don’t come to my bed.”

“From now on, the child’s food, clothing, lodging, schooling, future prospects, and dignity in front of the nobles… none of it has anything to do with me.”

“If my lord thinks I’m so scheming, perhaps he should raise the child himself.”

Before I transmigrated here, I worked in HR at a major tech company.

Aside from competence, the job also required knowing how to spot workplace PUA when you saw it.

Before we married, I already knew my husband had a concubine he doted on.

It did not matter.

I was marrying into a great house to become its mistress.

Naturally, I could afford to be generous.

After the wedding, I put the marquis’s household in perfect order, and my reputation as a virtuous wife spread throughout the capital.

Whether that concubine had a brain in her head, I could not say.

She actually let people know that the marquis and I had never consummated our marriage.

She meant to humiliate me, to make me a laughingstock.

What she never imagined was that her little stunt would force my mother-in-law to send the marquis knocking on my door late one night.

My imperial sister’s tomcat set his sights on my female cat and was rejected.

My mother consort ordered me to apologize, so I did.

The tom still refused to give up, and my cat’s other suitors beat him up.

Then Mother Consort told me to kill my “femme-fatale cat” to appease my sister…

This time, I refused.

“Think about who she is and where you stand,” Mother Consort advised.

Understanding dawned on me. “Oh. It’s because my mother is a coward.”

My mother might be a coward, but I was not.

Neither was my cat—she was, in fact, the greatest feline beauty in the entire imperial harem.

The day after our wedding, my husband went to the city for work and was killed by a falling billboard.

The CEO of the company responsible came to discuss compensation.

I said I was struggling to make ends meet.

He transferred me three million yuan.

I said I had nowhere to go.

He gave me a luxury apartment.

I said I didn’t want to stay a widow.

He gave me a handsome young man.

The morning after we slept together, he came to see me.

I was about to thank him when his expression changed.

“What is my brother doing here?!”

The boy who loved me more than anyone else in the world was dead.

His name was Jiang Yan. He was a police officer, stabbed seven times by a rich second-generation heir while trying to save a girl from domestic abuse.

Afterward, the girl tearfully claimed that Jiang Yan had molested her, and that was why her boyfriend had stabbed him.

The killer even got off scot-free with a psychiatric evaluation declaring him mentally ill.

As I stared at their faces, I suddenly laughed.

A psychiatric evaluation, huh?

What a coincidence.

I had one too.

The Prince of Beijing’s elite circle mistakenly thought I had a crush on him and, with a haughty air, said he agreed to my pursuit.

Because I’m a coward, I was forced to date him.

The young prince has a bad temper, is unreasonable, and uses his handsome face to bully me with his beauty.

After three years of dating, I still couldn’t convince myself to spend a lifetime with him.

But, coward that I am, I didn’t dare break up.

Just as I was worrying, I saw his group chat message:

[“I’ve never seen someone as lacking in self as her. Come home a bit late and she starts checking up on me, so annoying! Next time she pulls that, I’ll just pay her off and send her packing.”]

I was so happy I almost jumped.

I’d get money, and I could break up.

This useless coward has finally found her spring.

With my mission to win over the male lead on the verge of failure, I broke down sobbing.

I cried so hard I practically gave my system a CPU ache: “Quit your damn crying. I’ll just kill him.”

Later, the male lead asked why I no longer loved him.

My system wailed in exasperation: “Doesn’t he have a wife of his own?”

“Tell him to get lost!”