Romance

Chapter 0

On April Fool’s Day, a pregnancy test with two distinct red lines fell out of my coat pocket.

I turned to my wife in surprise. “Are you pregnant with our second child?”

Her voice was flat. “Chen Wei, we haven’t had sex in six months.”

I froze for a second before quickly spinning a lie.

“It’s a prank prop! It’s April Fool’s Day, I was just messing with you. Gotcha, didn’t I?”

As soon as I stepped out of the house, I called my mistress to demand answers.

If she was pregnant, she needed to get an abortion immediately.

She had a worse temper than I did and denied it outright.

What a joke.

I only had two women in my life, and neither of them was pregnant.

Was this pregnancy test supposed to be mine?

Gu Yuqing is the daughter of a fallen general and the most unlikely court historian in Great Chu: a woman who can fight an army but can barely read.

When a modern woman awakens in the body of Empress Pei Lingyi, the two of them turn Yuqing’s brutally honest records into a weapon against corrupt ministers, unfaithful men, and a kingdom built to erase women.

As reforms spread and the Chancellor moves to seize the throne, Yuqing must return to the battlefield while Lingyi risks being erased from history altogether.

Between broken brushes, unfinished chronicles, and birthday cakes from another world, two women fight to write their names—and their love—into the future.

After an argument with Zhou Mingyu, I jumped from the thirtieth floor with my five-month-old daughter in my arms.

When I opened my eyes again, time had actually returned to yesterday.

On this day, because the baby wouldn’t stop crying, Zhou Mingyu snapped at me for the first time: “Chen Ran, you don’t have a mother yourself, so it’s no wonder you don’t even know how to take care of a child!”

Our relationship had always been good, so I thought he hadn’t meant it; I blamed it on my own volatile temper and for taking things too hard.

But time continued to flow backward, and I discovered that this wasn’t the first time Zhou Mingyu had said such things: During my postpartum recovery month, he joked, “If your mother were still alive, my mother wouldn’t be so exhausted.”

On the day I was hospitalized to give birth, in response to the nurse’s questions, he said with a smile, “Her mother passed away, so who else could be her caregiver but me?”

At our wedding, he held my hand and vowed, “Chen Ran, I will definitely take good care of you in your mother’s stead!”

… It turned out he had always cared about the fact that I didn’t have a mother.

But the strange thing was, why didn’t I have any memory of my mother at all?

Had she ever truly existed?

If time continued to flow backward, would I eventually see her?

I am the pampered little fake heiress who was driven out to the countryside.

To go from the young lady of Marquis Manor to a carpenter’s eldest daughter-there is simply no living like this!

In order to return to the noble circles of Capital City, I set my sights on the scholar next door.

Standing on a ladder, I waved my handkerchief coquettishly over the wall.

“Hey~ I heard you’re my fiancé?”

The man chopping firewood with his upper body bare slowly turned to look at me.

In an indifferent voice, he said, “I am Lin Jiaoyue’s fiancé.”

Qiao Ying had transmigrated into a book. Unfortunately, kidnappers had injured her head, leaving her with amnesia.

In a dark, damp dungeon, she met a young man.

He wore robes of blue-green, his white hair as pure as snow. His face was exquisitely beautiful, but a white silk blindfold covered his eyes. Though he was disabled, he was the most optimistic person she had ever met, always smiling.

That day, the amnesiac Qiao Ying escaped the dungeon with the harmless-looking young man in tow.

The young man was a good person.

Because he was afraid of blood, even amid mountains of corpses and seas of gore, not a speck of dust stained his robes.

Because he was timid, whenever others fought, he only dared to hide far away, only for everyone to die in a poisonous mist the next moment.

Because he was kind, he offered medicine to enemies suffering in agony. Sadly, they failed to endure it and died with blood pouring from all seven orifices.

And so, she decided to marry such a good person.

Later, righteous cultivators came charging in with swords drawn, shouting that he was a monster.

That night, corpses littered the ground.

At last, she remembered the plot.

This was a bizarre, fantastical world crawling with eerie horrors.

There was a great villain who lacked the emotions of an ordinary person. He brought calamity to the world and stirred up countless conflicts, until in the end, the male and female leads sacrificed their lives to seal him away.

Amid the storm of blood and violence, the young man looked back at her.

His blue eyes were deep and uncanny. Blood spattered his face, making him look like an Asura descended upon the mortal realm. Behind him, nine fox tails unfurled with wanton grace, bewitching and breathtakingly vivid.

Qiao Ying went deathly pale with fright.

But he only smiled softly. “If you’re scared and want to run, it’s too late-”

Before he could finish, Qiao Ying ran, but straight into his arms. She wiped the blood from his face and said, “You scared me! I thought you were hurt!”

The young man blinked, patted her head, then poked her cheek. “Are you stupid?”

At seventeen, the old madam gave the head maids in the courtyard two choices.

Either become concubines to the masters of the various branches, or become the wife of a steward from the outer quarters.

There were four of us. Three chose to be concubines; only Yuchuan chose the steward.

She asked me why. I lowered my head and thought silently:

Because I don’t want my children to be servants anymore.

0

In the fourth year of our marriage, both Lu Jingli and I had affairs.

He kept a female college student, treating her like a treasure.

Behind his back, I supported a pure-hearted male college student, reliving the passion of youth.

I had thought he was already tired of this messy marriage.

But on the day he discovered my betrayal, he went crazy, insisting that we return to our family together.

On the day of my hairpin ceremony, my brother-in-law, tipsy from wine, barged into my room.

That same night, my mouth was gagged and I was taken to the Marquis’s Mansion.

My legitimate elder sister told me she could not bear children and needed to borrow my womb.

A year later, I gave birth to a son.

My legitimate elder sister brought me to the Bamboo Garden, where four old maids covered my mouth and buried me in a pit they had dug long before.

Before I died, I kept wondering what the point had been of someone like me coming into this world.

But I never imagined that I would be dug up again.

The person who found me was small and thin, yet he staggered along with me on his back for ten miles.

He covered me with the only clothing he had and gave me a chance to live.

An old man took me in. From that day on, I changed my name and became someone else.

Five years later, my wonton shop opened in Capital City, and I happened to run into my legitimate elder sister and her family being sold off.

She begged me to save her son.

But I pointed to the young man kneeling off to the side and said, “I’ll only save him.”

I am the dowry maid for the legitimate daughter of the Shen Manor.

Last night, I woke up in the Heir’s bed.

Now, the servants of the entire manor are pointing and whispering at me: “A lowly wench like this deserves to be beaten to death with clubs!”

Shen Yujiao sat regally at the head of the hall. “In that case, let’s just promote her to a Concubine.”

She watched with a smile as I knelt and kowtowed to thank her for her mercy.

Yet, I caught the scent of Hehuan Powder in the air.

That was the very incense I had blended with my own hands for her husband’s use.

Third Miss Liu did not have a very good reputation.

When she was fourteen, she threw a length of white silk over a roof beam and hanged herself, an act that stripped the primary wife of her power to manage the household.

The entire capital whispered that she was far too calculating for such a young age.

When she was seventeen, she sat atop a wall and tossed her silk pouch into the arms of a complete stranger.

Once again, the capital buzzed with rumors, claiming she was conducting a private affair and lacked any sense of shame.

Her father was so livid he was practically hopping mad, threatening to have her drowned in a pond. As soon as this news broke, General He grew anxious.

He was the capital’s most notorious man fated to kill his wife. And he had just accepted Third Miss Liu’s pouch.