Romance

In the eighteenth year after I transmigrated, I finally became a proper maidservant.

When Old Madam and Second Master quarreled, I was the one who stepped in to smooth things over.

I knelt on the floor, clinging to Second Master’s leg, and begged him not to say things in anger.

Second Master pinched my chin and sneered. “I know Third Brother has his eye on you. But I insist on making you my concubine. Even if he finds out, what of it?”

Of course Third Master would not do anything to Second Master.

He would only kill me without a word.

I belonged to Third Master. He would rather have me dead than defiled.

In their eyes, I was a maidservant, a plaything to be fought over and snatched around.

Both the Crown Prince and the Grand General wished to marry me.

I hated the intrigue of the Eastern Palace, so I chose the Grand General who had sworn that I would be the only woman in his life.

Yet on our wedding night, his female deputy lured him out of the bridal chamber with a single flask of wine.

Still dressed in my wedding robes, I listened to their moans through the wall for half the night.

When the rain became a downpour, I threw on a cloak and knocked on the Eastern Palace gate under cover of darkness.

At the Crown Prince’s astonished expression, I gave a bitter smile.

“Your Highness.”

“Tell me—if a woman suddenly thinks of another man on her own wedding night…”

“Isn’t that ridiculous?”

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!”

After Shen Linzhang fell from his horse and lost his memory, the House of Shen fell out of imperial favor.

Everyone avoided them as if they carried the plague.

Only I begged my father to let me marry into the Shen household at its most precarious hour.

Shen Linzhang had the mind of a child.

He understood nothing of worldly affairs; he knew only that I was his wife.

Three years later, the woman general who had guarded the frontier rode back to the capital.

The instant he saw her, Shen Linzhang was seized by a splitting headache.

A moment later, he abandoned me, vaulted onto a horse, and galloped after her.

When we met again, his eyes were clear.

He handed me a letter of divorce.

He said that I had been raised in the inner courtyard like a bird in a cage and had never seen how vast the world was.

He declared that the love of his life was a brilliant, valiant woman general like Feiying.

He spoke with easy arrogance, his chin held high.

Then I calmly accepted the letter.

This time, he was the one left speechless.

I spent seven years confined with the deposed crown prince, tasting poison for him and taking arrows meant for him.

Again and again, I barely escaped death.

Yet after he ascended the throne, he made his childhood sweetheart his empress.

I remained nothing more than a lowly palace maid.

Everyone knew he despised me.

But when I finally came of age and prepared to leave the palace, he seized my wrist and demanded, ‘Do you have a heart at all?’

My father, the emperor, once traveled through Jiangnan in disguise and encountered a diviner.

The man exposed his identity at a glance and left him with a prophecy: ‘The one who will plunge my realm into chaos stands even now at Your Majesty’s side.’

Even after my father ordered him beaten to death, he refused to name the traitor.

And so my mother, the most favored consort in the Six Palaces, was given a bowl of arsenic by that brutal, suspicious emperor.

After her death, he ordered her hair draped over her face and her mouth stuffed with rice chaff, so that even her ghost would be too ashamed to face anyone and unable to speak.

All because she had been the only person beside him that day.

But there was one thing my father did not know.

At nine years old, hidden behind a curtain, I had heard everything too.

In the fifth year since he took me for himself, the powerful young heir finally grew tired of me.

He handed me a bank card with a lazy smile. “Your childhood sweetheart isn’t actually dead.”

“Go find him.”

I stared at the address in my hand for a long time—so long that he lost patience, hauled me out of bed, and drawled, “I’ll give you a ride. Move your things out after today.”

He had just pulled on his coat and started looking for his car keys when his phone rang.

On the other end, his childhood friend was sobbing anxiously. “If you break up with her, what’s going to happen to Xu Xinghe and me?”

My mother had come from another world, and she believed firmly in monogamy.

When she discovered that my husband was keeping a mistress, she stormed into his princely residence, demanding that I divorce him and come home with her.

I stared at her.

“Mother, your daughter already has power and wealth.

Why should I care if he keeps another woman?”

As the School Belle, I swapped souls with the fattest and poorest girl in the whole school.

We exchanged secrets, shared our lives, and tried hard to return to our original selves.

Until one day, she disappeared.

The teacher said her whole family had moved abroad.

I saw her again ten years later.

She was standing beside my Childhood Sweetheart, having become the CEO’s Wife.

The day Fu Chengbi broke up with me, I got into a car accident.

I didn’t die.

The one who died was the personality inside me that loved him.