Romance

In my first life, I married Shen Yan, and everyone envied me for securing such a fine match.

Shen Yan won fame while still young, rose swiftly through the ranks, introduced new reforms, became Grand Chancellor, and wielded immense power as he guided a boy emperor.

But that glory belonged to Shen Yan alone.

No one knew how much bitterness I swallowed behind the gates of his illustrious household.

When I was given another life, I waited until Shen Yan’s name was renowned throughout the realm, packed my belongings, wrote a letter of divorce, and sat smiling outside our gates to await him.

“Congratulations on your triumph, my lord. I ask to leave your household of my own accord. From this day forward, may each of us be free.”

Lu Jia wakes inside a novel as a beautiful orphan doomed to die after drugging her adoptive brother, Lu Fang.

Desperate to survive both the gentle Lu Fang and his ruthless alternate personality, she accepts an arranged marriage and escapes to quiet Spring Mountain Temple.

There she meets Ye Yi, a tenderhearted traveler who promises her a life beyond the Lu family’s walls.

As Lu Fang’s forbidden feelings surface, Lu Jia clings to the freedom and future she has chosen, while her brother must decide whether love means possession or letting her go.

My family had been physicians for generations. The blood in our veins could be used as medicine to save lives.

One day, the princess who was visiting Yue City for leisure fell from her horse. In her final moments, with blood draining from her body, the prince consort forced my parents to let her drink their blood.

They had checked the princess’s pulse. She was already beyond saving; no amount of blood could turn back death.

The prince consort said, “If one bowl is not enough, then drain every last drop of blood from your bodies and feed it to the princess!”

My parents were held down by government soldiers and bled for an entire night. My six-year-old little sister was also cut open and made into medicine, dying weakly and miserably.

When the princess awoke and heard what had happened, she cooed, “To be able to save my life was their honor in this lifetime.”

They did not know that the divine-doctor family still had an eldest daughter skilled in witch-doctor arts.

Three years later, the princess became pregnant and suffered every kind of discomfort.

I disguised myself as an ordinary female physician and went to serve at her side during the pregnancy.

After my “careful treatment,” the princess gave birth to a male child, only this child had three faces.

I held the baby in my arms and met the terrified eyes of the princess and the prince consort, then smiled.

“The princess’s life was bought with the blood of three people. Now those three have been reborn and come back to find her. What are you afraid of?”

An accident while tasting medicine for the Noble Consort left me disfigured.

She arranged for me to marry the Fifth Prince, who had been stripped of his rank and reduced to a commoner.

The Fifth Prince did not like me.

He despised my ugliness and the shame it brought him. He never acknowledged me as his wife.

I knew better than to press myself on him, so I stayed out of his sight as much as possible.

Other people treated my disfigurement as an insult to him.

But I could not think of myself as something filthy.

Later, after painstaking effort, the Fifth Prince regained his rank and gradually won the emperor’s favor.

Everyone came to congratulate him.

Even my parents arrived with my younger sister, hoping to secure her a place among his women.

“Aqiao, you can’t possibly attend to His Highness looking like that.”

“If someone is going to benefit, it might as well be one of our own family.”

“His Highness likes your sister, too. Look for yourself if you don’t believe us.”

The Fifth Prince really did like her.

He allowed her to stay by his side, grinding ink, cleaning his inkstone, and keeping him company in his study.

Whenever he brought gifts home, there was always something for her.

He even let her choose first from the gifts bestowed by the palace.

Everyone said she was certain to become his secondary consort one day.

She thought so, too.

Yet he never formally took her as a concubine.

I no longer wanted to wait, either. I asked for a divorce.

For a moment, the Fifth Prince looked distracted. Then he asked quietly:

“Are you serious?”

Xu Feiyun has spent her life as the obedient maid of the privileged half-sister who taught her to call suffering a blessing.

When that sister stages her death to test her husband’s devotion, Feiyun enters the Shen household as a temporary second wife and quietly turns every piece of the reckless scheme to her own purpose.

Between a frightened child, a husband awakening to the truth, and a family built on buried crimes, Feiyun must decide how much tenderness is real and how much is another weapon.

Her revenge will bring the Xu family to judgment—but true freedom lies beyond vengeance, in the ordinary world someone once taught her she deserved to see.

In my dreams, I kept giving myself over to wild passion with a man.

One day, I finally saw his face.

It was Li Jici, the icy Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, a man said to have no interest in women.

When my brother is falsely accused, Li Jici mocks me for begging him for help—yet that very night, the man in my dreams is more passionate than ever.

Only after a drunken guest reveals the peach-shaped birthmark on Li Jici’s chest do I realize the truth: the beautiful dreams we have shared belong to both of us.

Gu Lin is a notoriously timid player who survives the Infinite Horror Game only by hiding behind her powerful boyfriend, Li Jingchi.

When a harmless slogan mutates into a world rule and hurls her into an SSS-rank wedding instance, she wakes beside a charred, many-armed entity that insists she is its wife.

To escape, Gu Lin must decode the rules, confront the man who sacrificed her, and decide whether the monster she fears is truly more dangerous than the humans she once trusted.

I paid for my fiancé’s journey to the capital to sit the imperial examinations.

He came back with a reward far greater than first place.

During the palace examination, His Majesty saw a face identical to his own.

He confirmed that my fiancé was his long-lost eldest son.

Restored to the imperial family, he was named crown prince.

Naturally, his engagement to me—a mere concubine-born daughter of a seventh-rank county magistrate—could no longer stand.

But he remembered what he owed me.

He took me as his sister.

He even found me another husband: a marquis’s heir.

He himself became engaged to the chief minister’s legitimate daughter, who would be his crown princess.

Everything had worked out for both of us.

Thanks to his protection, I spent five blissful years in my husband’s household.

My mother-in-law dared not subject me to her rules.

My husband dared not entertain other women.

Everyone treated me with respect.

Until, on an afternoon as ordinary as any other, he was deposed.

I was so fond of writhing around in the shadows that the System made me a snake spirit.

A snake spirit in Journey to the West.

I stared at Tang Sanzang being lowered into a cooking pot.

Words failed me.

To stay alive, I had no choice but to become his disciple.

Sun Wukong: “Huh?

We’ve already survived fifty-four of the eighty-one trials, and you’re joining us now?”

Me: “Fate works in mysterious ways.”

After my childhood friend and I registered our marriage, his kept woman sneered at me.

“He doesn’t love you.

This is just an arranged marriage!”

I was speechless.

“It’s a business alliance.

Could you sound any more provincial?”

In this day and age, who worried about love in a marriage like ours?

The only use I had for her sugar daddy was to give me an heir carrying both families’ blood as soon as possible.

As for the man himself, I doubted even our housekeeper, Mrs.

Wu, wanted him home.