Romance

The day I married into the Gu marquis’s household, my father-in-law died and my mother-in-law fell ill.

The wedding feast became a funeral banquet, and I was forced to take charge in the midst of the crisis, assuming control of the household and carrying the funeral through with composure.

My husband thanked me for preserving the Gu family’s dignity, yet never set foot in my room again.

In time, he filled the household with concubines and fathered a brood of sons and daughters by them.

I raised them conscientiously and planned for their futures.

Then I overheard my husband speaking to them behind my back.

“I have never met anyone as coldhearted as your mother. Your grandfather died, and she did not shed a single tear. You may call her Mother, but never learn from her. She is unworthy of the name.”

By then, a physician had already told me I did not have long to live.

Not one of those children came to visit me or bring me medicine; they simply left me to die.

With my last strength, I set fire to the Gu residence and burned that cold, loveless place to the ground.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn.

The Gu family came to propose marriage, and as I looked at the refined, handsome man before me, we spoke the same words at the same time.

“I refuse.”

It turned out I was not the only one who had returned.

The newly appointed Tanhua Scholar was gentle and refined, a young lord as flawless as jade.

No one knew that at three, he had killed a man and slit him open from chest to belly. At five, he had peeled off a human face to make a lantern. He was born rotten to the core.

Xie Zhixing and I grew up depending on each other for survival. I exhausted every trick I had just to barely rein him in and make him pass for a normal person.

During the parade through the streets, the Commandery Princess fell in love with him at first sight. When she confessed her feelings, he politely refused.

Several days later, I was found dead in the street, violated and murdered by wandering bandits.

At last, the Commandery Princess got her wish and took my place. With a gentle smile, Xie Zhixing married her as Madam Xie.

Later, when blood dyed the capital red, this became the thing she regretted most in her life…

Without me to hold him back, Xie Zhixing went on a killing spree.

On the eve of my wedding, my future mother-in-law forced me to press my bloodied handprint onto the paper. She told me the Shen Family wasn’t marrying me for love, but because my fate could save her son.

What she didn’t know was that the way to break that Marriage Contract had been left to me by my grandmother herself.

At our wedding, Duan Yingze’s first love showed up in a bridal gown to steal the groom.

“Duan Yingze, if you still love me, come with me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, he took her hand.

He left me alone to face the pity and ridicule of every guest in the room.

Everyone thought I would be devastated, that the pain would destroy me.

What they did not know was this: The one I had never stopped loving had come back too.

Duan Yingze was nothing but a poor substitute.

I no longer cared about him at all.

I’d had a crush on my best friend’s stiff, proper little brother for years.

To look younger, I always wore fresh, barely-there makeup and bright, cheerful outfits whenever I saw Jiang Heng.

He never so much as batted an eye.

Then came the bachelorette party before my best friend’s wedding.

With my hair in big, man-eater waves, a bodycon skirt, black stockings, and red-soled heels, I cut completely loose.

Afterward, I took my hopelessly drunk best friend home.

The door opened.

Jiang Heng and I stared straight at each other.

The sweet-girl act I’d kept up around him for years shattered on the spot.

Feeling guilty, I turned to leave.

But Jiang Heng, always so cool and scrupulously polite, raised a hand to block the doorway.

“It’s late, Qingzhou.

Why don’t you stay the night?”

By the time Xie Ruo’an realized he had mistaken me for someone else, I was already his wife, three months with child.

That night, the eldest young master, always so dignified and composed, got drunk.

He looked at me for a long time, then sighed.

“Very well.

Let things stay as they are.”

And so I spent my whole life as the Marchioness of Xie.

I alone shared his bed, adorned in pearls and jade.

Everything seemed perfect.

Yet whenever I woke from dreams in the middle of the night, I remembered the stillness in Xie Ruo’an’s eyes that evening.

There had been no joy in them.

No dislike, either.

A twist of fate had kept him from marrying the girl he loved.

So he accepted it, and spent the better part of his life quietly by my side.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day he came to ask for my hand.

Lavish gifts filled the hall with gold and jade.

I refused the marriage and told him calmly, “My lord, you have the wrong woman.”

On the day I died, Xiao Xu was about to make another woman his empress.

He came to the Cold Palace, hoping I would swallow my pride and yield to him. What greeted him was only my ice-cold corpse.

For reasons no one could explain, Xiao Xu broke down. He did one deranged thing after another, and every day he wept blood before my grave.

In the end, he got his wish and was reborn a thousand years later.

In the twenty-first century, Xiao Xu and I were classmates.

He was still dazzling. Still exceptional.

He was looking for me.

But he didn’t know that I had been reborn too, with all my memories intact.

In the twelfth year after my rebirth, the first thing I did upon leaving the Xie estate was visit my grave from my former life.

It lay alone in the wilderness, with Qingming as cold as winter and weeds growing ten feet high.

I added a shovelful of fresh earth and told myself, “Ah Lan, don’t look back. Keep walking.”

It was my fifth year since transmigrating from a smut novel into ancient times.

My body had been feeling worse and worse.

Then one day, I coughed up a mouthful of blood from my heart.

I knew that if I did not have a man to relieve me, I would die when my body burst apart.

Just then, lines of floating comments suddenly appeared before my eyes.

[The Male Lead has been afflicted with Lust Poison tonight. What a shame the Female Lead hasn’t appeared yet. The Female Supporting Character will have to detoxify him instead.]

The Male Lead was my eldest brother, a man as pure as a clear breeze and bright moon, cold and aloof.

But I was neither the Female Lead, nor the Female Supporting Character, nor Female Character N.

I was only an adopted daughter with the role of Background Character A.

Being Background Character A meant I could do anything.

So under cover of night, dressed in nothing but a layer of gauze,

I secretly slipped into my brother’s room.

I transmigrated into the story as the male lead’s sex-crazed wife. Every day, I pestered him to do it with me, endlessly demanding and never knowing restraint.

The couch, the bedroom, the kitchen, the floor-to-ceiling windows…

Only when the hatred value soared to 99 did I realize in horror that I hadn’t transmigrated into a smut novel at all, but a clean romance!

Su Yu was actually the kind of male lead who was cold and abstinent when it came to sex!

From then on, I lived in constant fear, treading on eggshells and never daring to cling to him again. As soon as night fell, I’d head to a hotel and not come home.

I even took the initiative to ask for a divorce.

I hoped it would make him hate me a little less.

But the man finally snapped. Eyes red, he erupted and locked me down in a pathologically unrestrained grip, every word crazed:

“Why don’t you cling to me anymore?”

“Is it because I’m getting old, or because that XL one outside has already satisfied your appetite?”