Romance

My husband brought home a young woman.

I waited for her to bow and pay her respects, but she started shouting that “all people are born equal.”

I suggested she become his concubine, and she clung to my husband, demanding “one man, one woman, for one lifetime.”

My husband told me to be more accommodating toward her.

I was silent for a long while.

Then I kicked him straight into the sewage ditch.

“You’re the one who’s born equal to dogs. The two of you can go be a pair of dogs for life!”

On my wedding day, my twin sister knocked me unconscious and locked me in the basement.

Then she impersonated me and married my fiancé.

“From today on, your man is mine.” Her eyes were filled with sheer determination.

She left in such a hurry

that she didn’t notice I had stopped breathing in the darkness.

Back when I was at my most innocent, I wanted the person I had a crush on to remember me.

So I kept deliberately controlling my scores, making him come in second in our grade for three whole years.

He got desperate and asked me out, trying to throw me off my game.

I agreed with a smile-then turned around and dumped him before he could dump me.

The good news: he really did never forget me for the rest of his life.

The bad news?

Years later, when I applied for a job, he was the interviewer.

He tossed my résumé aside without a second thought.

“This one won’t do. Next.”

Chapter 0

Pei Qian forgot me. All because, on the eve of our wedding, he got drunk, took a fall, and forgot he was supposed to take a bride. Was I to believe that, or not?

Naturally, I believed it with the utmost gratitude. Since he had forgotten me, my marriage to him could be written off in one stroke.

I packed up my money and dowry. Boling was no longer an option, so for the time being, I settled down in Hedong.

If my father had not died so early, I feared I never would have come anywhere near the gates of the Pei Family.

My father died after taking elixirs and running naked through the streets. Everyone praised him for being romantic and unrestrained-a true eminent gentleman!

He had only been a concubine-born son of a collateral branch of the Cui Clan, yet within a few days of his death, he had somehow become the pride of the Cui Clan.

For a time, the worth of my sisters and me rose with the tide. The great aristocratic families all came asking for our hands. Mother even forgot to fake her tears. Every day, she beamed with joy as she received one guest and sent off another.

This world had gone mad, and so had the people in it.

After much careful selection, Mother chose Pei Qian, the Second Young Master of the Pei Clan of Hedong, for me.

Everyone said he was elegant, graceful, wild, and unrestrained-the foremost romantic figure of Great Wei.

At that, I thought of my father, sprinting along with all that pale flesh jiggling in the wind.

I despised these so-called eminent gentlemen from the bottom of my heart.

As it turned out, he would rather change his name and identity than marry me. Excellent. That suited me perfectly.

Spending the night in an abandoned temple, I found a thin gauze handkerchief wreathed in fragrance. After nightfall, someone murmured beneath the window:

“My lady, have you perchance seen the handkerchief this humble scholar left behind?”

Through the crack in the door, the figure outside looked so ethereal that it seemed he might drift away on the wind at any moment.

At his words, I couldn’t help recalling the rumors about this place.

They said this temple had been abandoned for ages, and that seductive ghosts haunted the area. Any traveler who got entangled with them would either have their essence sucked dry or be dragged into another world, vanishing without a trace.

With that in mind, I hurriedly cracked open the window and tossed out the piece of cloth I had used to wipe the floor, the windowsill, and my stinky feet.

The other party caught it with lightning-fast reflexes.

Then he stared down at the gauze scarf in his hand, now crumpled and ruined like dried pickled greens, and fell into deep contemplation.

The woman who lived across from us was beautiful, with a captivating, mature allure.

Every man in the building was bewitched by her. Only my husband scoffed.

But when the elevator suddenly plunged,

he completely forgot about me and our daughter. He turned around and pulled her tightly into his arms.

So tightly it was as if he wanted to press her into his own body.

The first time I met Li Shuyu…

He had black hair, black clothes, and black-rimmed glasses.

He looked ascetic and buttoned-up.

Only after spending some time with him did I realize just how wrong I had been.

This seemingly aloof man would take off his glasses at night,

put in his lip stud and tongue stud, and say thickly,

“Don’t tremble, jiejie.”

I fell for the beautiful, powerful, tragic second male lead.

For his sake, I shattered my spirit meridians and lost every trace of my cultivation.

Yet when the heroine burst into our wedding hall, he still abandoned me for her.

I called after him, “Xie Qingxing, take one step beyond that door, and I’m done with you.”

He merely held the girl in his arms and showed me the cool, aloof line of his profile.

“She needs me. How can I stand by and do nothing?”

But he had forgotten that Meng Zhiyuan was not the only person who needed him.

My spirit meridians were completely severed, and without pure-yang spiritual energy to sustain them, they would wither within half a month and take my life with them.

But that was all right.

Xie Qingxing was hardly the only cultivator in the world who practiced the Formless Sword.

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

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.