Short Story

My sister took my jade hairpin, then used it to frame me for an illicit palace affair.

Our parents and my fiancé begged me to take the blame.

Three years of torment ended with my death.

When I opened my eyes again, I was kneeling before the emperor on the day it all began.

This time, I would spare none of them.

While my brother discussed the most elegant way to sever an artery, I tended my vegetables.

While my sister sharpened her fangs for the coming feast, I tended my vegetables.

While the whole family prepared to revel beneath the blood moon, I was still tending my vegetables.

I cared so much about growing them well that I converted the cellar into a climate-controlled greenhouse and trained our familiar bats to serve as pollinators.

Mom and Dad took one look at the sea of green filling our grounds.

Exasperated but helpless to change me, they took the rest of the family on vacation so they would not have to see it.

For a long while after that, I enjoyed the idyllic peace of country life.

Then one day, as I was picking pests off my cucumbers, a luxury car screeched to a halt outside the gates.

A wealthy young lady in a lace dress pointed at my castle and shrieked coquettishly to her eight brothers, “Baby wants it turned into a Barbie dream castle!

This is where a princess belongs!”

On a family reality show, superstar Lu Ling was the pampered heiress from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, and award-winning actress Shen Fan was the Northeast’s eldest daughter.

Unremarkable me?

I was there to make them look good.

My family wasn’t helping.

In the trailer, their elders showered them with money or love.

My grandma kept telling me to quit showbiz.

“Girls should stay home.

They shouldn’t work.”

The internet tore into her.

[Another old relic.]

Then the full episode aired.

What Grandma had actually said was: “Why not just spend my pension?”

“By the time I’m gone, your dad should be retired.

You can spend his next.”

“I’ve been paying your social insurance at the highest contribution level.”

“By the time your parents are both gone, you’ll be collecting your own pension.”

The internet changed its tune instantly.

[People like this terrify me.]

[Don’t they say whatever you fear comes your way?]

Qi He had spent three years trying to win me over, mistaking me for the heroine.

He sent me money, made transfers, and bought me a home.

I accepted it all without batting an eye.

I could hear his thoughts: Why hasn’t the romance progress gone up at all?

Am I not giving her enough?

I pretended I had no idea.

So he gave me more and more money.

Until one day, he finally realized he’d been pursuing the wrong woman.

My husband could not father children, but he was so kind and capable that he brought home another man for me.

“He is an outsider, and a handsome one at that; once he gets you pregnant, we will simply throw him out.”

We pretended to be brother and sister and carried out our plan.

To our surprise, the man proved practically saintly: he not only left me with a child, but also paid me a fortune before he departed.

“A rustic village woman is no match for me, so do not pester me again.”

My husband was so furious that he tried to fight him, and I tearfully held him back.

“Brother, let it go—do not hurt him.”

Then I turned and whispered to my husband, “A gigolo who works for free and pays us on top of it is hard to find these days, so just play along.”

Together, we saw our generous benefactor off, used his money to buy land and open a clinic, had a son, and lived very comfortably indeed.

Three years later, the Crown Prince returned to the place where it had all begun and found the three of us together.

He went mad on the spot.

“Some brother and sister you are—you made a complete fool of me!”

My husband was a notorious invalid.

We had been married for three years, and he had never once touched me intimately.

Gentle and gracious, he would often drag his frail body to the couch to read and compose poetry.

Watching him look so fragile that he might die at any moment left me utterly exasperated.

I couldn’t help demanding of the system, “Seriously?

Look at him.

He’s practically at death’s door.

“And you’re telling me he’ll become a monster everyone wants dead?”

In my previous life, before my elder sister entered the palace to become empress, she bent her head to tell me, “Ah Ting, when I’m gone, you must take care of yourself.”

I promised her through my tears.

Five years later, the empress fell out of favor.

Her enemies had her raped, and that night she hanged herself.

The emperor decreed that the deposed empress of the Meng family was without virtue.

No one in the capital was permitted to wear mourning white.

I went to beg forgiveness on behalf of the Meng family.

Struck by my beauty, His Majesty took me into the palace, where I became the most favored woman in his harem.

The day I dragged him into the flames to die with me, he closed his hands around my throat in a rage.

“I have treated your family well!

For your sake, I even overlooked that defiled, deposed empress!”

I let the fire climb over me as though I could feel nothing.

“I didn’t.”

When I woke again, it was the day my sister entered the palace.

She stroked my head, then turned toward the palace that devoured people.

I stripped off my fine clothes and jewelry, then turned toward the bloodshed of an army camp.

Let us see whether that imperial bastard would still dare call her “deposed empress” when I surrounded his palace with my army.

After marrying a blind CEO, I took full advantage of the fact that he couldn’t see me and kissed him again and again.

Blushing, he kept saying, “Miss Lin, please don’t.”

Later, he backed me into a corner, his gaze dark and intent.

“Come here, sweetheart.

I need a cuddle.”

I’d finally scraped together enough money for an immortal sword.

Then some godforsaken sword cultivator used Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Source and summoned mine away.

When it flew back, it had thirteen notches in its blade.

Damn you!

Give me my sword back the way it was!

My husband, Xiao Ji, is the realm’s celebrated Grand Chancellor.

My elder sister, the Empress Dowager, commands the inner palace.

For years, they have put each other—and the empire—before me.

When they cancel the birthday fireworks I have long awaited, I finally stop asking to be chosen.

I leave the capital with a divorce agreement and build the life I always wanted as a physician in Jiangnan.

Only after I am gone do they realize that devotion cannot excuse neglect.

But regret may have come too late, because I have no intention of returning to the game that broke me.