Short Story

The Empress had devised an elegant diversion: if a prince shot down a kite bearing a noblewoman’s name, he could choose her as his consort.

I made a point of running over to remind the Third Prince.

“That huge red butterfly kite is mine.

Don’t mix it up with the others later.”

He grinned and teased me.

“Are you that eager to marry me?”

“Fine.

I’ll think about it.

If I can’t hit anyone else’s, I’ll shoot yours.”

I flushed and spat at him in mock disgust.

“Plenty of men want to marry me.

I’m only afraid you’ll fail to win me and start bawling.”

Pei Qing and I had grown up together, bickering and playing since childhood.

It was the most ordinary kind of banter between us, but I knew he would take my words to heart.

Yet once the contest began, Pei Qing kept aiming at my elder sister’s kite without so much as glancing at mine.

My kite was so conspicuous.

He could not possibly have missed it.

I watched several arrows skim past it.

I grew anxious that someone else might shoot it down.

I had no choice but to let it climb higher and higher, beyond everyone’s reach.

Then, without warning, the string in my hand snapped.

The kite swayed as it fell—and landed on the Crown Prince, who had set his heart on renouncing the world for a Buddhist monastery.

I had been married to Shen Shi’an for eight years, but he still cherished the woman he had never forgotten.

He had grown tired of me, sick of me, finding me dull and vulgar.

When I cooked porridge or simmered soup, I was a woman with no ambition, forever fussing over a stove.

When his beloved washed her hands and made a bowl of soup, she was gentle, considerate, and understanding.

Later, after I had written our divorce agreement, Shen Shi’an traveled all the way to Jiangling to ask me for a bowl of jujube porridge.

I smiled and told him, “We don’t grow jujubes in Jiangling.

I haven’t made it in years.

I’ve quite forgotten how.”

Would living my life over again make it any better?

After I was reborn, I still chose the young general who had treated me with icy courtesy in my previous life, and rejected the devoted Tanhua scholar.

A road whose every pitfall I had already crossed ought to be easier the second time.

Across two lifetimes, I was already an eighty-year-old woman at heart.

I asked for no great romance, only a safe and steady life.

On April 27th, Shen Yichuan wished me a happy birthday.

I was silent for two seconds and nodded.

“I agree to the divorce.”

An awkward look crossed Shen Yichuan’s face.

“That’s not what I meant…”

He paused. “At least not today.”

I just said, “Mm.”

“Then take it as my return gift for your birthday.”

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.

My sister died, leaving behind two young children.

Mother begged me to marry her widower.

I got straight to the point.

“Your grandson is precious.

If he misbehaves, may I smack him?”

Mother nodded repeatedly.

“Of course.”

“Your granddaughter is delicate.

If she does something wrong, may I scold her?”

“No problem.”

“And my brother-in-law?

I’ve never liked him.

May I beat him up?”

Mother wiped the sweat from her brow.

“You’ll have to ask your mother-in-law about that.

I didn’t give birth to him, after all…”

When our village reservoir dries up, several skeletons and eighty-eight strangely shaped stone Buddhas emerge from the mud.

Grandma warns everyone never to touch the statues.

But after my cousin dies by smashing his own head against one of them, I uncover a century-old injustice—and a vengeful spirit determined to make every descendant of the Lin family pay.

Eight months pregnant, Jiang Xingluo is attacked by her husband’s childhood sweetheart and accused of being his mistress.

At the police station, Fu Tingchen tears up their marriage certificate and walks away with the other woman.

He thinks her demand for a divorce is another jealous tantrum.

This time, she means every word.

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.”

Ren Suixi sells herself into a wife-leasing contract to save her wounded husband, only to be claimed months later as the chancellor’s long-lost daughter.

Her return pulls her into a web of family devotion, imperial cruelty, war, and sacrifices made by men and women with nowhere else to turn.

As dynasties and households collapse around her, Suixi must decide what home, kinship, and a life of her own truly mean.