Short Story

My mother was kicked to death by the horse of a nobleman from the capital. Everyone in the village warned me, “That nobleman only spared you because he thinks you’re a fool. Don’t even think about revenge.” After burying my mother, I went to the largest brothel in the capital to seek out my aunt. She wrapped an arm around me and said, “Good girl. We’ll kill him and make him pay for your mother’s life.” “The legitimate son of the Capital Magistrate, huh? Let me think about how he ought to die.”

In the twelfth year of her political marriage, Lu Zhuohua’s husband slaps her for the sake of his newest concubine—and the formidable marchioness answers by smashing a bench over his head.

What first looks like another petty battle in a crowded noble household soon exposes a plot involving a staged miscarriage, a powerful young heiress, and a poison meant for Zhuohua and her little daughter.

With her family, her fighters, and twelve years of household authority behind her, Zhuohua decides that if her husband wants her dead, she will simply strike first.

At twenty-five, the eldest son of the Cui family lived a life of such restraint and purity that he still had no intention of taking a wife.

Madam Cui could wait no longer.

With tears, tantrums, and threats to hang herself, she forced Cui Lanzhang to choose a bride.

At his wits’ end, Cui Lanzhang pointed at me at random.

And just like that, I landed myself one very eligible catch.

Later, I asked Cui Lanzhang why he had chosen me.

After thinking for a moment, he said, “That day, when you saw me, your cheeks were flushed and your eyes were hazy.

I assumed you must have liked me.”

I spent the entire night debating whether to tell him the truth.

My cheeks had been red because I had put on too much rouge, and my eyes had been hazy because I had stayed up reading storybooks the night before and was exhausted the next day.

After eight years of marriage, divine physician Huo Yunqiao discovers that her beloved husband has betrayed her to protect the junior martial sister who has always hated her.

Bound to a System that will send her home only if she dies by the male lead’s hand, Yunqiao chooses to drink the poisoned prescription he writes for her—and spends her final days exposing every lie, reclaiming her dignity, and forcing those who wronged her to face the ruin they made.

I am the youngest princess of Baojun Palace, raised to seem innocent while my elder sister bargains with a ruthless eunuch and my elder brother plots for our survival.

Our mother was framed and killed, our palace became a prison, and every smile I wear becomes a weapon against the emperor who abandoned us.

As love, revenge, and a battle for the throne close around our family, the secrets everyone hides prove far more dangerous than my supposed naivety.

I may be the family’s little fool, but I will decide which hearts are saved—and which debts are paid.

At my daughter’s birthday banquet, the longevity lock in its brocade box had been replaced with a decapitated snake.

As every noblewoman in the courtyard screamed in terror, my husband’s former beloved reddened her eyes, hugged her son, and apologized.

“He is only a child.

He did not mean to curse the young lady with an early death by bringing her a headless snake.”

Beneath her lowered gaze was a taunt.

She was waiting for me to fly into a rage and ruin my own daughter’s celebration.

I merely gave a quiet hum.

At once, a servant swung a cudgel into the back of her knee.

She dropped to the ground before me, smashing her forehead against the flagstones.

Blood streamed down her face.

She looked utterly wretched.

I tapped the lid of my teacup without even looking up.

“Drag her out and kill her.”

“The child may not know better, but is the adult dead too?”

On the day my father placed third in the palace examination, my mother was found unconscious in a busy street, her clothes in disarray.

Mindful of the many years she had supported his studies, my father did not fault her for having been violated.

Everyone praised him for his honor.

Even the emperor marveled at his devotion.

Yet, concerned for my father’s reputation, His Majesty decreed that he marry the Marquis of Yongyang’s legitimate daughter and expected my mother to step aside and become a concubine.

Proud and unyielding, my mother hanged herself that very night.

On Mars, every breath costs money, wanting is treated like a moral failure, and Chen Xiaoba has spent her life longing for one impossible luxury: savory flatbread from Earth.

After that longing costs her job and home, a reunion with her childhood friend Ah Zhi leads them to Black Rose Street, where Earth’s discarded scraps can still be traded for hope.

Together they build a food stall, save for passage to Earth, and discover that the road to freedom may demand far more than money.

In a world designed to make the poor stop dreaming, Xiaoba must decide whether a seemingly wasted journey can still be a life worth choosing.

My dream guy suddenly asked why I had stopped simping for him.

I checked my spreadsheet and realized I had accidentally left him off the roster.

So I sent him a queue number and promised he would get his turn after two more rounds.

“Don’t worry, I work fast, Ziyue.”

He replied, “My name is Qi Pei!”

When a grotesque mass of “immortal flesh” falls from heaven, the emperor declares it a divine gift and distributes it among the realm’s most powerful families.

Lady Yan refuses to eat it after receiving a warning written in her father’s blood, only to watch her household descend into ravenous horror.

Fleeing a plague of man-eating monsters with her young brother-in-law Wen Ge, she races toward the ruined capital in search of her father—and the truth.

The flesh may indeed grant immortality, but only if they survive long enough to learn how.