Short Story

Switched at birth to repay her father’s debt, Li Yuanxi endures ten brutal years at the northern frontier while another girl grows up as a noble heiress.

When she returns to the capital, her family sends her to die in a political marriage and deceives her betrothed, Fu Qingchuan, into marrying the favored daughter instead.

After Yuanxi’s death, Qingchuan turns his grief into a patient revenge, using love, ambition, and an old imperial conspiracy to destroy everyone who betrayed her.

Yet even when justice is done, the ghost beside him knows that nothing can cross the distance between the living and the dead.

Before Qin Ruyu transferred to my school, I was the smartest and prettiest girl there.

After she arrived, I never came first in anything again.

Even when I confessed to Fu Shaonian, he turned me down because he liked Qin Ruyu.

So I hated her to death.

Years later, someone brought her up in front of me.

“What a shame. Why did you two break up back then?”

Me: ???

I’m straight too, okay!

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.

After dying a hero, I used the merit I had earned in life to make a wager with the King of Hell.

I would be turned into seven different animals, and if I could get my family to recognize me every time, I would be allowed to return to life.

If I failed, I would stay in the underworld and work there without complaint.

The first animal I became was a giant southern cockroach.

I had lived with the Shen family for eighteen years when they suddenly told me I was a fake heiress.

The real heiress wept and begged my adoptive parents to throw me out because the mere sight of me upset her.

My biological mother grabbed my hand and ran, terrified that my adoptive parents might try to stop us.

After all, we both knew the apocalypse was coming.

My mother had farmland, a house, a little grocery store, and even a storage dimension in the countryside—not a pile of useless numbers in a bank account.

I married Prince Shu in my elder sister’s place, figuring that if he discovered the truth, the worst that could happen was a fight between us.

Little did I know that Prince Shu was not only blind, but also determined to pamper the “wife” he had brought home.

Now he is knocking outside my door. “Little Qiao, we have been married for half a month. May I sleep in the bed tonight?”

Er… How am I supposed to tell him that his bride is actually his male, cross-dressed nemesis?

I was the legitimate daughter of an illustrious clan, mild by nature and untouched by worldly desire, and I should have become the sacred monk’s disciple at the imperial temple, spending my life before an ancient Buddha and a solitary lamp.

For the sake of prestige, however, my parents insisted on marrying me to the eldest son of a ducal household—a well-matched libertine notorious for his debauchery.

Before I left, the monk heaved a long sigh and gave me a fragment of the Buddha’s bone, warning me to wear it at all times and never let it leave my body.

After I entered the Zhu household, my husband first brought home a concubine, then took a proper wife, but I did not mind, and my husband’s aunt praised me for knowing my place.

When my husband molested a colleague’s female relative and the Censorate denounced him, I did not mind, and my husband’s aunt praised my sweet temper.

My sister-in-law kept control of the household accounts, claiming that someone as pure as I was should never sully herself with the stink of money.

My mother-in-law demanded that I wait upon her morning and night and handle every task myself, so that I might become a model noblewoman.

At an imperial banquet, the Grand Empress Dowager took a fancy to the Buddha’s bone at my breast and demanded it for herself.

My mother-in-law hurried to tear it from my neck and offered it up with both hands, fawning shamelessly.

At last, I smiled in deliverance.

Twenty years, you damned bald donkey—let us see how you plan to keep the evil inside me chained now.

After years away from the capital, I returned to find a female study attendant at my fiancé’s side.

I stormed over to demand an explanation, only to drink a cup of drugged tea by mistake.

When I opened my eyes again, I was pinning my fiancé’s stern, old-fashioned, rule-bound elder brother beneath me, his body covered in scandalous red marks.

Our eyes met.

Silence filled the room.

I forced a smile and searched for something—anything—to ease the mortifying tension.

Without a word, he rose, found a length of white silk, and expressionlessly began to—

My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll take responsibility!”

“I said I’ll take responsibility!”

When the war ended, the army prostitutes did everything they could to persuade soldiers to take them home, because the alternative was being sold to a brothel.

By the time the dark-skinned, taciturn centurion came looking for me, only an old dying woman and I remained in the camp.

She laughed and asked why I was still waiting for Young General Pei when he was about to marry a princess in a blaze of glory.

That night, Pei Qingfeng pinned me to the bed and ordered me to wait for him at the house he had bought outside the city.

Not once did he ask about the man who had visited me that day.

He seemed certain I would never leave with anyone else.

What he did not know was that I had already accepted the centurion named Zheng Yuan.

On the day Pei Qingfeng married his princess, Zheng Yuan and I would be married too.

On the day my only daughter was born, the Marchioness of Zhenbei gave birth to a son in the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

At dawn, Shen Chizhou brought me her child and exchanged him for mine.

When I caught him, he merely raised his eyes and said, “The child born of Wan and me must be raised in the palace.”

Song Wan was the great love he had lost in his youth.

Now that she had borne him a child, he meant to make amends to mother and son at any cost.

The cost was my daughter becoming the young lady of the Marquis of Zhenbei’s household.

She went from an exalted imperial princess to the daughter of a mere court official.

After a long silence, I neither wept nor protested.

Instead, I lifted my face and smiled in approval.

“As it should be.”

After all, a child ought to be raised beside her real father.