Short Story

By day, Song Wenxi is presented as a chaste Daoist nun; by night, Yuzhen Convent sells her to powerful men.

After her abused younger sister dies, Wenxi refuses to accept the same fate and uses a pregnancy to enter the household of Gu Zhun, heir to the Prince of Pingnan.

Inside the princely estate, she discovers that noble wives, concubines, and prostitutes are all trapped by the same brutal order.

To avenge the dead and free the women still imprisoned at Yuzhen Convent, Wenxi turns the desires of the men around her into weapons and sets out to make sure the long night finally ends.

Shao Yuhan lost his memory in a car accident, forgetting the fact that he had once forced me into a relationship through sheer coercion.

As soon as his family found out, they wasted no time in helping him divorce me.

In less than half a day, I found myself standing in a different city, dazed, holding a divorce certificate in one hand and a massive check in the other.

After being subjected to Shao Yuhan’s obsessive, forced love for so long, I felt a strange sense of displacement the moment I finally gained my freedom.

I settled down in this new city and began a quiet, ordinary life.

One day, while out buying groceries, someone suddenly covered my mouth and nose.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a dark yet familiar basement. A man’s cold, clear voice rang in my ears.

“Be my woman, and I can give you everything you want.”

… Very well. It was exactly the same as back then.

The day His Majesty bestowed a marriage upon me, my entire household wept like we were holding a funeral.

Mainly because I was a woman disguised as a man attending court, and even my Adam’s apple was drawn on.

There was no way I could make the princess happy!

But the princess who bowed with me to Heaven and Earth was a full head taller than I was.

Tentatively, I reached toward a place I really should not be touching.

In a rough voice, the princess confirmed, “Yes, I have a peepee.”

I entered the palace to plead guilty, but His Majesty said that spending one son to make four generations of my family work loyally for him was an excellent bargain. Me: ?

On the day the Su Clan was raided and seized, Father dressed me in a magnificent gown and threw me in front of the soldiers.

“She is Su Yueying, the Eldest Young Miss of the Su Clan.”

Everyone said Father was a loyal servant.

When I saw him again, Father had become the New Emperor’s most trusted Divine Martial Great General.

Su Yueying had become Empress, the New Emperor’s one and only for the rest of his life.

And I was a courtesan in a brothel, a woman anyone could have.

To buy back my freedom, Mother dragged her gravely ill body to beg Father for help.

The gatekeepers beat her to death with two strikes of their staves.

I begged Su Yueying to let Mother be buried.

But she said, “There are plenty of untouched entertainers in the pleasure houses. If you had held fast to your principles, I might still have helped you. But you chose to debase yourself. I will not help someone like that.”

That very night, someone hacked off my limbs and sank me into the river.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the Su Clan was raided.

This time, let Su Yueying go to the brothel herself and hold fast to her precious principles.

During the year of our purest love, Chen Ming and I shared a kiss in front of everyone when we won the Zhengfa Cup debate competition.

But later, when our son was diagnosed with autism, we both came to regret it.

After ten years of love, the wear and tear of life had transformed us from a match made in heaven into a pair of bitter rivals.

Time skipped forward to our son’s fifth birthday.

Chen Ming and I were in the car, arguing once again over our child’s illness.

Right in front of our son, we cursed each other, screaming for the other to drop dead.

The next second, an out-of-control heavy truck barreled toward us.

Chen Ming went against his instincts and jerked the steering wheel to the right, but the violent impact swallowed all the shouting and cursing anyway.

When I woke up again, we were back on the day we won the Zhengfa Cup.

This time, facing a stadium full of cheering and jeering, we pretended we barely knew each other.

I was the worst student in the Joyful Union Sect.

And yet the Chief Disciple of the Sword Sect claimed me as family, saying I was his long-lost little sister.

The cool, otherworldly Immortal Lord Xie said he wanted to make it up to me.

So I lied and told him I was gravely ill, and that I needed dual cultivation with him to stay alive.

Just like that, I landed the number one spot on my must-eat list.

Later, when I truly couldn’t take another bite, I had no choice but to confess:

“I’m not sick at all. I just wanted your body. But now I’m tired of sleeping with you.”

I thought Xie Lingyu would hate me to death once he learned the truth.

But when I turned around, I saw him holding a huge bag of aphrodisiacs, expressionlessly pouring them down his own throat.

“It’s all right. Now it’s Yanyan’s turn to help her big brother with his illness.”

Me: “???”

Ever since I was little, I had refused to let anyone get the better of me.

When my elder brother gave my sister perfume from across the seas, I cried until I got some too.

When Mother hired a palace matron to teach my sister court etiquette, I threw a tantrum until I was allowed to learn beside her.

When it came time to arrange our marriages, the family chose the finest husband imaginable for my sister.

Then came my turn.

“There is only one Crown Prince in the realm,” they told me.

“His full brother is imperial blood as well. You can marry him.”

In my last life, I refused to accept that.

Why should I settle when the two princes were born of the same mother?

So I devoted myself to serving the Empress and winning her favor.

At last, I got my wish and became Crown Princess.

But Pei Jin despised my competitive nature.

The moment he ascended the throne, he made my elder sister his empress instead and sneered at me.

“Why struggle for something fate never meant you to have?”

When I was reborn in the year of my coming-of-age ceremony, I stopped fighting.

“Prince Rui is a fine match too. Thank you for arranging it, Mother.”

I was the CEO’s white moonlight, but I had gone dark.

“So you can fly overseas for business, but you can’t come overseas to see me? Is it that you can’t afford a ticket, or that you can’t make the time?”

“You keep saying I’m your white moonlight, then turn around and find a substitute. If your feelings are that cheap, don’t ever tell anyone you liked me.”

“I don’t want a man who’s been tainted. Don’t come looking for me again.”

Ever since Huo Yu married me,

his son has been making a fuss nonstop.

“Bad Woman won’t let me eat!”

“She won’t let the butler tell me bedtime stories!”

“Daddy, she bullies me every day, wuwuwu…”

Huo Yu was used to his son’s unreasonable tantrums and didn’t pay much attention.

Until one day, he suddenly realized it had been half a month since he last received a complaint call.

Huo Yu found it rather odd.

After finishing work that evening, he took the initiative to call his son to coax him to sleep.

Unexpectedly, his usually clingy son seemed uninterested.

“Daddy, go to bed early. There’s a ton of stuff to do at kindergarten tomorrow.”

Huo Yu:?

When I was young, I found the Crown Prince and took him with me as we spent three years begging for a living.

After the Crown Prince was restored to his position, the Emperor took me in as his adopted daughter.

Everyone assumed that I would be betrothed to the Crown Prince. Instead, the Crown Prince became engaged to the legitimate daughter of the Duke’s Mansion.

On my birthday, he remarked with a casual smile in front of the crowd, “How can one of noble blood be matched with a beggar?”

I raised my glass and sincerely wished him a life free of worries, year after year.

He did not yet know that I had accepted the decree for a marriage alliance.

In the years to come, there would be no more Ah Yu by his side.