Short Story

I spent seven years confined with the deposed crown prince, tasting poison for him and taking arrows meant for him.

Again and again, I barely escaped death.

Yet after he ascended the throne, he made his childhood sweetheart his empress.

I remained nothing more than a lowly palace maid.

Everyone knew he despised me.

But when I finally came of age and prepared to leave the palace, he seized my wrist and demanded, ‘Do you have a heart at all?’

The day Grandpa’s legs were crushed, I knelt on the ground, kowtowing as I heard the thoughts of the people around me.

[The heroine is so pitiful. Shouldn’t we help her?]

[No! If we help her, how is Song Hansheng supposed to make his entrance? He’s my favorite male lead in a redemption romance!]

[Shen Song is the heroine’s true love!]

[Nonsense! The heroine is the wife I picked for my darling Jiang Yanbei!]

Later, those male leads really did enter my life, one after another.

They loved me, saved me, fought over me, and tried to force me into their arms…

But I hated this world, and I had no need to be saved.

My goal was to kill the male leads.

Sixteen-year-old maid Chen Yue’er has spent her entire life inside the House of Crimson Delight, where women who claim to have transmigrated are bought cheaply and broken quickly.

When the irrepressible Zhi Niang arrives expecting a trashy romance, she discovers an age that treats women as property and refuses to let it crush her spirit.

Through forced prostitution, betrayal, war, captivity, and flight, Zhi Niang and Yue’er cling to each other and turn survival into a stubborn march toward freedom.

Darkly funny and unflinching, their journey is a story of female friendship, dignity, and the courage to keep living without looking back.

The year I came of age, Father gave me three marriage choices.

I could become the lawful wife of a penniless scholar, the honored concubine of the Marquis of Pingnan’s heir, or the second wife of a wealthy merchant.

I wanted none of them.

Marriage negotiations always came down to the woman’s family, and my father held a modest post while I was merely a concubine-born daughter, so no truly eminent house would consider me.

Still, low birth had never cured me of high ambition.

If I could not marry up, I would sooner hang myself.

My father was once the best-known peddler on Qingyun Street.

He walked from lane to lane selling everything from thread to malt candy.

Then he became addicted to opium.

He sold Mother back to a brothel and stuffed my little sister and me into the baskets on his carrying pole.

The last time he shouldered that pole, the rest of our lives swung from either end.

My online boyfriend had an insanely attractive voice.

Every night, I hid under my covers and talked to him on the phone.

He indulged my every request, and his voice was so seductive it could practically get me pregnant on the spot.

Afraid my male roommate might overhear, I asked my online boyfriend to lower his voice.

That was when a comment feed suddenly appeared before my eyes.

[How can the supporting female character be this oblivious? She has no idea her online boyfriend is the obsessive male lead she lives with.]

[She really went and provoked him. She’ll have plenty of reasons to cry later.]

[She’s only chatting with him as a stand-in for the heroine, though. She’d better run before he finds out who she is, or it’ll be too late and he’ll…]

Terrified, I ended the call.

I stepped out of my room, intending to splash some water on my face and calm down.

Then, from the bathroom, I faintly heard a man’s voice trembling with restraint. “Baby, why did you hang up all of a sudden?”

My parents had always told me that the less I spoke, the fewer mistakes I would make, so I became a girl of few words.

At the same time, they adored my older cousin’s bright, gracious manner and told me to imitate her in everything.

They loved her so much that when she refused to marry her impoverished fiancé, they did not hesitate to offer me in her place.

Smiling obsequiously at my uncle, my parents assured him, “Han’er is willing to help her sister out of this difficulty.”

My uncle stared at me in surprise and asked, “Han’er, are you truly willing?”

My parents frantically signaled for me to answer.

I nodded and gave them what they wanted.

“I am.”

Relief washed over their faces.

With no expectations of them left to lose, I finally spoke from the heart.

“Anywhere would be better than staying with a pair of fawning, spineless, shamelessly biased parents.”

Dad bought a new electric scooter.

My brother climbed onto the back seat, and my sister was lifted onto the footboard.

I ran behind them, grinning so hard my teeth showed.

Dad went around and around, but never once stopped to give me a turn.

When I could not keep up anymore, I went to ask Mom to speak for me.

Then I heard her talking about me.

“We only had her so we could use the cord blood for her sister, but who knew her sister had been misdiagnosed?”

“Oh, what a waste—all that suffering for nothing!”

I had just turned six that day, and the words I wanted to say stayed trapped behind my lips, so I never asked for a ride again.

For years afterward, I ran the road from home to school.

Then the provincial team recruited me, and I was interviewed.

Dad wheeled out that same electric scooter.

“It’s all thanks to me training her with this thing, because how else could she run so fast?”

My sister was a goldsmith who entered the palace to deliver jewelry, only to be knocked unconscious by Consort Yi.

Consort Yi had quarreled with the emperor, so she stole my sister’s clothes and exit token and slipped out of the palace for fun.

Furious and frantic, the emperor cut my innocent sister down with a single stroke, then rode out to find the woman he loved.

In the end, my sister’s body was thrown into a mass grave.

The emperor and Consort Yi returned sweetly together on the same horse, and their reunion became a celebrated romance.

Half a year later, I became one of the emperor’s beauties.

After all, I am not human—I am a marten.

If a fox spirit can bewitch a ruler, so can a marten.

On the day of my daughter’s sixth birthday, she fell into a lake, and the soul of a transmigrated woman took possession of her body.

She was not the first transmigrator I had encountered.

I expected another loud, shallow creature like Consort Chao, but this one proved entirely different.

As she stood on a spy and scolded me for being weak and softhearted, I discreetly wiped the blood from my hands and sighed.

Facing the Buddha, I said only, “Amitabha.”