Short Story

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.”

I loved slithering around like a twisted little creep so much that the System turned me into a snake spirit.

In Journey to the West.

Watching Tang Sanzang being lowered into a cooking pot, I fell silent.

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 ordeals, and now you want to join?”

Me: “Fate works in mysterious ways.”

The good news: I’d landed in a Journey to the West fanfic.

The bad news: I was a snake spirit who survived exactly one episode.

To stay alive, I lied that Guanyin had sent me and became Tang Sanzang’s disciple.

Eldest Brother was stunned.

“We’ve already cleared fifty-four of the eighty-one trials, and you’re only joining us now?”

“Ha ha.

That’s what having connections gets you.”

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.

“Fine.

I’ll marry him.”

Everyone around me breathed a sigh of relief when I said it.

My elder sister most of all.

She didn’t want to marry him.

I didn’t mind.

Mostly because the Crown Prince was offering far too much to refuse.

Besides, he’d treated me rather well in my previous life.

Now that I’d been reborn, of course I would clear the thorns from his path.

I wanted to make his journey to my side a little easier.

I was the daughter of Princess Changning and a peasant from the countryside.

When I was seven, the Empress Dowager bestowed a name on me.

She said my very birth was a grievous wrong, and named me Luoyuan.

For years I lived in the palace, fearful and ashamed, keeping both myself and my heart imprisoned.

But someone told me I should be a bird with its wings spread against the sky, free to soar.

And so, in the end, I found the courage to be brave—for myself, and for him.

My parents sent me into the deep sea to work as a housekeeper for an octopus.

Before I left, I asked Mom: “You have five children.

Why send me away?”

Mom sobbed so hard she could barely speak.

“Business class on the interplanetary flights only has six seats, but there are seven of us.”

“Because of you, our family can’t all sit together whenever we travel to Mars!”

Me: “?”

But I was the middle child.

After nearly six months of being bullied by the other four girls in our dorm, my roommate He Xiaorui finally snapped.

That night, she and I were alone in the room.

She suddenly climbed into my bed and kept telling me she was Noble Consort Xi of the Great Qing, of the Niohuru clan.

I was so frightened I had no idea what to do.

Then she suddenly smiled.

“Listen well.

Her Highness is about to take her revenge!”

I had been the most pampered princess since childhood, yet everyone called me brutal, cold, inhuman.

Even my younger brother, now emperor, had slowly begun to distance himself from me.

He said he had found his real elder sister.

I smiled at Princess Ronghua.

She did bear a certain resemblance to my imperial brother.

Indeed.

A pair of bastards passing themselves off as imperial blood.

My husband was a notorious invalid.

We had been married for three years, and he had never once touched me intimately.

Gentle and gracious, he would often drag his frail body to the couch to read and compose poetry.

Watching him look so fragile that he might die at any moment left me utterly exasperated.

I couldn’t help demanding of the system, “Seriously?

Look at him.

He’s practically at death’s door.

“And you’re telling me he’ll become a monster everyone wants dead?”