Short Story

In my senior year of high school, the school beauty, Song Shuyao, once came to me to borrow money for medical treatment and asked me not to tell anyone.

As it turned out, she used it to get an abortion. She hemorrhaged and died on the operating table of a shady little clinic.

Years later, Lu Jingnian-the untouchable top student everyone had once admired from afar-pursued me obsessively and proposed to me.

Then, when I was eight months pregnant, he locked me in a basement in the suburbs.

He cut open my belly while I was still alive and said, “This is what you owe Yaoyao and our child.”

Only then did I learn that before Song Shuyao died, she had held his hand and told him not to blame me.

But he was convinced I had deliberately killed the woman he loved and their child.

That day, I died under Lu Jingnian’s butcher knife, my eyes wide open in hatred.

Then, carrying a hatred vast enough to drown the heavens, I returned to the day Song Shuyao came to borrow money from me.

For three whole years, I took contraceptive medicine because I was terrified of having children.

Sob, sob—we koi lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.

No matter how rich that dog emperor was, I feared even he could not afford to raise them all.

I am a blood demon, and the young demon I raised with my own hands poisoned me and carved out my core.

She fell for a mortal man, stole another woman’s identity, and entered the imperial palace.

Then she reduced the emperor’s wife—the woman who had once shared all his hardships—to a beggar.

She thought that would make her the heroine of the story.

Demons do not usually pity humans.

But she dug out my ten-thousand-year demon core just to steal a man?!

I would feed it to a dog before I let her have it.

My mother taught me that a concubine could only live well by pleasing her husband until he cast aside his wife for her.

But I discovered that the lawful wife was beautiful, kind, and—most importantly—rich.

So I switched sides without hesitation and asked, “Madam, may I work for you instead?”

In my dreams, I kept giving myself over to wild passion with a man.

One day, I finally saw his face.

It was Li Jici, the icy Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, a man said to have no interest in women.

When my brother is falsely accused, Li Jici mocks me for begging him for help—yet that very night, the man in my dreams is more passionate than ever.

Only after a drunken guest reveals the peach-shaped birthmark on Li Jici’s chest do I realize the truth: the beautiful dreams we have shared belong to both of us.

Wan Youling is a washed-up celebrity mocked across the internet for having no class.

Pressed for money, she joins a livestreamed wilderness survival show in the Ailao Mountains.

When a boastful rival claims to know the range better than anyone, Youling calmly says she is a native—and no one believes her.

Twenty minutes into the mountains, the cameras capture impossible creatures bowing to her, and the cast realizes she may have been telling the truth.

In my previous life, as my Imperial Younger Brother and I were being hacked into mincemeat by a flurry of blades, the Imperial Son-in-Law stood outside the bamboo grove, cold and detached, as if he were a mere bystander.

In this life, I looked at the handsome gigolo kneeling before me-the same man who had once died while shielding me from a blade-and I couldn’t help but smile.

“You’ll do.”

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

When he called out his first love’s name in the heat of passion, I knew that woman had to die.

The General and I were wed by imperial decree, our families perfectly matched in status. In a marriage like this, I never expected much in the way of affection.

Yet, he brought back a woman from his past-his “white moonlight.” She was pregnant, and he even intended to raise her status to that of an Equal Wife.

He does not understand me. Though I am a virtuous and kind wife, I will never allow another woman to claim a share of my husband.

Chapter 0

I am the mistress of the Marquis’s Manor, serene and detached as a chrysanthemum.

Aside from me, there are two favored concubines in the household.

As the main wife, my daily duties include chanting sutras in the ancestral hall and mediating the disputes between those two concubines. Among them:

The second, Jiaoniang, was born a courtesan, with a naturally seductive air.

The third, Wenniang, is a sweet girl from a modest family, gentle and understanding.

As for my husband, Marquis Wenchang Gu Jinyan, he is accustomed to sleeping with the second and sharing his heart with the third.

With me, however, things are so tepid we may as well be brother and sister.