Short Story

Six years ago, forced to choose between Huo Yanxu and my future, I chose my future and went abroad to study.

Six years later, I returned after completing my studies, and Huo Yanxu confessed to me with six years of devoted waiting behind him.

I helped him secure his position as heir to the Huo Family, only to hear him tell his friends, “Pretending to be a lovesick lapdog has been exhausting. Once I marry her, she’ll make money for both of us, and I’ll take Yinyin traveling around the world.”

The young woman in his arms was smiling brightly.

Someone warned him, “Aren’t you afraid she’ll turn on you?”

“We’re getting married tomorrow. Her family cares so much about reputation. You think she’d let herself become damaged goods?”

I laughed coldly. Six years ago, I could give you up for my career. Nothing has changed.

Because of her physical development, Li Zhuguang was maliciously humiliated and secretly photographed by her classmate Zhang Kang.

Luo Xing, once her only friend, also turned her back on her amid the rumors.

To strike back, Li Zhuguang deliberately got close to Song Wangshu, the top student Luo Xing had a crush on, using Zhang Kang’s jealousy to force him to expose himself.

She then returned the evidence of the secret recordings to each of the victims.

After Zhang Kang was expelled, the off-campus landlord retaliated by planting a pinhole camera in her room.

With help from Luo Xing, Song Wangshu, her teachers, and her classmates, Li Zhuguang finally dragged the malice lurking in the shadows out into the sunlight-and learned to trust the people around her again.

Everyone in my family was a villain.

In my last life, my father was impeached by Xie Linyuan, the emperor’s brother-in-law.

So Father drugged him and hired several men to ruin his chastity.

After Xie Linyuan rose to power, he had my entire family arrested and our estate confiscated.

In this life, I was determined to be a good person.

I reached Xie Linyuan in time to save him after he was drugged.

He reclined against the bed, his face flushed, but his tongue remained as sharp as ever.

“What shameless temptress is this?

How dare you resort to such vile tricks to harm me?”

My fault.

I had been in such a hurry to save him that I had not even dressed properly.

I said awkwardly, “Well, Lord Xie… should I fetch a girl from next door to cure you?”

“A virgin courtesan would do too?”

After being stolen from her husband and caged in the palace, Jiang Yunshu dies branded as the stain on an emperor’s perfect reign.

Reborn before her disastrous marriage, she breaks her engagement, evades Prince Jing’s search, and chooses the sickly Crown Prince Xie Zhao as her unlikely ally.

Armed with memories of betrayal and rebellion, Yunshu pursues revenge against everyone who destroyed her first life.

Yet the partner she meant to use may become the one man willing to share both his throne and his years with her.

The boy I’d secretly loved was expelled from school for protecting his childhood sweetheart.

Years later, I became the most famous talent manager in the industry and ran into him waiting tables at a restaurant.

He had long since forgotten me, but I still wanted to give him a chance. I asked him, “Xie Xingyun, do you want to be an actor?”

He came with me.

It took me three years to transform him from a waiter carrying plates into the entertainment industry’s hottest new star.

Then the childhood sweetheart he’d protected all those years ago came looking for him.

In our village, a child who dies before his parents cannot be given a funeral—unless he dies in an unclean place.

When my drowned best friend is laid in the mourning hall, a seven-day vigil turns my guilt into terror, and the truth behind the hauntings proves more horrifying than any ghost.

On my first night inside the novel, the villain barged into my practice room.

Then he found himself staring at the male lead and the second male lead, already seated on meditation cushions.

After a long silence, he said, “Move over.

Make room for me.”

“There’s no room,” the male lead said.

“There really isn’t.”

I surveyed the cushions packed across the floor.

“I think we can squeeze in one more.”

On the day Ran Ling returned to the capital in triumph, his long-lost first love was brought back to him.

She had once cast aside reputation and status to elope with him, and he had once taken a sword for her.

Everyone said the star-crossed lovers of their youth would finally get the happy ending they had been denied.

But I wasn’t worried, because my mother had transmigrated into this novel—and I was a devoted mama’s girl.

It didn’t matter what anyone schemed against me; I was the hollow rose my mother had raised.

At my birthday banquet, my husband presented me with a portrait of myself on horseback.

The face in it was an ugly pig’s head.

The young woman holding it laughed at my scars, and he asked me to forgive her: immortals, he said, knew nothing of mortal rules.

I drew my sword and cut off her arm.

Now she knew mine.

I spent ten years loving my childhood friend, and he spent the same ten years finding me unbearable.

Then one day, I finally had my way with him—and left two hundred yuan behind.

Humiliated beyond measure, my childhood friend hunted for me everywhere.

But I made sure he never found me.

I hid from him for three years, until my father died and left me with no family.

His parents told me, “From now on, our home is your home, and that boy is your big brother.”

I looked at the face that went mad with shame and fury the moment he saw me, and called out brightly, “Hello, Big Brother!”