Short Story

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.

When Wei Zhao married me as his lawful wife, all of Shangjing City laughed.

The once-proud Eldest Young Master of the Wei Family had fallen so low that even a phoenix in decline was no better than a chicken.

In the end, he had only managed to marry a maid who tended the fires and cooked the meals.

Later, when Wei Zhao achieved fame and success, noble ladies from aristocratic families who wished to marry him were too many to count.

So I made an appointment with a well-known matchmaker in the capital, intending to take in two honored concubines for him.

But just as I was about to leave, Wei Zhao, who should have been handling affairs in Yangzhou, blocked me at the front gate.

Travel-worn and furious, he was trembling all over. “Try stepping out of this gate today. I dare you.”

Vice Minister Ye and I had become bitter enemies. We were constantly at each other’s throats, neither of us willing to yield an inch.

One night, completely wasted, I even started shouting in the tavern: “Hey! Brothers! Tie up Beauty Ye and carry him to this Young Master’s room! I’m going to show him a real good time!”

In my drunken stupor, I thought I heard his hoarse voice roaring: “…You were the one who provoked me first. Why do you keep messing with me… We’re both men, what am I supposed to do…”

Men?

But I’m a girl!

After sacrificing a kidney for the family that never loved her, Song Zhiwei wakes up at seventeen on the day Zhou Jiashu offers her a cruelly false confession.

Newly able to hear other people’s thoughts, she rejects the boy who betrayed her and refuses to become medicine for her ailing half sister again.

As Zhiwei fights to reclaim her future, she discovers that Cheng Chi–the notorious silver-haired school tyrant–is the one person whose fierce devotion has always been real.

In the third year of my relationship with Tan Zongmin, I caught him meeting the woman his family had arranged for him to marry.

The moment he saw me, he froze.

Noticing his distraction, she followed his gaze and asked curiously, “What are you looking at?”

Tan Zongmin looked away and replied flatly, “Nothing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and played along with our unspoken understanding, pretending not to know him.

That morning, I’d received an email confirming that my resignation had been approved.

I’d been wondering how to break up with Tan Zongmin gracefully.

I went on a celebrity dating reality show, and the host asked me which male guest I would pick.

Smiling, I looked toward the acclaimed Best Actor, the veteran singer, and the current young idol heartthrob.

“Among these guests is a serial killer. Three years ago, you dismembered my little sister.

You left no remains of her behind and turned her into a target for the internet’s scorn.

“Now, it’s my turn to hunt you down.”

By the time I transmigrated into this world, the story was already nearing its end.

The realm had been united, and the New Emperor had ascended the throne.

The woman who had shared his hardships and stayed by his side through everything had been granted a cup of poisoned wine.

And I was the Empress he was about to marry: the legitimate daughter of the Wang Clan, born of an illustrious house.

I looked at the woman who had just drunk the poisoned wine. “Do you know why I came?”

She let out a cold laugh, sweat beading across her brow. “Afraid I won’t die?”

“No.” I took a pill from my sleeve and pushed it into her mouth. “Afraid you will.”

Twenty years have passed since I entered the palace.

I accompanied my mistress as she rose from a deposed consort to the exalted position of Empress Dowager.

I, too, rose from an unnoticed little palace maid to Auntie Lian, a woman even His Majesty addressed with respect.

I have done many wicked things.

When Lady Wang became pregnant, I caused her to fall into the water and lose her child.

When the Noble Consort refused to follow the late emperor into death, I strangled her with my own hands.

Only as I lay dying did I let out a quiet sigh.

“In the end, good is rewarded with good, and evil with evil.”

As a child, Li Sujun saved an immortal lord who promised to answer whenever she lit the Heaven-Seeking Incense.

She called for him three times.

He never came.

Years later, Sujun has become a healer—and the same immortal lord lies powerless at her door after failing his tribulation.

He insists she is the trial of love he must overcome.

She thinks he should look closer at his own mistakes.

But the dog, cat, and little snake in her home are not what they seem, and the path Sujun abandoned is already winding back toward her.

To understand what Zhao Yunzhi truly lost for her, she must face the family that discarded her, the sect that used him, and the difference between love as possession and love as freedom.

Her eldest son was devoted to a two-faced woman he thought was his one true love.

In a fit of rage, my future mother-in-law conceived a second child—and promised me to him instead.

I stared miserably at my still-unborn new fiancé and tactfully suggested that this might, possibly, perhaps be a little inappropriate.

She slapped the golden, glowing egg so hard it rang, and declared with absolute conviction that if her second son let me down too, she would simply have a third.

Me: Excuse me?