Short Story

The neighbor’s kid jumped off the building after being bullied.

She landed directly on my brand-new car, her head lolling, hanging off the windshield.

She died, and her mother lost her mind.

When the neighbors held the funeral, several of the bullies actually showed up at the scene.

They mocked the mother relentlessly: “Your family line is completely dead now. You don’t even have a single relative left, do you?”

They were making too much noise.

I slowly pushed open my door to teach them a lesson: “A near neighbor is better than a distant relative.”

Besides, her neighbor might just be insane.

At exactly midnight, there was a sudden knock on the dormitory door.

I thought it was just the dorm warden doing rounds, but then a cold, mechanical voice rang out in my ear- [Ding-The Zombie invasion has begun. Your first WeChat meme sticker is now your life-saving artifact.]

My three roommates were: an Avatar, Briar, and an Armor Hero.

Trembling, I tapped on my phone… My first meme sticker was my ex-boyfriend’s grinning face.

Second Young Master Xie was a notorious wastrel.

I lived under the Xie Family’s roof and bent over backward to please him, yet he looked down on me all the same.

He thought I was trying to climb my way up by clinging to him, and sneered at me.

“With looks like hers, I wouldn’t take her even as a concubine.”

Then his mother took him by the arm and told him to call me sister-in-law.

“This son of mine is the only one I still worry about. Thank goodness I have you to help me look after him.”

That night, he climbed over the wall and pinned me into a corner, asking in a coaxing voice, “If I become your concubine instead… will you take me?”

A plague had infected the entire city.

Everyone was suffering from a persistent high fever, gradually losing their ability to work.

I, however, posted on Weibo: “Doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of it.”

The next second, I was dragged onto the trending searches and bombarded with insults.

What they didn’t know was that I was the sole Earth Master successor, and the one who started this plague in the first place.

On the day my stepsister was murdered.

I told my dad and the police that I had gone to school to do homework, that I hadn’t been home, and that I really didn’t know what had happened.

But the truth was, I lied.

I used every trick in the book to marry my wife.

In front of others, she refused to acknowledge me. Behind closed doors, she kept me at an even colder distance.

I knew she hated me.

But I could live with being hated by her.

Until one afternoon, at the dining table, she suddenly said to me, “He’s back from overseas. We… should spend some time apart.”

I froze.

From the day my wife and I met until now, seven years had passed.

And I still hadn’t managed to warm her heart.

Looking at her indifferent face, I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. “Okay.”

She had always been efficient and decisive. That very night, the villa was emptied out, leaving only me behind… She had even taken the housekeeper with her.

I drank beneath the moon until dawn, yet my mind only grew clearer.

I had waited all these years. Suffered all these years. What right did I have to give up now?

Who the hell did some bastard back from overseas think he was, daring to compete with me?!

I was the freest child in the village.

All the other kids envied me because no one ever told me what to do.

But the truth was, my parents had divorced, and neither of them wanted me.

That was why they left eight-year-old me all alone in a mud-brick house up in the mountains.

During the day, it was all right.

But at night, the mountain wind howled, and the drunk old bachelor would reach his hand in through the crack in the window. “Jingjing, are you scared all by yourself? Uncle Dog will keep you company!”

I transmigrated into a tragic romance world trapped in an endless cycle and became the city spirit of the Liang Kingdom.

Again and again, the heroine, Bai Ruohuan, leapt from the city wall.

Again and again, the emperor, Liang Qingci, marched toward the ruin of his nation.

At first, I only wanted to sit back and watch the spectacle unfold, but I was forced onto the stage to change their fate.

Alongside that cold-hearted, impassive emperor, I fought to survive through countless cycles, until at last I glimpsed the truth hidden behind Heaven’s Love Calamity.

In 2016, I was working as a security guard in a residential complex.

A homeowner’s ten-year-old daughter vanished from her bedroom under bizarre circumstances.

On the rumpled bedsheets, all that remained was a pair of bloodstained underwear.

The police and all of us searched for her with everything we had, but we found no leads at all.

Then I remembered a fairy tale the girl had once told us about when she was playing in the complex.

It was called the “Tooth Fairy.” Years later, I got married and had a child of my own.

When my kid reached the age of losing baby teeth, my wife told her a bedtime story.

And once again, I heard the words “Tooth Fairy.” Startled, I asked, “Is that how the story goes?”

“Yeah.”

That night, after lying awake until dawn, I contacted the officer who had been in charge of the case back then.

“We were wrong all those years ago.”

I transmigrated into a school angst novel-but I’m an emperor.

When my childhood friend fell in love with the new transfer student, I immediately bestowed a marriage upon them.

“Lowborn wretches, why aren’t you kneeling to thank Us for Our grace?”

The class monitor accused me of cheating and listed a whole pile of motives.

Me: “You don’t get the final say. I am the emperor. What I say goes.”

“Spout any more nonsense, and I will exterminate your entire clan.”

The school bully confessed to me and said he was willing to do anything for me.

Me: “Merit deserves reward. I appoint you Chief Eunuch.”