Supernatural
Carrion for Crows
I was the legitimate daughter of an illustrious clan, mild by nature and untouched by worldly desire, and I should have become the sacred monk’s disciple at the imperial temple, spending my life before an ancient Buddha and a solitary lamp.
For the sake of prestige, however, my parents insisted on marrying me to the eldest son of a ducal household—a well-matched libertine notorious for his debauchery.
Before I left, the monk heaved a long sigh and gave me a fragment of the Buddha’s bone, warning me to wear it at all times and never let it leave my body.
After I entered the Zhu household, my husband first brought home a concubine, then took a proper wife, but I did not mind, and my husband’s aunt praised me for knowing my place.
When my husband molested a colleague’s female relative and the Censorate denounced him, I did not mind, and my husband’s aunt praised my sweet temper.
My sister-in-law kept control of the household accounts, claiming that someone as pure as I was should never sully herself with the stink of money.
My mother-in-law demanded that I wait upon her morning and night and handle every task myself, so that I might become a model noblewoman.
At an imperial banquet, the Grand Empress Dowager took a fancy to the Buddha’s bone at my breast and demanded it for herself.
My mother-in-law hurried to tear it from my neck and offered it up with both hands, fawning shamelessly.
At last, I smiled in deliverance.
Twenty years, you damned bald donkey—let us see how you plan to keep the evil inside me chained now.
A Wager on a Mother’s Love
After dying a hero, I used the merit I had earned in life to make a wager with the King of Hell.
I would be turned into seven different animals, and if I could get my family to recognize me every time, I would be allowed to return to life.
If I failed, I would stay in the underworld and work there without complaint.
The first animal I became was a giant southern cockroach.
When He Tore Off His Prayer Beads
I had profaned the divine after all.
The aloof, ascetic monk from the altar now stood inside my red-draped bedchamber, tearing off his prayer beads as he clasped my ankle, his Adam’s apple shifting.
“Little Highness, this humble monk has broken his vows.”
Peach Crisps
The year I turned eight, I was trampled to death beneath the Crown Prince’s horse.
His guards paid my parents one tael of silver to make the matter go away.
My parents did not even retrieve my body; they took the money with ingratiating smiles and said, “For our daughter to die beneath His Highness’s horse is a blessing she could never have hoped for.”
Before my first seven days of mourning were over, Father divorced Mother and took another wife.
Mother remarried with every appearance of joy.
It seemed they had forgotten me.
Later, just as I was about to be reincarnated, Father and Mother dragged the Crown Prince to my grave and made him pay for my death with his own.
The Eighty-Eight Buddhas
When our village reservoir dries up, several skeletons and eighty-eight strangely shaped stone Buddhas emerge from the mud.
Grandma warns everyone never to touch the statues.
But after my cousin dies by smashing his own head against one of them, I uncover a century-old injustice—and a vengeful spirit determined to make every descendant of the Lin family pay.
The Rugged Merman and the Little Succubus
Yun Chu is a hungry young succubus whose fiancé despises her true form and rations the affection she needs to survive.
After she falls from a cruise ship, she wakes on a private island in the care of Song Xuye, a fierce, sun-browned recluse whose secret merman tail makes him her perfect match.
What begins as a shameless plan to seduce, abduct, and keep him as her personal food supply becomes something far more dangerous when jealousy, trafficking, and a rigged race expose how cruelly their world treats nonhuman beings.
Only when Song Xuye risks everything to defend a captive succubus does Yun Chu realize that the hunger pulling her toward him has become love.
The Great Demon and Her
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.
Lingling Jade Shop
After her father vanishes, Zhu Ling abandons corporate life to inherit Lingling Jade Shop—and the forbidden power of her bloodline.
When a wealthy lecturer asks why eight relatives occupy a mansion with only seven bedrooms, Zhu Ling discovers that one family member is an illusion and every survivor is hiding a piece of a woman’s murder.
Trapped by a vengeful spirit during a winter storm, she must uncover the silent conspiracy before the mansion becomes a grave for the guilty and the innocent alike.
The Water Monkey Mystery
I was venting during a livestream.
“What kind of problem makes my roommate shower seven times in one night?”
The chat immediately filled with viewers complaining about their own nightmare roommates.
Only one person gave me a serious answer.
[Your roommate showers so much because she’s a monkey.]
The Loving Crow Keeps Watch Over the Old Grove
The day Father strangled Mama to death, a fox spirit took over her body.
I caught her just as she was digging out Father’s heart.
She fumbled around trying to hide it, then deliberately let her fox muzzle show.
“I killed him, not your mother. Your mother was a good woman.”
“Oh,” I said, bringing over a clay pot.
“Wouldn’t that heart taste better stewed?”