Tragedy

I’ve read so many novels about the “crematorium” trope-where the husband has to crawl back and beg for forgiveness-but I never expected to find myself starring in one.

Except there’s no chasing, only the crematorium.

Because I’m actually dead.

I’ve become a ghost, watching the man who betrayed me. Seven days after my death, he finally seems crushed by a delayed sense of grief. In the home I can never return to, he howls in agony, acting as if life is no longer worth living.

You want to know how I feel?

I just stand there blankly, carefully admiring every inch of pain etched onto his face.

I listen intently to his desperate wails, triggered by my departure.

Beyond the desolation and heartache in my soul, a massive wave of schadenfreude suddenly wells up within me.

A joyful, blissful sense of schadenfreude.

It’s a sensation so sharp it borders on thrill. I cover my mouth and begin to laugh.

I once saved a pregnant noblewoman. She smiled and told me that once the child was born, they would recognize me as their godmother.

But later, as I led my troops to station at the border, we gradually lost touch.

Until one day, eight years later, my subordinates reported that someone had come all the way from Jinling, specifically asking to see me by name.

“Who is it?” I asked as I walked toward the entrance.

There, I saw a young girl sitting atop a pony, threatening the group of soldiers surrounding her.

“Song Yunying is my mother! If you dare bully me, you’re all finished!”

I am Song Yunying.

In my previous life, a woman armed with a conquest system won over my parents, my brothers, and my fiance one after another.

They adored her, indulged her, and let everything go her way until she stood at the height of favor.

As for me, everyone despised me.

I was imprisoned in a secluded palace alley for life, forbidden to take even half a step beyond its gates.

Only after I died did I learn that she had come from another world, and that every bit of my suffering fed her luck. Reborn, I traded away a lifetime of love for a single wish.

The Bodhisattva asked me, “What do you want?”

I whispered, “I want everyone she targets to know that she is here only to conquer them.”

And from that moment on, they could all hear her conquest alerts.

My sister has hated me for twenty years. She once told me to my face that it would be better if I just died.

So, just as she wished, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

My lady was injured and lost her memory. She forgot everyone, yet she remembered my husband.

My husband was once a beggar.

During a heavy winter snowfall, he lay by the roadside, covered in blood and filth.

Passersby all steered clear of him, but my lady alone ordered her carriage to stop and took him in.

From then on, he stayed in the manor to tend the horses for her.

My lady often visited him under the pretext of checking on the horses.

I saw the deep, lingering affection in their eyes with my own.

But how could a young lady of her status ever marry a horse slave?

Heartbroken, she told him:

“I cannot marry you.

“But I will find someone to take care of you in my stead.”

My lady personally betrothed me to him.

Later, the lowly horse slave found his way back to the imperial capital and reclaimed his identity as a prince.

I, in turn, became his legitimate consort.

On the day of the investiture, I was waiting.

I knew.

Sooner or later, my lady would come back to reclaim what was originally hers.

Before the Divine Lord descended to the mortal realm to undergo his trials, he gave me his Little Carp as a love token.

To my surprise, the carp leaped out of the fish tank and followed him into the mortal world.

In my panic, I followed suit. Eighteen years later, amidst a vast expanse of heavy snow.

Standing atop the city walls, Crown Prince Wei fired an arrow that pierced straight through my bridal sedan.

“Yue Nu, it is you who are shameless, insisting on marrying me. I already have someone in my heart.”

The woman in red he held in his arms was that very Carp Spirit. I knew mortals could not see through her disguise.

To help him complete his trials, I stepped out of the sedan and entered the Wei Palace on foot.

Three years later, the Carp Spirit became pregnant, triggering a Heavenly Punishment.

Believing slanderous lies, Crown Prince Wei had me bound to the city walls to endure eighteen strikes of Heavenly Thunder in her stead.

At that moment, my heart turned to ash. I summoned Siming Jun. “Siming, it is time to return to the Nine Heavens.”

Three years after Lin Wan’s death, I found the record of her seven years of love for me tucked away in an old cardboard box.

The last page still carried the smell of medicine, where she asked if, in the next life, I could be the one to love her first. That night, I finally understood that the cruelest thing I had ever done was to let someone waste away to death without ever once looking back at her.

Zhou Xingzhi was disfigured while saving the woman he truly loved. In the hospital, I cried my heart out, my sobs echoing through the halls.

I kept pestering the doctor, asking over and over if his face could be fixed.

Everyone thought I was hopelessly in love with him.

Only Zhou Xingzhi’s younger brother handed me a tissue, a smirk playing on his lips. “Sister-in-law, my brother’s face is beyond saving.” “You might as well choose me instead. After all, my face looks much more like Wei Qiao’s now than my brother’s does.”

While we were conducting a quantum computing experiment, my graduate student suddenly asked me a question. “Professor, do you know what it means when they say, ‘Primordial Chaos Gives Birth to the Two Poles’?”

I set down the equipment in my hands, but before I could speak, she began to strip off all her clothes right in front of me.

She placed my hand against her softness, her seductive eyes locked onto mine.

“Primordial Chaos Gives Birth to the Two Poles, and the Two Poles Return to One Place.” “The height of nobility is also the height of debauchery.”

Everyone says my Little Aunt climbed her way to the top using her body.

They claim she used the excuse of caring for me to sneak into my husband’s room every night.

People curse her for being shameless, accusing her of defiling even her own niece’s husband.

But she simply handed me a piece of candy and said, “Yingying, in this life, we will survive together.”