Tragedy

Born into wealth but sold into a brothel by her opium-addicted father, Zhao Xiaochan remakes herself as Tang Xiaowan and refuses to let a violent age decide her worth.

Beside a rough warlord and later a principled reporter, she survives betrayal, occupation, and impossible love while risking everything to shelter other women from the same fate.

Across decades of war and upheaval, the jade cicada at her throat becomes the last witness to a life lived fiercely, proudly, and on her own terms.

After I died, my boyfriend’s grief moved God.

God gave me a chance to be reborn, sending me back to my boyfriend in a stranger’s face.

If he fell in love with me again, I could come back to life.

But when I returned to him, he already had a new girlfriend.

My mother was a farm girl who couldn’t read a single character, yet she still supported my father all the way until he passed the provincial examination.

On the day my father married the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter, my mother obediently became his equal wife.

My father thought my mother loved him, which made her easy to control.

My father’s principal wife thought my mother, born and raised in the countryside, could never be a match for her.

And so, beneath their contempt, my mother played the fool while hiding her claws, raising me into someone whose worth was beyond measure.

Fu Qiu had always accepted her lot in life.

When she was a child, a blind man read her fortune through bone-weighing and said her bones were light, her fate was lowly, and that in this life she could only sell her body.

As it happened, her family was going through hard times, so her father simply sold her to a brothel.

When she was still young and first put on display, the madam said that although she was beautiful, her face carried a pitiful, sorrowful look, and the customers she attracted would never be decent men.

Sure enough, every few days, she suffered another bout of abuse.

By middle age, her looks had withered, and she married a merchant. The neighbors said her thin lips and fox-like eyes meant she would never be the faithful sort.

Before long, rumors were flying everywhere. The merchant could not bear it, and on a rainy night, he drove her out of the house.

Even so, she never hated anyone. She only hated that her own fate was so poor.

As she lay on the verge of death, the Old Blind Man happened to pass by drunk, bragging to the crowd.

“Twenty years ago, I saw a little girl in another town. She was so young, but she already had the looks to topple a kingdom.

“So I pretended to be blind, did a bone-weighing for her, and told her she had a lowly fate-that in this life, she could only become a whore.

“And guess what? Her whole family believed me!”

On the day the Xiao Family ran into disaster, the servants all scrambled to grab whatever valuables they could find. Unable to outfight them, I could only take away the nine-year-old Second Young Master, who still couldn’t speak.

Later, after the storm had passed, he asked me if I would be his concubine.

On the day my boyfriend and I got our marriage license, the lottery ticket I bought won fifty million.

Double happiness had come knocking.

Who could have known that very night, he would brutally murder me?

As I lay dying, I heard him call another woman, practically giddy with excitement.

“Baby, we’re rich! Get over here and help me cut up the body.”

“Can you believe she actually asked me before she died if I’d ever loved her? Of course I loved her. Loved using her as an ATM and a fuck buddy, hahaha.”

I died. My body was dumped into a pit latrine and a garbage dump, left to be gnawed on by maggots, mosquitoes, and flies.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn on the day I won the lottery and got my marriage license.

My boyfriend was opening the door. He looked back and smiled at me. “Honey, tonight is going to be very exciting. Are you ready?”

On my wedding day, my twin sister knocked me unconscious and locked me in the basement.

Then she impersonated me and married my fiancé.

“From today on, your man is mine.” Her eyes were filled with sheer determination.

She left in such a hurry

that she didn’t notice I had stopped breathing in the darkness.

My husband was upright and restrained, a gentleman praised by court and commoners alike.

He took no concubines and kept no maidservants in his chamber, so everyone believed he cherished me.

Only I knew the woman he loved was the Empress.

I had resigned myself to it, until the year rebels stormed the capital, seized our only daughter, and forced him to surrender the Empress and the Crown Prince.

Before the two armies, he shot our daughter dead with an arrow and said, “Since ancient times, loyalty to the realm and love for family cannot both be preserved.”

My hair turned white overnight. In despair, I dragged the Empress down with me.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to our wedding night.

Facing his still, emotionless face, I smiled sweetly.

“Since you love each other so much, I will make sure your love story is sung throughout the world.”

When I transmigrated into the role of the true heiress, a universally disliked person, the story had already reached its end.

The fake heiress, doted on by all, had won everyone’s affection, leaving me to be cast out onto the streets. Destitute and adrift, I still clutched a half-eaten meat bun made from lymph node meat in my hand.

Such a miserable script gave me not a shred of will to live.

I lifted my head to look at the clear blue sky, my expression serene and relaxed. I was fully prepared to give up, contemplating whether to follow the original owner into the afterlife and elegantly choosing between a car crash or jumping off a building as the more dignified demise.

Just then, a passing gang of robbers dragged me into a car.

They pressed sharp knives to my throat, grinning ferociously:

“Don’t move! This is a robbery! Call your family right now and have them send five million in ransom.”

“If you dare make a sound, I’ll send you straight to hell!”

As expected, heaven has its own plans.

I nodded contentedly with a smile, tossed the bun aside, and screamed at the top of my lungs:

“Help!”

After my rebirth, that wayward young man whose fleeting impulse for fun had destroyed my family had already turned over a new leaf and redeemed himself. He was engaged to his childhood sweetheart and had become a young entrepreneur admired by all.

So I did everything in my power to marry him.