Tragedy

I was beaten and driven out of the Chancellor’s Mansion with clubs.

As I lay dying of illness in the pouring rain, a scholar picked me up and took me home.

He didn’t mind my filth, nor did he mind my stupidity.

He cared for me in silence, acting even more like a mute than I did.

Once my injuries had healed, I prepared to bid the scholar farewell.

He went out to buy supplies for my journey, but he did not return that night. When I finally found him, I discovered that someone had broken both his legs and left him on the street to die.

He saw me and looked dazed for a moment, his face tinged with regret.

“Zhizhi, why haven’t you left? You should have gone.”

I wanted to ask myself that too-why hadn’t I left? Perhaps it was the few scraps of conscience I had left that made me unable to walk away, unable to avoid the trouble.

I dragged him home and nursed him with care. Before long, he recovered.

Neither of us ever mentioned my departure again. Later, his name appeared on the golden roster.

He was named the Top Graduate during the palace examinations, and he was on the verge of achieving fame and fortune.

Yet, he knelt and pleaded with His Majesty to thoroughly reinvestigate the case of the deposed Crown Prince from years ago.

His Majesty was furious. He threw him into the Imperial Prison and ordered his exile to the frontier.

I had no money and couldn’t get into the Imperial Prison.

I could only wait at the city gates, hoping to run into him and ask what on earth had happened.

But I waited through several dawns and dusks, and he never came.

Later still, I entered the palace as a study companion for the Fifth Princess.

Only then did I learn that a scholar in the Imperial Prison that year had died to prove his resolve, smashing his head against the blood-stained walls of the cell. Naturally, there were no guards to escort a prisoner out through the city gates.

But the Song Duhe I knew was never a reckless man, and he certainly wasn’t one to choose death so easily.

My father was a treacherous official.

The man who raided my home was my fiancé.

When he slipped the iron chain around my neck, his touch was even more tender than the year he placed a flower wreath upon my head.

On the day my father was beheaded in public, I was calmly picking lice off my mother. I remarked, “If I had a fire, I could stir-fry these lice and pair them with a pot of wine.”

Unexpectedly, my words drew a laugh from the young general in the neighboring cell, despite the hooks driven through his collarbones. Was it that funny?

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

When the Crown Prince ascended the throne, he installed his Crown Prince’s Secondary Consort as the Empress.

The reason was simple.

It was written in the Destiny Book that his first Empress would die from a hail of arrows piercing her heart.

On the day the imperial decree for the installation was issued, my elder sister-the Crown Princess Shen Chengyun-entered my palace with a beaming smile and gave a rather sloppy bow.

“This consort offers her congratulations to the Empress.”

She leaned in close, her bright red lips curling into a venomous sneer.

“Shen Ruoruo, you’d better cherish these few days of luxury. Don’t get too ahead of yourself, though. If you do anything to upset me… well, whether you receive an honorable posthumous title after you die will be entirely up to me.”

“Is that so?”

I took a step back and spoke in a low, steady voice.

“Then Sister had better make sure she doesn’t die before I do.”

I was being bullied.

My bullies even threatened to show up at my house.

I begged them not to go.

They had no idea that I was the only normal person in my family.

My father is a serial killer.

My mother is a yandere.

My brother has an antisocial personality disorder.

I am the only one who is a delicate, pitiful little flower.

Elder Sister was a physician.

After she treated the Noble Consort, the Emperor praised her for having a “miraculous touch.”

Consumed by jealousy, the Noble Consort had Elder Sister’s hands severed.

She smiled and said, “I hear Doctor Song’s medical skills are peerless. In that case, heal your own stumps.”

She denied Elder Sister water and medicine, watching as she slowly succumbed to the agonizing pain.

Six years later, the Noble Consort contracted a strange illness that left her wishing for death.

I stepped forward and reported, “There is one person in this world who can cure this ailment.”

Hope flared in the Noble Consort’s eyes. “Bring this divine physician here at once! I will pay any price!”

I shook my head with regret. “Six years ago, Your Ladyship killed her with your own hands.”

I was born cold-blooded.

When my mother died, I stood by her bedside without shedding a single tear.

In the front courtyard, lanterns and streamers were being hung to celebrate my father’s concubine’s birthday.

“Yuntan,” my mother said, “you are just like your father.”

A dying person always carries a certain air of decay.

She stared up at the canopy of her bed and sighed again.

“It is better to be like him… the heartless… always live longer…”

“Do not be like me, trapped in the word ‘love’ for a lifetime. It was a mistake…”

My mother was a loser her entire life.

I never expected that years later, the most reputable and upright gentleman in the capital, Xie Yijue, the Heir to Duke Zhenguo, would come to my door to ask for my hand in marriage.

He had one condition: He wanted to take my younger half-sister, Ji Zhi, into his household alongside me.

During the year of our purest love, Chen Ming and I shared a kiss in front of everyone when we won the Zhengfa Cup debate competition.

But later, when our son was diagnosed with autism, we both came to regret it.

After ten years of love, the wear and tear of life had transformed us from a match made in heaven into a pair of bitter rivals.

Time skipped forward to our son’s fifth birthday.

Chen Ming and I were in the car, arguing once again over our child’s illness.

Right in front of our son, we cursed each other, screaming for the other to drop dead.

The next second, an out-of-control heavy truck barreled toward us.

Chen Ming went against his instincts and jerked the steering wheel to the right, but the violent impact swallowed all the shouting and cursing anyway.

When I woke up again, we were back on the day we won the Zhengfa Cup.

This time, facing a stadium full of cheering and jeering, we pretended we barely knew each other.

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.

I was meant to marry the Emperor of Great Liang, but a decree for a political marriage sent me to Northern Yan instead.

On our wedding night, I mixed blood from the tip of my tongue into the wedding wine, intending to poison the tyrannical prince.

Yet, he drained the poisoned cup for me and said with a smile, “Don’t be in such a hurry. The heads of every official in this court-I will cut them off for you, one by one.”