Tragedy

The Young General, who avoids women, took a concubine.

The Crown Prince asked me, “Why does she look so much like my beloved consort?”

I smiled coquettishly, “I just have a common face.”

In the third year of my relationship with Tan Zongmin, I caught him meeting the woman his family had arranged for him to marry.

The moment he saw me, he froze.

Noticing his distraction, she followed his gaze and asked curiously, “What are you looking at?”

Tan Zongmin looked away and replied flatly, “Nothing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and played along with our unspoken understanding, pretending not to know him.

That morning, I’d received an email confirming that my resignation had been approved.

I’d been wondering how to break up with Tan Zongmin gracefully.

When the matchmaker came to propose the marriage, she said Cen Dalang (Eldest Master Cen) of the Cen family had talent, while Erlang (Second Master) had looks.

“A perfect match for your two young ladies.”

“The eldest son for the eldest daughter, the second son for the second daughter.”

“With their older brother and sister looking after them, how could the younger ones ever have a bad life?”

In my last life, things were indeed just as the matchmaker had said.

I married Dalang, and my younger sister married Erlang (Second Master).

Dalang and I spent years cleaning up mess after mess for our younger siblings.

Until Dalang died saving Erlang (Second Master).

I thought he would resent them.

But instead, he looked at my plain, unremarkable face, tears in his eyes, and sighed bitterly.

“This life was far too worthless.”

“Was I not even worthy of having a beautiful wife?”

He passed away with that regret.

It struck me like a bolt from the blue.

So all those messes he had cleaned up-he had done it willingly.

Not only for his younger brother, but for my younger sister as well.

Now, reborn into this life,

as I listened to the matchmaker say those same words,

I merely replied calmly,

“Let’s forget it. Dalang has no looks, and Erlang (Second Master) has no talent. Neither of them is a good match.”

After my Senior Sister died, Master brought back a Seductress Spirit.

The Seductress Spirit looked exactly like Senior Sister, only far more alluring.

Seductress Spirits were wanton and wicked by nature. All she had to do was crook a finger, and my senior brothers would slip in and out of her bedchamber night after night.

She had stolen Senior Sister’s face and used it to do every filthy, degrading thing imaginable. I hated her to the bone.

But when I went to kill her, she took out a plum candy and spoke in a voice gentle enough to bewitch me:

“Since I’ve already used this skin, I have to fulfill its original owner’s dying wish.

“Seductress Spirits have their own rules. But do you want to avenge your Senior Sister with your own hands?”

In the year I was desperately poor, I deliberately fed two of my fingers into the factory machinery and had them crushed, all for the thirty thousand yuan my grandmother needed for surgery.

The factory manager frowned with such pain that he wanted to compensate me eighty thousand yuan. I was too guilty to take it, so I only asked for thirty thousand.

Years passed. My grandmother had been gone for many years.

Then I saw a trending news report: the factory from back then had been swallowed by a fire.

The factory manager had died of a heart attack. His wife had vanished.

Their twelve-year-old son had been sent to an orphanage.

Looking at those helpless, terrified eyes on the screen, I poured the medicine I had been about to swallow down the drain.

Then… let me live once more.

For that thirty thousand yuan from back then.

While everyone else was fighting for the Emperor’s favor, I built an intelligence station in the cold palace.

Until the day he died, the Emperor never knew that the woman stirring up the hidden currents of his harem was someone whose name he could not even remember.

I died in Yongxiang Alley during my third winter there.

Not truly died-only the kind of death where your name is crossed out in vermilion ink on the registry.

They said Noble Lady Li, who had once worked in the imperial garden and was later favored by His Majesty for her beauty, had gone mad.

Because on the late Empress’s memorial day, I let my hair hang loose, went barefoot, and sang a rousing rendition of “Liangzhou Ci.”

In truth, I was not mad. I had simply calculated that the Chief Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial would pass through the imperial garden that day.

Madness was the best pass in the cold palace, and the best armor.

On the day I moved into the West Third Institute, only one lame old eunuch came to lead the way.

The weeds in the courtyard rose past my knees, and the moss on the well curb was as thick as a velvet blanket.

My roommate, Attendant Li, had been thrown in here three years ago after offending the Imperial Consort.

When she saw me arrive, she did not even lift her eyelids. She only kept rubbing a length of hemp rope in her hands, its edges worn fuzzy.

I set my only bundle down on the crumbling earthen kang.

Inside were two sets of worn palace clothes, a bald writing brush, and half a ream of yellow paper.

The paper pasted over the window lattice had a hole in it the size of a fist. The north wind poured in with a howl, carrying the faint sound of pipes and flutes from far away.

I stared at that hole, but in my heart, a sliver of light slipped through.

In a madwoman’s world, there were the fewest rules.

Here, perhaps, I could live.

When I was young, I found the Crown Princess and took her begging for three years.

Later, after she was retrieved, the Emperor recognized me as his adopted son.

Everyone assumed I would marry the Crown Princess.

But she became engaged to the Duke’s legitimate son.

On her birthday, she declared with a mocking smile in front of everyone: “How could someone of royal blood be matched with a beggar?”

I raised my cup and sincerely wished her a worry-free life, year after year.

She didn’t know yet that I had already accepted the imperial decree of a marriage alliance.

And from that year on, she would have no worries, and no Ziyou.

By sheer chance, I stumbled across a diary from a hundred years ago.

Its owner seemed to have been the young master of some wealthy household. Inside were little records of his daily life: “May 7, Year 14 of the Republic of China. Clear skies. I skipped class to play cards with my classmates, and my teacher chased me all the way home and scolded me. So annoying!”

I found it amusing, so I added a line beneath it: “May 2024. Been working for too long. Exhausted.”

The very next second, a sentence surfaced on the diary page: “Who are you?”

In my third year of living the high life in the Underworld, my ex-husband suddenly developed a passion for courting death.

To save him, I called in every favor I had, spent fortune after fortune, and kowtowed to King Yan until my head nearly fell off.

After a few months of this, I went from the richest soul in the Underworld to a homeless drifter.

Not only was I penniless, I also owed the Heaven and Earth Bank a massive loan.

King Yan had no idea what to do with me. After brooding over it for ages, he finally made a grand stroke of his brush:

“Permission granted for you to return to the mortal world for one day. Go collect money from the living to repay your debt.”

My boyfriend had depression.

Medication and sessions with specialists cost over ten thousand a month.

To help him get better, I took on art commissions and delivered takeout day and night. Even my friends warned me to be careful before I worked myself to death.

Then one day, I managed to grab an errand order from a wealthy villa district.

The high-end Japanese takeout was worth eighteen thousand. I held it with both hands and handed it to the customer with the utmost respect.

But when I lifted my eyes, I saw my boyfriend-who should have been in therapy-standing in the doorway, staring at me in utter shock.