2026

On the day Mother was buried, Father gave me three copper coins.

He sent me all the way to West Street for candied hawthorns, but when I returned, he was gone.

Two days later, I found him at the lantern festival with a beautiful lady and another little girl in his arms.

The candied hawthorns he claimed to want were still wrapped in my hand.

Rather than waste them, I offered them to a pale, handsome prince who refused to drink his bitter medicine.

That small gift changed both our lives—and gave two abandoned hearts a home.

The general saved a woman.

Then he asked me to surrender my place as his lawful wife.

I held the divorce paper and laughed coldly.

“Gu Nianwu, success has gone to your head.”

You may command a thousand troops, but I command ten thousand ghosts.

Without me, where would all your glorious victories have come from?

On the day Ran Ling returned to the capital in triumph, his long-lost first love was brought back to him.

She had once cast aside reputation and status to elope with him, and he had once taken a sword for her.

Everyone said the star-crossed lovers of their youth would finally get the happy ending they had been denied.

But I wasn’t worried, because my mother had transmigrated into this novel—and I was a devoted mama’s girl.

It didn’t matter what anyone schemed against me; I was the hollow rose my mother had raised.

By imperial decree, I was forced to marry into the Xiaoshan Earl’s Estate as the heir’s second wife.

I had heard that my future mother-in-law was cruel, my sisters-in-law were impossible, and my husband kept a pampered concubine so vicious and overbearing that she had driven his first wife to her death.

Every respectable family in the capital avoided the place like the plague.

Before I climbed into the bridal sedan, Mother clasped my hands with tears in her eyes.

“My daughter, you must be careful.”

“Don’t kill anyone in your husband’s family. Your father will have a hard time explaining it to His Majesty.”

My imperial sister’s tomcat set his sights on my female cat and was rejected.

My mother consort ordered me to apologize, so I did.

The tom still refused to give up, and my cat’s other suitors beat him up.

Then Mother Consort told me to kill my “femme-fatale cat” to appease my sister…

This time, I refused.

“Think about who she is and where you stand,” Mother Consort advised.

Understanding dawned on me. “Oh. It’s because my mother is a coward.”

My mother might be a coward, but I was not.

Neither was my cat—she was, in fact, the greatest feline beauty in the entire imperial harem.

Ever since I was little, Mother had told me that the Marchioness was a broad, hulking shrew with the heart of a viper.

Anyone who offended her, she said, would be beaten half to death and locked in a dark room to perish.

Yet on the day we were brought to the marquis’s estate, the woman seated at the head of the main hall looked like a celestial maiden.

Mother sprang forward and hoisted her out of the chair.

“Sitting in the Marchioness’s place? Have you got a death wish?”

I have been able to breathe underwater since I was little, and I often hide at the bottom of the river to play with the fish and shrimp.

When I am seven, the county magistrate begins sacrificing young girls to the River God in exchange for favorable weather.

The family of each chosen girl receives five taels of silver and two sacks of rice.

Every time, I rescue the girl and secretly hide her in the mountains beside the river.

When I am sixteen, my parents bind my hands and feet while I sleep.

“Yuniang, your brother is old enough to take a wife.”

“This year, it is your turn to be sacrificed to the River God!”

After my divorce, I married the woman I had cheated with.

She was gentle and considerate, the kind of woman who always knew how to make me feel valued.

Her only drawback was that she came with a son.

But that was all right.

I had promised to love her, and I would love her child too.

As for my ex-wife, apart from the three thousand yuan I sent in child support every month, we had nothing more to do with each other.

Until the day I saw a hanging chair at a friend’s house—a chair that had once belonged to me.

On our wedding night, the prince was summoned away to the side courtyard by his cousin.

I had already taken off my bridal robes and slept soundly until morning.

After all, neither of us was the heroine.

Why should one supporting villainess make life difficult for another?

When I married into the Shen family, I already knew my husband had one great love.

She was the fisherman’s daughter who had saved him after he was gravely wounded while suppressing bandits.

They had sworn themselves to each other through life and death and privately pledged to marry.

But his mother threatened to take her own life and would only permit the woman to become his concubine.

On the eve of my wedding, Mother wept with worry and asked, “How will our Zhen’er ever live like this?”

How else?

He could play the devoted lover.

I would be the lady of the household.

Shen Yunfeng and I were merely two people traveling the same road toward entirely different ends.