2026

Qi Sinian had one rule for his affairs: his mistresses had to know their place.

Any woman who dared show herself in front of his wife would be dealt with by the next day.

And still they kept coming.

Because I, Mrs.

Qi, was so easy to push around.

To marry Qi Sinian, I had signed a prenup.

If we divorced, I would leave with nothing.

Later, to be allowed to have our child, I agreed to send him to the family estate.

I could see him only once a month.

I had no power, no connections, no family or friends.

All I knew was beauty treatments and flower arranging.

Then another of Qi Sinian’s mistresses came to gloat.

“He’s so bad.

He kept me on my knees all night.

They’re still swollen.”

Smiling, I set down my scissors and led her to fetch something.

When she wasn’t looking, I pushed her inside.

“Since you’ve worked so hard, take a couple of days off.

Don’t see anyone for the next two days.”

The first thing I did after being reborn was hurry back from the country estate to my father’s residence.

A young woman was kneeling inside.

Gloom shadowed her eyes; she was small and frail, her clothes patched over patches.

She was the daughter my father had conceived in a single night’s dalliance years ago.

In my previous life, she had married the tyrant in my place.

After winning his favor, she poisoned our entire family.

I spent twelve years as a ghost.

At first, I hated her bitterly.

Once I pieced together the truth, I could only pity her.

“Father, Mother.

I’ll marry him.”

I helped my younger half sister to her feet.

“His Majesty asked for me by name.

There’s no reason someone else should suffer in my place.

I’ll go.”

When I was young, I once kept a lover behind my husband’s back.

When the affair came to light, my husband forced me to choose.

I gritted my teeth and chose my husband.

The lover I abandoned vowed, “Cast me aside today, my lady wife, and one day you will regret it.”

“No, I won’t,” I said guiltily.

Years later, my husband took revenge by sending me to the Eastern Palace.

“I hear the crown prince has a taste for married women.

With your wanton nature, my dear, you should serve him very well.”

That night, I knelt in the Eastern Palace.

My beautiful “kept lover” and I stared at each other.

Seated high above me, he ground out, “Never imagined I was the crown prince, did you?”

“You’d drop a poor man for a rich one!”

The shock brought on my heart condition, and I died on the spot.

Given another life, I returned to the day the affair was exposed.

My husband asked, “Will you remain a lady of the distinguished Cui clan, or become a runaway wife despised by all?

I suggest you think carefully.”

This time, my voice rang out loud and clear.

“I’ve thought it through.

I’m eloping with him!”

My father’s wife always said she treated me as her own daughter.

Whenever she went out, she insisted I accompany her—an unpaid bodyguard.

When the Empress wanted to raise me at the palace, she refused on my behalf.

All a girl needed, she said, was a good husband who would cherish her.

I ruined both hands saving her son.

She still refused to register me as her legitimate daughter, saying only shallow families cared about birth status.

She would find me a fine young man someday.

When marriage was finally discussed, she cited my mother’s low birth and my damaged hands, and persuaded Father to marry me to his old nurse’s grandson.

The nurse despised my mother.

My husband took no interest in household affairs.

They tormented me to death.

When I opened my eyes again, it was the morning of the day I had saved my little brother.

While my husband was buying the freedom of a brothel’s star courtesan, I was at home feeding the pigs.

Floating comments warned me that my replacement was on her way.

I trusted my husband—and when he brought her home, he announced that her musical talents would make our pigs worth a fortune.

What followed was less a battle over a man than a very unexpected business venture.

My unhinged artist and I were heading out for a late-night snack when we ran into a man carrying snail noodles.

We decided to take the other elevator beside it.

By the time our elevator reached the ground floor, the man’s head was wedged between the doors of the other one.

His body lay sprawled backward inside, with blood sprayed all over the elevator.

We called the police immediately and helped with their investigation.

But when we got back to the door of our hotel room, a tiny glint of metal caught my eye…

Everyone in my family is a protagonist.

Dad is a Qidian-style male lead: as “ordinary-looking” as Louis Koo, just your averagely rich Long Aotian.

Mom is a PO-style heroine, an innocent little flower on the outside who regularly throws orgies behind Dad’s back.

My fiancé is a Jinjiang-style male lead: prayer beads around his wrist, eyes reddening at the slightest provocation.

Beijing’s ascetic prince.

I’m only an anonymous extra, but I have a cheat of my own— A pirated-novel reader.

After three years away recovering from illness, I returned to the capital.

My betrothed now had a woman at his side who looked rather like me.

At my welcome banquet, I accidentally stained her dress.

She dissolved into tears.

And Pei Yanli, always so cold and reserved, lost his temper with me for the first time.

“Lu Shijin, must you be so unreasonable?”

Unreasonable?

Without changing expression, I slapped him across the face.

“Who gave you the right?”

Perhaps it was time he saw what being unreasonable really looked like.

When I was sixteen, Dad suddenly said to me with a smile, “Our family has a big secret.

I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

He said it again when I was eighteen.

Every few years, for no apparent reason, he would bring it up again.

But however much I pressed him, he refused to tell me what the secret was.

When I turned twenty-six, he said it once more.

This time he was especially excited.

Tomorrow, he said, he could finally tell me.

I was excited too.

I’d always suspected the secret might be that my parents were actually rich.

But the next day, Dad was killed.

His body was hanging from the ceiling fan in the living room.

There was a note in his mouth.

It read: [Sweetheart, run!]

On my first day in the Duke of Liang’s household, my stepdaughter threw her ceremonial tea onto the floor, and my stepson threatened to have me cast out.

I drenched her with a teapot and took a ruler to his hand.

When their father asked what had happened, I told him I was merely teaching the children our household’s rules.

Everyone says a stepmother’s lot is hard.

But this household would recognize only one mistress: me.