2026

In my last life, I saved He Yan, the young master of a marquis manor.

He took me as his wife, and for a time, our marriage was the talk of Shangjing.

But I had been born and raised in the countryside.

My manners were crude, and my reputation gradually soured.

He Yan, too, slowly grew distant from me.

I wept day after day, and before I even reached thirty, I died in misery.

Given a second chance, I swore I would never live that way again.

Only, after eating wild greens for three days straight, I realized I simply could not let go of the marquis manor’s soy-braised pork knuckle, sticky rice chicken, crab roe lion’s head meatballs, scallion-fried lamb…

On the day of my daughter’s sixth birthday, she fell into a lake, and the soul of a transmigrated woman took possession of her body.

She was not the first transmigrator I had encountered.

I expected another loud, shallow creature like Consort Chao, but this one proved entirely different.

As she stood on a spy and scolded me for being weak and softhearted, I discreetly wiped the blood from my hands and sighed.

Facing the Buddha, I said only, “Amitabha.”

The Sect Cannot Disband Today I was toiling away in the Accounts Office until the hour of the rat when a crisp notification suddenly rang out overhead.

“Ding! Detecting the imminent and simultaneous start of ‘The Stand-in Junior Sister’s Bitter Love,’ ‘The Yandere Junior Sister’s Imprisonment,’ ‘The Amnesiac Junior Sister’s Wife-Chasing Anguish Arc,’ and ‘The Salted Fish Junior Sister’s Flat Life.’

If no intervention occurs, the Guiyuan Sect will suffer a total collapse of its reputation due to a series of Love-Struck Mind incidents in three hundred days.

Its assets will be liquidated, and it will officially go bankrupt.” I looked down at the bright red debt of 1.03 million High-grade Spirit Stones recorded in the ledger.

Closing the book, I seriously wondered for the first time if the Heavenly Dao was specifically out to get me.

The night I married Pei Guanli, I cried so hard I soaked half my bridal veil.

Not because I didn’t want to marry him, but because everyone in the capital knew that Pei Guanli was more upright and proper than the ancestral tablets in a shrine.

He oversaw ceremonial protocols at the Ministry of Rites and revised the dynasty’s statutes and rites.

If a family used the wrong ritual vessels at a wedding, he could remember it for three years.

If someone wailed one time too many at a funeral, he could submit a memorial impeaching them straight to the emperor.

As the daughter of a merchant family from Jiangnan, this was exactly the sort of man I feared most.

Before my mother sent me into the bridal sedan, she clutched my hands and cried even harder than I did.

“Ah Ning, once you reach the Pei Family, speak less, smile less, and eat less.”

I asked, “Why eat less?”

Choking back sobs, my mother said, “Noble young ladies in the capital eat as delicately as if they’re painting flowers. You eat three bowls in one sitting. You’ll give yourself away too easily.”

I paused, suddenly feeling that before this marriage had even reached the bridal chamber, I had already lost on appetite alone.

I was a bridesmaid at my friend’s wedding, but the bridesmaid’s red envelope I received was stuffed with spirit money.

My friend got into a fight with the groom’s side.

The groom stormed in with a group of people, trapped us in the room, and even threatened that when they came to “tease the bridesmaids” that night, he’d make sure I paid for it.

What he didn’t know was this: seal paper money inside a red envelope, and a hundred ghosts will come to feast.

That night, every ghost for miles around came to offer their congratulations.

And I was the sole Earth Master successor.

Sold at sixteen to the Zhao family of Taoshui Village, Pan Xi’er expects a life of hardship among three unmarried brothers with terrible reputations.

Instead, she finds warmth, loyalty, and a family ready to work for a better tomorrow.

With tofu, new recipes, and stubborn kindness, Xi’er helps the Zhaos turn hardship into prosperity—until old wounds and new ambitions put their hard-won happiness to the test.

On the night I was crowned Empress, Lu Yuheng personally handed me a cup of Poisoned Wine. He said that since the Ye Family’s name had been cleared, I should spend one night as a glorious Empress before going to meet my kin with a clean slate. But what he didn’t know was that the most painful wound of my life was never death-it was him.

A couple lived next door to me, and they were like tinder and flint-always ready to ignite.

Every night, their loud, frantic wailing kept me from getting a wink of sleep.

I tried reasoning with them, I tried cursing them out, and I even called the police, but nothing worked.

So, I decided to start pursuing his wife.

On Valentine’s Day, I went out of my way to tuck a small note inside a bouquet of roses: “Your husband hasn’t found out about us yet, has he?” Then, her husband absolutely blew his top.

After winning the war, I entered the capital, and the Old Emperor asked what reward I wanted.

I pointed at the handsome man in purple robes and a golden belt standing in the hall. “I beg Your Majesty to grant me a marriage. I am carrying his child, and he promised he would marry me!”

The elderly eunuch beside the emperor hurriedly tried to stop me. “General, mind your words. This is the Second Prince.”

A faint, languid voice sounded behind me. “Whose child are you carrying?

“Isn’t your belly full of roast duck, roast chicken, candied hawthorn, red bean pastries, dried sweet potatoes…”

I turned to look, only to find that the handsome man who had just spoken looked exactly like the Second Prince.

I made a split-second decision and cupped my fists toward His Majesty. “If that one won’t marry me, this one will do!”

The elderly eunuch was beside himself with panic. “My dear ancestor, this is the Crown Prince!”

On the day of the grand wedding, every guest in the hall witnessed Ah Ying take a sword strike intended for Gu Yanzhi.

No one knew that the blades, arrows, and poisons she had endured for him throughout her life were already enough to have killed her many times over.

All she had ever waited for was to die in his arms and hear him call her name just once.