2026
Beyond the Palace Walls
That dog of an emperor ordered me to marry a young eunuch, and I didn’t even blink before agreeing.
Yet, on the night of the wedding, I was tied up and hauled into the emperor’s bedchamber before I even had the chance to remove my bridal veil.
Bite Me Before Dawn
Synopsis While working the night shift at the hospital morgue, a man on the autopsy table who had died from blood loss suddenly opened his eyes and called out my name.
Only later did I learn that he was a vampire who had lived for two hundred years, and I was the one he had been searching for through seventeen lifetimes-the only person who could both save him and kill him.
Blood Rouge
I spent ten years in the imperial harem testing rouge, and not once did I fail to detect a single trace of poison.
That was until Consort Hua dropped dead after applying the “Drunken Beauty Red” I had personally verified.
It was then that a newly arrived talented lady told me: what truly kills isn’t the rouge, but the intent to murder.
Bone Blade
The first time I killed someone, the blade was dull.
I was fourteen that year. It was winter, and the north wind whipped against my face with a stinging bite.
Three bandits had scaled the wall of my grandfather’s courtyard, intent on stealing the last half-sack of millet he had hidden in the cellar.
My grandfather was blind. Hearing the commotion, he called out my name: “Shen He, Shen He!” He was using my alias.
My real name is Shen Heyi, and I am a girl. But the bandits didn’t know that, and Grandfather pretended not to know either.
He just kept calling, his voice urgent and hoarse, sounding like an old crow being strangled by the neck.
I fished out that Bone-Cleaver from beneath the stove.
Its edge was curled and nicked, so dull it couldn’t even slice through sheepskin cleanly.
But a human neck is softer than sheepskin.
I didn’t think about that day again for a very long time-not until I met Xie Changgeng.
Broken Promise
I’ve spent five years trying to win Shi Juan’s heart.
As long as he proposed to me on my birthday, I would have been allowed to stay in this world.
But I waited until the early hours of the morning, and only then did the System’s voice finally ring out.
[It is all over.]
[Shi Juan’s “white moonlight” returned today. He has been with her this entire time.]
After staying by my side for so long, the System decided to grant me one final request.
It would let me choose the manner of my death.
Fine. Since I have to leave sooner or later anyway…
I want to die right in front of Shi Juan.
I want him to kill me with his own hands.
And then, I want him to regret it for the rest of his life.
Call from Time and Space
In the dead of night, I received a phone call. The caller ID showed it was my husband. With a voice of utmost gravity, he told me that I would die at two o’clock in the morning.
But right now, he was clearly lying right beside me, fast asleep.
Changning
The first time I went to a nightclub after starting university, I ran into the neighbor who had disappeared a year ago.
He had his arms around two scantily-clad beauties, looking like a total delinquent.
When he saw me, his gaze flickered across my chest before he let out a soft, dismissive “tsk.” Later, he pinned me against a corner. His finger pressed against my lips as he leaned down, demanding I call his name. It was only then that it dawned on me. He wasn’t my Zhou Yanzhi.
Corpse Worms
I was in a rush to get home that night, so I hailed a taxi.
The driver asked me, “What do you do for a living, young lady?”
“I’m a fortune teller,” I replied. “Scary accurate, too.”
The driver gave a short laugh. “Well then, can you tell mine?”
“Sure.” I turned my head and stared intently at his face.
He had the features of a truly wicked man.
Coward
I married a man three years my senior, and everyone said he was head over heels for me.
But not long after our wedding, he cheated.
He smoked, he drank, he got into fights, and he even kissed other women right in front of my face.
He did everything I hated most.
Duan Yi took a drag from his cigarette, looking down at me through hooded eyes. “What? Regretting it now?” Clutching the divorce papers in my hand, I took the glowing, red-hot cherry of his cigarette and ground it hard into his palm.
“Duan Yi, you ruined me. You should have died back when you loved me most.”
Duan Yi acted as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “That actually hurts.”
Dark Fairy Tale
While we were conducting a quantum computing experiment, my graduate student suddenly asked me a question. “Professor, do you know what it means when they say, ‘Primordial Chaos Gives Birth to the Two Poles’?”
I set down the equipment in my hands, but before I could speak, she began to strip off all her clothes right in front of me.
She placed my hand against her softness, her seductive eyes locked onto mine.
“Primordial Chaos Gives Birth to the Two Poles, and the Two Poles Return to One Place.” “The height of nobility is also the height of debauchery.”