2026

Mother always said I took everything to heart.

People said husband and wife were one, that they ought to stand by each other through hardship.

I believed them.

After the crown prince was deposed, I knocked my forehead against the ground twenty-eight times before the eunuch guarding him.

At last, my pleading won the prince a bowl of medicine to save his life.

But everyone except me, his unloved wife, knew he was only pretending to be ill.

He stared at my injured forehead, stunned and deeply moved.

“From now on, I’ll… be good to you.”

“Let’s be husband and wife in earnest, for the rest of our lives.

Will you?”

So afraid was he that my heart might change, he even spent a fortune to make me swallow a love gu.

But it had no effect on me.

Pitying him for how little sincere affection he had ever known, I pretended it had taken hold.

I followed him everywhere, shamelessly telling him one sweet thing after another.

Yet barely a year after he took the throne, he summoned the gu master to the palace again.

“She isn’t the only woman in the harem.

She clings to me all day.

Where does that leave the others?”

“Find a way to erase her memories.

Let her spend the rest of her days in comfort, with nothing to trouble her.”

At last, something got through even to me.

After thinking it over all night, I took everything of value I owned to the gu master and earnestly begged him: “I still want to visit Mother’s grave.

I don’t want to forget everything.”

“Could you give me a gu that will make me seem dead instead?

Please?”

My dad was a delinquent, my mom a troublemaking wild child.

They had me before they got married.

They never paid me much attention—until one day they realized something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Dad: “She’s in sixth grade and she’s never skipped a single class.

You don’t think there’s something wrong with her?”

Mom: “Look what I found in her room.

An Outstanding Student certificate!

That filthy thing—in our daughter’s room!

What are we going to do?”

That day, for the first time ever, they took me out together: hair dye, tattoos, an internet café, the works.

They were determined to set me straight and get me back on the right path.

I took a concubine for my husband.

The concubine was tall and long-legged, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and extraordinary beauty.

My husband nearly lost his mind.

Because when the concubine pulled it out, it was bigger than his.

Ever since my husband brought his mistress home as an honored concubine, I had been living like a goddess.

Getting up at the fourth watch every morning to prepare him for court?

The concubine’s job.

His clothes, his meals, his daily needs.

Taking care of him when he was drunk or ill.

The weighty business of attending to his parents—all hers.

So were the marital bed and bearing children.

When I asked her, yet again, to make shoes and socks and do the other needlework, I told her, “You’re an honored concubine, practically half a mistress of the house.

These are a mistress’s duties.

If you won’t do them, who will?”

She looked at me, dressed to the nines and ready to go out.

Seething with resentment.

Then her child was registered as mine.

And she became more respectful and obedient by the day.

I was perfectly happy with the arrangement.

My husband, however, began to grow restless.

I was born untamable.

After my parents died, I was passed from one relative to another.

At every house, I beat up the entire family—even the dog got a couple of slaps.

Then a delicate noblewoman adopted me and offered the perfect deal: food, a home, and permission to beat anyone except her and her cat.

Her household full of unruly adopted children never stood a chance.

Neither did the capital’s arrogant young nobles.

But her beautiful, sickly son might just be the one person who wants to shelter my sharp edges instead of putting them to use.

A one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry the company had lent my artist was stolen during a performance.

The good news: we had a lead.

We knew the woman was a regular at a certain nightclub.

The bad news: joining me on our undercover investigation were my unhinged artist and two psychiatric patients.

Of those three, one wore huge pink SpongeBob shorts, one dressed as a Calabash Brother, and the other climbed onto roofs for no reason.

The boss decided they all had something special and hired them as male hosts.

And me, the only normal person in a proper suit…

I became a waiter.

The day Ying Que descended to the mortal world, he accidentally crashed through my roof.

He also knocked out the simple-minded bridegroom I had taken in.

I came home from walking my dog, found my world had fallen apart, and burst into tears.

Ying Que promised to repair my house and heal my bridegroom.

But it would take at least seven days for him to wake.

The village was offering girls to a river demon.

If I failed to marry within three days, I would be sent as its sacrifice.

When Ying Que heard, he took up his sword and slew the demon, unexpectedly completing his trial under Heaven’s Way.

Before returning to the Celestial Court, he gave me two gifts in apology.

A grand house, and a clever husband.

Three years later, he returned to the mortal world to undergo a tribulation.

Passing through Yanhe Town, he found me begging beside the road.

I held out a chipped wooden bowl and “looked” at him with empty eyes.

“Sir, could you spare something to eat?

My dog is starving.”

My dad was only a scrap collector, but he raised me and sent me to university.

Only later did I learn that he wasn’t my biological father.

My birth parents were far crueler than I could ever have imagined…

I had been born with little feeling for others.

When Mother struck me with a ruler for my sister’s sake, I did not shed a tear.

When my brother threw out the cat I had raised, I did not plead with him.

When the childhood friend I had grown up with asked for my sister’s hand, I calmly wished them well.

Without attachment, there could be no hurt.

I was content that way.

But I married a man who clung to me and loved me alone.

Xie Fuyu liked making me laugh, watching ripples disturb my expressionless face.

He taught me to hold on to the things I cared about.

So I began to fight for his love.

I would not let him go to wine houses or spare another woman so much as a glance.

Until my sister fell into the water and miscarried, and I would not let him go to help.

With a trace of disappointment, he snapped, “Meng Shiying, you never used to be this petty.”

Before long, he tired of me and took several aloof, quiet women as concubines.

Every one of them looked so much like the girl I had been.

I fought for half my life, and none of it brought me a good ending.

Then I was reborn on the day Mother arranged my marriage.

I bowed my head.

“Mother… the third young master of the Xie family and I are not suited.”

I transmigrated into an erotic novel as a supporting character—a female general built like a double-door refrigerator.

For now, though, I was merely the heroine’s maid of all work, ordered about and worked like a beast of burden.

But I knew a prince would soon buy her freedom, then hand her over to the brutal emperor.

Even a heroine as experienced as she was might not survive him.

I had lived through countless loops in this world because its main characters kept dying halfway through the story.

I assumed this time would be no different.

Then, right in front of the male lead, the woman who had always looked down on me suddenly caught my arm.

“Your Highness, please buy Hua Nu’s freedom too!”