Abusive Characters

Pei Qi traded cities for a beauty, a grand gesture that became a legendary romance. Unfortunately, I was not that beauty, nor was I Pei Qi; I didn’t even know him.

My husband was merely a soldier defending the city. Because he refused to surrender, he died in that war, though the city was ultimately held.

The following year, when Pei Qi traded cities for his beauty, I became that beauty’s Foot-washing Maid.

It has been ten years since I died.

After a decade, I have finally seen the first person to come and pay their respects at my grave.

It is a man, limping as he walks toward me.

It is my father.

On the night of my wedding, the Queen ordered her guards to pin me down and force those Glass Slippers back onto my bleeding feet. She said that if the shoes were not sated by my blood before the thirteenth bell toll of midnight, she would carve out my heart to feed the mirror. The entire hall waited for me to become a Princess Consort, but only the groom, Su Zhichuan, leaned in and whispered into my ear, his voice trembling and hoarse. He said, “Don’t believe in fairy tales. Kill me before dawn, or you’ll be the one who dies.”

[Horror Romance + damp, unhinged, obsessive male leads with lots of strange quirks + dark otome vibe]

When Qiu Rongrong met Zhou Jingxing, she thought she could start over. Later, she realized it had only been an illusion.

The gentle “older brother” tore off his disguise and revealed his cruelty. The boy at school who always seemed to protect her turned out to be the one driving the violence. The murderer’s son took her hand and said he would save her-help her escape.

They all said she should atone.

But in this grand, feverish revel, she was the only innocent survivor.

She tried to claw her way out of the mire, to struggle up onto solid ground-only for them to drag her back down into the mud.

Her beginning with him started with deception.

“Remember what fear tastes like. I don’t just want you dead-I want you to die in agony.”

Her ending with him finally came from sincerity.

“Love is the most twisted form of revenge. If you hate me, then use love as your blade-drive it straight into my heart.”

On the eve of my wedding, my biological father, stepmother, and fiancé conspired to commit me to a mental asylum.

My crime? Being so “insane” that I attacked someone with a knife.

Three years later, I was discharged with a ten-billion-dollar inheritance that requires only my signature to claim.

Everyone expects me to still be a lunatic, but this time, I’m going to make them pay.

While I am at my most lucid, I will reclaim the lives, the money, and the truth they owe me, one debt at a time.

My mom works as a housekeeper for Jiang Chuyi’s family, so I’ve lived in the Jiang Family home since I was little.

Jiang Chuyi is the model student in adults’ eyes.

Top grades, a good personality-he’s a child of heaven.

But the moment he took a knife and slit his own wrist-

I was the only one who saw it.

I am a bastard born of a concubine, yet I carry a face that could topple a kingdom.

When I was nine, a local thug tried to snatch me to make me his bride.

Mother risked her life to save me.

The next day, she took me through the streets and alleys of the capital for three hours, until every passerby had memorized my face.

Then she carried me to the gates of the Marquis of Pingyang Manor, knelt, and cried out:

“I, Lady Liu, a humble concubine, bore this girl for the Marquis on the ninth day of the twelfth month nine years ago in Apricot Blossom Alley, west of the suburbs. The neighbors can all attest to it.

“I know my lowly station and dare not ask for a title. I can only trade my death for the Marquis to acknowledge this child and raise her within the household!”

With that, she slammed her head against the stone lion at the gate and breathed her last.

My mother exchanged her life for my place in the Marquis’s household.

And she let the entire capital know that I am a bastard born of a kept woman.

After my mother got divorced, she became the fiercest woman in the village.

She often cursed at me, “If I didn’t have you dragging me down, I would’ve remarried some rich man long ago.”

Behind her back, the villagers gossiped, “She can’t get anyone to marry her, so she uses her daughter as an excuse.”

My father mocked her even more. “With your mother’s firecracker temper, and since she can’t even give birth to a son, the only man who’d want her is one with four sons who can’t find wives.”

Later, a small business owner really did want to marry my mother.

Then my father regretted it. “Yufen, let’s get married again. The three of us can live a proper life together.”

My sister has hated me for twenty years. She once told me to my face that it would be better if I just died.

So, just as she wished, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

Zhou Ci and I were also a pair of resentful lovers, exchanging harsh words and blows, finally threatening, “Whoever doesn’t get divorced is a dog.”

On the way to the divorce, we cursed each other with the most venomous words we could muster.

But when the oil tanker crashed towards us, he jerked the steering wheel, using his side to take the impact.

He let me live 0.01 seconds longer.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the summer at the end of my second year of high school.

Zhou Ciye was holding a bouquet of flowers, asking if I would accept it.

The next second, his listless face lifted, full of gloom.

The moment our eyes met, I knew he had come back too.