Ancient China

Xu Man is forced into the Crown Princess Academy with only one goal: get her tuition back and save her ailing father.

When the academy uses rules and money to grind its noble students into submission, she joins forces with her classmates, exposes its corruption through a single ledger, brings the bride-training institution to a halt, and balances the books for women determined to win back their freedom.

The day I married into the Gu marquis’s household, my father-in-law died and my mother-in-law fell ill.

The wedding feast became a funeral banquet, and I was forced to take charge in the midst of the crisis, assuming control of the household and carrying the funeral through with composure.

My husband thanked me for preserving the Gu family’s dignity, yet never set foot in my room again.

In time, he filled the household with concubines and fathered a brood of sons and daughters by them.

I raised them conscientiously and planned for their futures.

Then I overheard my husband speaking to them behind my back.

“I have never met anyone as coldhearted as your mother. Your grandfather died, and she did not shed a single tear. You may call her Mother, but never learn from her. She is unworthy of the name.”

By then, a physician had already told me I did not have long to live.

Not one of those children came to visit me or bring me medicine; they simply left me to die.

With my last strength, I set fire to the Gu residence and burned that cold, loveless place to the ground.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn.

The Gu family came to propose marriage, and as I looked at the refined, handsome man before me, we spoke the same words at the same time.

“I refuse.”

It turned out I was not the only one who had returned.

I found an unconscious noblewoman by the river.

One bowl of lard rice a day, and she slowly nursed back to health.

Then one day, a great contingent of Tiger Guards came sweeping in full force to my butcher shop and knelt before the noblewoman: "We humbly request that our mistress return to the marquis's residence!"

The man leading them noticed me standing off to the side, trembling: "And who are you?"

I blurted out in a panic: "This commoner is the third butcher shop south of the city, pig slaugh-"

Before I could finish, the noblewoman clapped her hand over my mouth.

"This is my only daughter, the one I had fostered with my maiden family."

The newly crowned top scholar accidentally swallowed the love gu I had meant for my absent husband.

To keep him alive, I had to share his bed every seven days until the antidote arrived.

What began as mutual resentment slowly turned dangerously tender—just as my husband, General Zhou Hanchuan, returned and recognized me as the woman he had never forgotten.

Now one man refuses to let me go, the other refuses to grant me a divorce, and I am trapped between two rivals who would sooner kill each other than give me up.

Shen Qi had secretly loved my elder sister for years.

When she and I fell into the river together, he mistook me for her and pulled me out first.

My sister was swept away and drowned.

Knowing none of this, I fell hopelessly in love with him.

I made such a scene about marrying him that he gladly agreed.

After the wedding, however, he alternated between warmth and coldness.

At times he treated me tenderly.

At others, he looked at me as if he hated me to the bone.

Once bright and willful, I withered day by day and lived in misery.

Only as I lay dying did I discover the truth…

He was kind whenever I reminded him of my sister.

He was cruel whenever he remembered that he blamed me for her death.

After I was reborn, I climbed onto the bank by myself and watched him rejoice at having my sister back.

Then I turned and walked toward the most exalted man in the realm.

In my last life, I married Wei Zheng, and everyone in the capital said that the eldest son of the Wei family and I were a match made in heaven.

Wei Zheng and I spoke of the realm and its people, dreaming of peace beneath all four seas.

We spent more time apart than together, never dwelling on petty romance, because greater duties filled our hearts.

When he went north to guard the frontier, I set up porridge kitchens outside the capital.

When he reviewed official papers in his study, I sat beside him annotating ancient texts.

When work kept him overnight at the government office, I thoughtfully sent him a letter: “All is well at home. Do not worry.”

He said I was unlike other delicate young ladies who cared only for moonlight and flowers and pestered their lovers to count their eyelashes.

He praised me for being calm, sensible, and mindful of the greater good.

What he never knew was that, as an imperial princess, I had once been the most pampered, vivacious girl of all.

I had simply spent everything I had chasing after him, running until I could barely breathe.

Then one day, I quarreled with someone while Wei Zheng watched coldly from the side.

Only after we returned home, when no one else was present, did he say in that mild voice of his, “The other person did have more reason on their side.”

That was when I realized he had never once stood on mine.

The Minister of the Court of Judicial Review withstood enormous pressure, uncovered the true culprit, and cleared my father’s name, sparing our entire family from exile to Lingnan.

My father was immeasurably grateful and swore he would give his life to repay the minister’s kindness.

After a little polite hesitation, Lord Fu said, “My son has reached marriageable age, and I hear the vice minister’s household has several fine young ladies.”

My father understood.

My family had three daughters, each lovelier than the last.

When we came of marriageable age, suitors nearly wore our threshold smooth.

Even the Emperor decided to interfere.

He insisted that one of us marry the great general, Xie Yuan.

Father and Mother could do nothing but sigh.

My two elder sisters exchanged uneasy looks, so I rose with righteous resolve.

“What’s there to worry about? Marrying a general would be glorious, and I might even get to ride a great stallion!”

“If neither of you will marry him, I will.”

Later, Xie Yuan pinned me in his arms and coaxed me again and again:

“Are you shirking again, Mianmian? Why won’t you ride your great stallion tonight?”

Would living my life over again make it any better?

After I was reborn, I still chose the young general who had treated me with icy courtesy in my previous life, and rejected the devoted Tanhua scholar.

A road whose every pitfall I had already crossed ought to be easier the second time.

Across two lifetimes, I was already an eighty-year-old woman at heart.

I asked for no great romance, only a safe and steady life.

After Shen Linzhang fell from his horse and lost his memory, the House of Shen fell out of imperial favor.

Everyone avoided them as if they carried the plague.

Only I begged my father to let me marry into the Shen household at its most precarious hour.

Shen Linzhang had the mind of a child.

He understood nothing of worldly affairs; he knew only that I was his wife.

Three years later, the woman general who had guarded the frontier rode back to the capital.

The instant he saw her, Shen Linzhang was seized by a splitting headache.

A moment later, he abandoned me, vaulted onto a horse, and galloped after her.

When we met again, his eyes were clear.

He handed me a letter of divorce.

He said that I had been raised in the inner courtyard like a bird in a cage and had never seen how vast the world was.

He declared that the love of his life was a brilliant, valiant woman general like Feiying.

He spoke with easy arrogance, his chin held high.

Then I calmly accepted the letter.

This time, he was the one left speechless.