Aristocracy

I was born cold-blooded.

When my mother died, I stood by her bedside without shedding a single tear.

In the front courtyard, lanterns and streamers were being hung to celebrate my father’s concubine’s birthday.

“Yuntan,” my mother said, “you are just like your father.”

A dying person always carries a certain air of decay.

She stared up at the canopy of her bed and sighed again.

“It is better to be like him… the heartless… always live longer…”

“Do not be like me, trapped in the word ‘love’ for a lifetime. It was a mistake…”

My mother was a loser her entire life.

I never expected that years later, the most reputable and upright gentleman in the capital, Xie Yijue, the Heir to Duke Zhenguo, would come to my door to ask for my hand in marriage.

He had one condition: He wanted to take my younger half-sister, Ji Zhi, into his household alongside me.

On the day my lady and I fled, I went east while she went west.

Dressed in her clothes and carrying her token, I drew the pursuers away for her.

At death’s door, I was rescued. My lady’s betrothed mistook me for her.

Badly wounded and stripped of my memories, I was cherished by him and carefully nursed. He even married me.

Five years later, he brought back a battered woman. It was my lady. Convinced that I had deceived him, Qi Yu hated me to the bone and sent me to my death with a cup of poison.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I lured the enemy away for her.

I returned her clothes and token, then smiled and told her: “Go east. And don’t look back.”

I was the concubine Madam forced on the General.

She was testing whether his heart had strayed.

He remained perfectly unmoved and ordered me to copy scriptures all night to prove his devotion.

And me? My hand ached. So did my heart.

My father was the richest man in Great Zhou, and I was his only daughter.

To protect me, he arranged for me to marry into Marquis Manor with an enormous dowry.

On the day of my engagement, I had a dream.

I dreamed that Marquis Manor looked down on me for being born to a merchant family, while the Young Marquis doted wholeheartedly on his talented cousin.

After my father died, my dowry was swallowed up completely.

To make his cousin his legitimate wife, the Young Marquis bribed the midwife to murder me while I was in childbirth.

When I woke from the dream, the Young Marquis walked into my family’s jewelry shop with his cousin in tow.

“Since you’re going to marry into Marquis Manor, you ought to shed that stink of money. Marquis Manor can’t afford that kind of embarrassment.

“Give this shop to my cousin. Consider it a greeting gift from you, her future sister-in-law.”

I looked at his smug, superior face and let out a cold laugh.

Then I turned and ordered the steward to throw him out.

“What kind of down-and-out household starts eyeing a wife’s dowry before she’s even married in?

“Your highborn Marquis Manor has worse manners than a farming family!”

I was beaten and driven out of the Chancellor’s Mansion with clubs.

As I lay dying of illness in the pouring rain, a scholar picked me up and took me home.

He didn’t mind my filth, nor did he mind my stupidity.

He cared for me in silence, acting even more like a mute than I did.

Once my injuries had healed, I prepared to bid the scholar farewell.

He went out to buy supplies for my journey, but he did not return that night. When I finally found him, I discovered that someone had broken both his legs and left him on the street to die.

He saw me and looked dazed for a moment, his face tinged with regret.

“Zhizhi, why haven’t you left? You should have gone.”

I wanted to ask myself that too-why hadn’t I left? Perhaps it was the few scraps of conscience I had left that made me unable to walk away, unable to avoid the trouble.

I dragged him home and nursed him with care. Before long, he recovered.

Neither of us ever mentioned my departure again. Later, his name appeared on the golden roster.

He was named the Top Graduate during the palace examinations, and he was on the verge of achieving fame and fortune.

Yet, he knelt and pleaded with His Majesty to thoroughly reinvestigate the case of the deposed Crown Prince from years ago.

His Majesty was furious. He threw him into the Imperial Prison and ordered his exile to the frontier.

I had no money and couldn’t get into the Imperial Prison.

I could only wait at the city gates, hoping to run into him and ask what on earth had happened.

But I waited through several dawns and dusks, and he never came.

Later still, I entered the palace as a study companion for the Fifth Princess.

Only then did I learn that a scholar in the Imperial Prison that year had died to prove his resolve, smashing his head against the blood-stained walls of the cell. Naturally, there were no guards to escort a prisoner out through the city gates.

But the Song Duhe I knew was never a reckless man, and he certainly wasn’t one to choose death so easily.

On the eve of His Majesty’s bestowal of marriage, I lay in the Crown Prince’s arms and murmured, “Your Highness dotes on me so much. When my sister marries into the household, she won’t be angry, will she? Everyone else envies Your Highness for receiving His Majesty’s favor and being allowed to hold the wedding in the palace, but all I feel is sorry for you. It must be exhausting.”

I thought I was just putting on a fragile, sweet little act for the Crown Prince.

I never expected him to be sincere with me.

When he called out his first love’s name in the heat of passion, I knew that woman had to die.

The General and I were wed by imperial decree, our families perfectly matched in status. In a marriage like this, I never expected much in the way of affection.

Yet, he brought back a woman from his past-his “white moonlight.” She was pregnant, and he even intended to raise her status to that of an Equal Wife.

He does not understand me. Though I am a virtuous and kind wife, I will never allow another woman to claim a share of my husband.

I am the pampered little fake heiress who was driven out to the countryside.

To go from the young lady of Marquis Manor to a carpenter’s eldest daughter-there is simply no living like this!

In order to return to the noble circles of Capital City, I set my sights on the scholar next door.

Standing on a ladder, I waved my handkerchief coquettishly over the wall.

“Hey~ I heard you’re my fiancé?”

The man chopping firewood with his upper body bare slowly turned to look at me.

In an indifferent voice, he said, “I am Lin Jiaoyue’s fiancé.”

I was the unloved young lady of the Marquis Mansion.

My father gave me to my elder sister’s fiancé and forced me to bear his child.

I was compelled to write a breakup letter to the man I loved.

“How could a Mountain Village Bumpkin ever be worthy of a lady of my station?”

Later, the bumpkin from that letter had risen to the highest ranks, and he mocked me with disdain,

“And you, an Abandoned Wife – how could you ever be worthy of me?”

The transmigrated woman and the Seventh Prince were thrown into the Cold Palace together.

Her mission was to win over the Seventh Prince and get rid of me, the main villain.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

So I picked up a brick and smashed it down hard on the unconscious Seventh Prince.

Once he stopped making a sound, I raised the brick with an icy expression. “Now I’m the Seventh Prince. You can win me over instead.”