Arranged Marriage

After my sister was widowed, she applied for a new Beastman partner.

As fate would have it, she was matched with my husband’s twin brother.

Upon learning this, Jiang Xu held me in a daze, his eyes wide open the entire night. I, too, suffered a rare bout of insomnia.

It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that I heard him finally lose his resolve.

He slipped outside to make a quiet phone call to his brother.

“Ah Chi, I really don’t want to spend my whole life missing out on her.”

“Just help me this once.” “Don’t worry, Wen Ning is dim-witted; she’ll never realize you’re pretending to be me.”

“Remember? She already mistook us for each other once before.”

“Wen Lin hasn’t met you yet either, so even if I take your place for a few days, she won’t notice.”

“I’m begging you, just for a week. One week is all I need. I just don’t want to live with any regrets…”

He kept pleading until the sun began to rise.

Only then did Jiang Chi finally agree to pose as his brother to stay with me. At that moment, Jiang Xu and I both breathed a sigh of relief.

He never knew. In truth, I was just like him. I, too, harbored the regret of an unrequited love.

After discovering yet another mistress Jiang Chengning was keeping outside the estate, I asked for a divorce.

He looked at me coldly and did not say a single word to make me stay.

I went to another town and rented a house. That very night, some lecher crept into my bedroom.

In my panic, I smashed his head in and killed him. His family was determined to make me pay with my life.

But I did not die. I spent a month in prison. When I was finally released, the daylight was so blinding I could hardly open my eyes.

Jiang Chengning’s face was a blur before me.

“Yingying is a woman living all alone out there, and surviving is as difficult for her as it was for you. Now that you’ve experienced it yourself, can you understand her?”

This time, I did not raise my voice and argue as I used to. I only stayed silent. His voice softened.

“I never truly wanted to divorce you. I only wanted to teach you a lesson. From now on, don’t make trouble with me over Yingying again. She has not had it easy.”

I nodded obediently. Jiang Ying had not had it easy.

And Jiang Chengning could just as easily make sure I did not have it easy either.

I returned to the Jiang Family and became his wife again. Once more, he brought up taking Jiang Ying as a concubine.

This time, I agreed. Not only did I feel sorry for Jiang Ying, that poor woman-I went on to feel sorry for one woman after another.

Only much later did Jiang Chengning realize something was wrong and demand to know why I no longer cared about him the way I used to.

I sighed and explained, “None of them have had it easy.”

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.

My fiancé had been secretly sponsoring a young girl behind my back.

As my car passed by her school, I saw the girl clutching the faded sleeve of a teenage boy, timidly calling him Brother Xu.

The boy had delicate, handsome features and stood tall and elegant, like a white birch tree.

“Bring him over,” I said. “Miss?” I lifted my chin, my tone indifferent. “It’s nothing. I just want to do some sponsoring of my own.”

The day I died of illness, the entire palace was shrouded in grief.

Only Emperor Yan Lang was not sad; he was merely a bit annoyed.

He was annoyed that half a month ago, because he wanted to invest my sister, Cui Mingshu, as Noble Consort, I had a massive argument with him and had yet to bow my head and admit my fault.

He was annoyed that the tactless officials from the Ministry of Rites were kneeling outside the hall, claiming they did not know how to determine the Empress’s posthumous title, write her biography, or arrange her burial in the imperial mausoleum.

Memorials piled up on his desk like snow on the eaves, as the hundred officials exhausted every flowery word to speculate on the Son of Heaven’s whims.

They suggested posthumous titles like ‘Virtuous,’ ‘Moral,’ ‘Gentle,’ and ‘Respectful,’ yet I was once the woman who, because someone had skimped on Yan Lang’s rations, chased that eunuch through three streets with a knife like a common shrew, cursing him the whole way.

They described my life as ‘noble and carefree,’ yet after his enthronement, he and I did nothing but argue or give each other the cold shoulder.

It seemed I was always crying-always weeping.

When it came to the matter of the imperial mausoleum, Yan Lang finally recalled a sliver of my merit.

Having been husband and wife, he was not stingy in granting me glory after death, graciously permitting me to sleep in the same tomb as him.

Before the vermilion ink of his approval for our joint burial could dry, Aunt Sun, the head maid of Jianjia Palace, was already kneeling respectfully outside the hall. She said the Empress had a final request she wished to be granted.

Yan Lang likely guessed what it was.

In all probability, she wanted to bow her head and admit her mistake, then ask for a grander posthumous title, an honorary rank, and for him to forbid Cui Mingshu from entering the palace.

“The Empress does not wish to be buried with you. “She said this life was too wretched; she never wants to see you again, neither in the blue vault of heaven nor the yellow springs of the underworld.”

By the tenth year of failing to find a human skin, I was ready to flay even the old yellow dog at the temple.

Then I met a beautiful concubine who had been thrown out of the marquis’s estate.

She knelt beside my white bones and burned paper money at the altar.

“The Immortal Lady likes the skin of beauties, and I hate this pretty face of mine. Let’s trade.”

In the third year after I married Zhao Yan, he made me Empress.

On one condition: I was not to lay a finger on the Imperial Noble Consort he held so dearly in his heart.

He seemed to have forgotten that I was his lawful wife first.

I worked as a maid at Marquis Manor for ten years. Then, simply because the young lady lost a Peach Blossom Hairpin, I was driven out of the household.

In the blink of an eye, many years passed. I had nearly let go of all the grudges and grievances between me and Marquis Manor.

But to my surprise, one night, the young lady of Marquis Manor knelt before me in utter disarray, begging me to take her in.

Her husband’s family had cast her out. In all the vast world, she had nowhere left to go.

And now, I was the only person she could turn to.

The auspicious hour had arrived. The wedding rites were complete, yet the bride remained kneeling in her blood-red wedding dress.

A gust of wind lifted her bridal veil, revealing a woman’s half-rotted head. Her lifeless eyes stared straight at me.

I tried to flee, but an icy hand clamped tightly around my wrist.

“Where are you going, my lady?” the wedding attendant asked with a smile. “It’s time for the banquet.”

Dark purple corpse spots stood out starkly on his powder-caked wrist.

So none of the guests at the wedding banquet were alive.

Myself included.

I am the Crown Princess.

The Crown Prince’s concubine came before me to flaunt her success. “I am already with child, yet you haven’t even been graced with his favor yet, have you, Sister?”

Rather than being angry, I was overjoyed. I fervently instructed the Imperial Physician, “You must ensure the child is protected at all costs.”

I have waited three years for the Eastern Palace to be blessed with a pregnancy.

Now, I can finally dispose of the father, keep the child, and rule from behind the curtain.