Betrayal

I was the late emperor’s younger sister, the reigning emperor’s own aunt, and the only Grand Princess of Great Jin.

On my sixtieth birthday, my husband’s supposedly dead first wife appeared at my door with the daughter she had borne late in life.

“The first wife is the lawful wife; her successor must take a concubine’s place.

But Your Highness is far too exalted for me to ask that of you.

I am willing to become a concubine myself.

I ask only that you show mercy and allow Mian to be entered in her father’s clan register, so that father and daughter may be reunited.”

Only then did I learn that the husband who had shown me such love and devotion had been keeping her in another household for forty years.

Seven years into my marriage, I met the woman I wanted to protect for the rest of my life.

She was gentle.

Romantic.

Her smile lit up my stagnant life.

Beside her, my wife seemed so much less.

All she ever talked about was our child and the endless petty details of daily life.

So, on our anniversary, I asked for a divorce.

But the tears, the accusations, the desperate struggle I expected never came.

Her hands merely paused over the food she was preparing.

She turned to me calmly.

“Fine.

I have just one condition.”

“Sell this apartment, and I’ll sign.”

When I was still a little fox, the crown prince rescued me from a trap.

He took me home and raised me for nine years.

Then, at fifteen, he fell in love with a girl.

The imperial family said her birth was beneath him.

So I found him a divine herb that could summon the image of a phoenix in the sky.

On their wedding day, I happily went off to the feast to sneak a bite of pork knuckle.

Before I could get any, he came to feed me a bowl of meat broth, just as he always did.

I drank it and passed out as though drunk.

When I woke, my inner core was gone.

I sacrificed three tails just to cling to life.

Taking human form, I returned to his side.

And saw my inner core hanging around the neck of his beloved wife.

When the zombie outbreak hit, my two-faced best friend locked me out.

Before I could find somewhere to hide, the ten-year-old next door bit me on the butt.

He was little, and his teeth weren’t much good.

Becoming a zombie hadn’t made him much tougher, either.

Once he’d bitten me, he stiffly shuffled away.

Watching him go, I suddenly felt a little embarrassed.

Suppose zombies ruled the world years from now, and someone asked how we’d all turned.

Everyone else would have fought off a whole pack of vicious zombies before finally going down.

Or sacrificed themselves heroically to save humanity.

Was I supposed to say I’d been lousy at hiding and some brat shorter than me had bitten my butt?

I felt pretty miserable.

But not for long.

Then I decided to stop trying.

After nearly six months of being bullied by the other four girls in our dorm, my roommate He Xiaorui finally snapped.

That night, she and I were alone in the room.

She suddenly climbed into my bed and kept telling me she was Noble Consort Xi of the Great Qing, of the Niohuru clan.

I was so frightened I had no idea what to do.

Then she suddenly smiled.

“Listen well.

Her Highness is about to take her revenge!”

After my enemy tortured me to death, the crown prince went mad.

He avenged me, then shaved his head and became a monk for my sake.

The whole country cursed me as a temptress who had brought ruin upon the realm.

But I didn’t even know him!

Eight months pregnant, Jiang Xingluo is attacked by her husband’s childhood sweetheart and accused of being his mistress.

At the police station, Fu Tingchen tears up their marriage certificate and walks away with the other woman.

He thinks her demand for a divorce is another jealous tantrum.

This time, she means every word.

Before the zombie virus broke out, I could barely lift a thing.

After the apocalypse hit, I was taking out zombies with a single swing.

When that two-faced bitch threatened me, I had one answer: Then we die together.

My elder half-sister was dying of an incurable illness.

My fiancé had just placed first in the imperial examinations.

She invited me to her house to entrust her children to my care.

After dinner, I lost consciousness.

When I woke, I was in her husband’s bed.

He slapped me several times, accusing me of scheming against him and drugging him.

My father’s wife held my grief-stricken sister and called me shameless.

I watched the three of them act out their little drama, coldly.

Fine.

Wonderful.

You could all go and die.

Dad brought home a golden retriever especially to keep Mom from getting lonely.

I turned around and sold it to a dog dealer to be bred for twelve litters in a row, until giving birth left it paralyzed.

Because in my last life, Mom had given that dog everything.

She took it everywhere and even held it while she slept.

In just two months, she seemed to age fifty years.

Then she died right in front of me.

The doctor called it sudden-onset premature aging.

Less than a month after we buried Mom, Dad moved her best friend into our house.

The woman who should have been lying in intensive care waiting to die had suddenly recovered.

Wearing Mom’s necklace and sleeping in Mom’s bed, she stroked my head and said, “Niannian, I’m your mommy now.”

Only later did I learn the truth.

Her soul was living inside the golden retriever Dad had brought home.

She was bound to a Life-Swapping System.

All she had to do was stay close to Mom in that dog’s body for forty-nine days straight, and she could steal Mom’s health and lifespan little by little.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the golden retriever arrived.

I looked down at it and smiled sweetly.

Send them to prison?

I didn’t have enough evidence.

But it was only a female dog in heat.

Sending it off to have eight or ten litters was perfectly reasonable, wasn’t it?