Betrayal

My sister took my jade hairpin, then used it to frame me for an illicit palace affair.

Our parents and my fiancé begged me to take the blame.

Three years of torment ended with my death.

When I opened my eyes again, I was kneeling before the emperor on the day it all began.

This time, I would spare none of them.

After my husband leaves on a business trip, my best friend moves in so I won’t be lonely.

Then I hear the stray cat’s thoughts and realize it is my husband, plotting with my friend to kill me for my inheritance and insurance payout.

He thinks I will never discover the truth.

So I decide to take him to the vet and have him neutered first.

Ever since I was little, I was determined to become the Head of the Six Palaces.

So I married the Crown Prince and fought for the position of Empress, until I was only one step away from my goal.

All I had to do was outlive the sickly Empress currently sitting in that seat.

Of course, aside from the Empress, I still had other rivals: Consort De, Zhaoyi Zeng, Jieyu Yao…

Diligently, I crushed dissent. Conscientiously, I built my own faction. Day and night, I colluded with officials at court. One after another, I brought down every consort in the harem who dared stand against me, until at last I became the most powerful woman in the world.

I was selfish, calculating, and vicious.

But on his deathbed, the Emperor held my hand and said gently, “All these years, you worked hard.”

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, I climbed out of my childhood friend’s bed.

He lit a cigarette with careless ease.

“Leave through the back door in a bit. Don’t let my girlfriend see you.”

I froze. “You have a girlfriend? Since when?”

He curled his lips in a cold smile.

“None of your business.”

“You were the one who came on to me last night. I’m not taking responsibility.”

My expression turned indescribable.

“The person who slept with you last night wasn’t me…”

It was the cleaning lady from the guesthouse, who also happened to be his second uncle’s wife.

I had only come over to clean up the mess for them.

After being passed over for promotion yet again, Cheng Ying discovers that her secret boyfriend of twelve years, Lu Siming, personally vetoed her while openly favoring another employee.

When he denies their relationship in front of the whole company, she quits, leaves him, and rebuilds her career in Hong Kong.

Two years later, Lu Siming returns as a client, determined to win her back—but Cheng Ying has finally learned that choosing herself means refusing to live in a world where her love must remain hidden.

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.

I was born rotten. I wanted a better life, so I would do whatever it took.

When I was eight, I waited until my father was drunk, then pushed him into the river and drowned him. After that, I took his corpse to the gates of the marquis estate and sold myself to bury my father, earning my way into the household.

When I was thirteen, I staged a beating so severe that the stewarding matron nearly killed me. The young lady happened to pass by and saved me, and I became her personal maid.

I thought that if I followed the young lady when she married, I might become the Young Lord’s bedchamber maid and finally live comfortably.

Who could have known that the young lady had fallen into a secret affair with a penniless scholar? With a silver tongue and pretty lies, the scholar coaxed her into eloping with him, dragging me along as well.

As I watched the lecherous way the scholar’s eyes swept over me, I let out a deep sigh. I truly did not want to kill anyone. So why did they never let me live a good life?

In the year of severe famine, Mother took me to Prince Zhong’s Mansion, a place so distantly related it could hardly be called kin, to seek charity.

We came back with eighty taels of silver and a cart of grain, which we shared with the villagers.

In exchange, the whole village was abuzz with rumors.

The villagers gossiped that she had traded her chastity for grain. After my father divorced her, she hanged herself with a hemp rope, swaying there with her eyes open.

Later, after Prince Zhong’s Mansion fell, the Little Commandery Princess from the mansion, who had once given me a Golden Phoenix, was kidnapped and sold into the brothels.

I pretended to redeem her, then robbed her of her last few pieces of silver.

People-aren’t they all like that?

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 ten years by my side, my husband brought home a beauty and announced he would make her empress.

He said, “You have no son, but I need a crown prince.”

“What man under heaven doesn’t have three wives and four concubines?”

“When did you become so jealous, so incapable of tolerating others? You’ve changed. You’ve become hideous.”

That very night, I took my Young General with me and charged out through the city gates without looking back.

After I left, he said with red-rimmed eyes, “Ning Huan, come back.”

Of course I would come back.

Clad in the imperial yellow robes, I led three hundred thousand troops back to the capital, my loyal Young General standing at my side.

“Men, drag the Deposed Emperor and that beauty out and behead them. Hang their heads from the city walls. Let them go to hell and reflect on their disloyalty and lack of filial piety.”