Betrayal

I was ordered by my master to assassinate Han Zhaoye, the Young Master of the Demonic Sect. Instead, standing beside the broken blade buried in his chest, I lit a Life Lamp to sustain his ebbing life. From that moment on, if he was injured, I spat blood; if he sought death, I was the one driven mad. Now, the entire Immortal Sect says he and I should become Dao Companions. But what they don’t know is that fourteen years ago, in the great fire of Floating White City, our lives had already been bound together by another’s hand.

On the eve of my wedding, my biological father, stepmother, and fiancé conspired to commit me to a mental asylum.

My crime? Being so “insane” that I attacked someone with a knife.

Three years later, I was discharged with a ten-billion-dollar inheritance that requires only my signature to claim.

Everyone expects me to still be a lunatic, but this time, I’m going to make them pay.

While I am at my most lucid, I will reclaim the lives, the money, and the truth they owe me, one debt at a time.

The summer I turned ten, my younger sister went missing.

She vanished on her way to deliver lunch to our parents.

There were no security cameras, and no one had seen her.

Because I was the one who was supposed to have gone, my mother never spoke another word to me again.

Fifteen years later, I became a police officer. I retraced the path my sister took that day, over and over again.

The past began to resurface in my mind, piece by piece.

Slowly, I pieced together a heartbreaking truth.

Two years into our marriage, I finally became pregnant.

But then my husband brought home an eight-year-old girl.

That girl called him “Dad.”

My husband thinks I’m one of those women who bleed their husbands dry for their brothers and sisters. What he doesn’t know is that my “eldest brother” is actually the son I gave birth to at nineteen, my “second brother” is the son I gave birth to at twenty-five, and my “little sister” is the daughter I gave birth to at twenty-eight.

On the night before the college entrance exam, I was raped.

Two murderers broke into our home and brutalized me right in front of my grandmother.

Then, they strangled her to death right before my eyes.

I barely escaped with my life, but I went from being a star student destined for Tsinghua and Peking Universities to a useless cripple, paralyzed from the neck down and unable even to use the bathroom on my own.

Fortunately, I have been reborn.

I have returned to the very moment the killers knocked on the door.

After winning the lottery, the first thing I did was dump my sugar daddy.

Then, I turned around and sponsored the broke, handsome guy I’d had my eye on for ages, all while sending a three-hundred-point manifesto to my ex-benefactor, tearing him to shreds.

With money in my pocket and my pride restored, I was walking on air.

That is, until I decided to flaunt my new boy toy right in front of my former sugar daddy.

My handsome new man looked at him and said, “Hey, Bro.” Me: ?

Chapter 0

I unexpectedly entered Wonderland.

But what awaited me was a rules-horror nightmare.

Players who violate the rules will become the red paint used to color the white roses.

Rule 2: Both cookies and potions are poisonous. Please consume with caution.

Rule 3: The hat is the Mad Hatter’s most precious possession. Do not touch it lightly.

Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

Rule 10: Under no circumstances should others be allowed to see your rules.

Welcome to Alice’s Nightmare.

Good luck, Player Tong Yu.

I stared at the playing card that had appeared in my hand at some unknown moment, printed with these bizarre rules, and fell into deep thought.

Five minutes ago, I was still sitting in a theater seat, quietly waiting for the post-credits scene of the movie Alice in Wonderland.

I had seen this animation when I was a child. While shopping at the mall, I had unexpectedly won a free movie ticket, so I stopped by to revisit the classic.

After the film ended, I intended to leave directly like most of the audience, but the theater staff blocked the exit and suggested we stay to watch the surprise post-credits scene before leaving.

Was my memory failing me? In my impression, there were no post-credits scenes at the end of this film.

It wasn’t until the credits finished rolling that the big screen suddenly went blank, and all the lights in the theater extinguished simultaneously.

The next second, a blood-covered, red-eyed rabbit suddenly appeared on the screen.

Accompanied by the screams of the audience, a terrifying giant rabbit crawled out from the two-dimensional screen, opened its bloody maw, and swallowed everyone whole.

When I opened my eyes again, I had arrived in this strange world along with the other audience members.

A mysterious forest and a White Rabbit in formal wear looked almost identical to the scenes from the film.

It had been exactly one week since the last time I entered a bizarre and absurd fairy tale world.

I had thought it was just a premonitory dream.

But the card in my hand with the eerie rules seemed to tell me that this was likely only the beginning.

Standing in the center of the crowd, Mr. White Rabbit glanced at the pocket watch on his chest, cleared his throat, and said:

“Everyone, welcome to the first stage of Alice’s Nightmare Trial: Broken Pocket Watch.”

As soon as the White Rabbit finished speaking, an identical pocket watch suddenly appeared in everyone’s hands.

“Adjust the time to the correct position and press the button on top of the pocket watch to submit your answer.”

I leaned in and saw the time on the pocket watch on his chest.

It displayed a fixed moment that never advanced.

20:27.

I lowered my head and re-examined the rules.

The only useful information was Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

But how could I know exactly how much faster it was?

There are thirteen ranks in a deck of cards, but I had only received four scattered cards.

The other half of the clues for this puzzle should be on the other cards I hadn’t received.

This was a game that required cooperation.

Just as I was planning to look for teammates among the people around me, the man standing in front of me suddenly exploded into a blur of flesh and blood.

Droplets of blood splashed onto my card.

At the same time, explosions began to occur one after another throughout the crowd.

The White Rabbit held a paint bucket, collecting plasma while saying, “A reminder to everyone: once an answer is submitted, it cannot be changed. Please cherish your only chance.”

I am the most pathetic Marchioness in all of the capital.

Marquis Jing’an married me for one reason only: I was honest, kind, and easy to manipulate.

Before our wedding, he told me quite bluntly, without a shred of hesitation:

“As long as you treat my beloved Concubine Bai well once you enter my home, and as long as you don’t get jealous or pick fights with her, I will grant you the dignity and status you deserve.”

For the sake of my family, I had no choice but to marry him.

From then on, whenever Concubine Bai sat, I stood.

When Concubine Bai ate meat, I drank the broth.

Whenever rewards arrived from the palace, Concubine Bai got first pick; I only received whatever she didn’t want.

I thought Marquis Jing’an was satisfied with my performance over the years, yet when I prepared to leave, he blocked the doorway, his hands trembling.

“You are my wife! You aren’t going anywhere!”

Me: “?”

I’m literally making room for your sweetheart!

On the final day of the divorce cooling-off period, I waited for Yuan Shiyu at the Civil Affairs Bureau for three hours.

The person who eventually arrived wasn’t him; instead, it was a hospital representative delivering a critical condition notice and a last letter.

Everyone thought he had finally agreed to let me go. Only I knew that the first sentence of that letter read: Wantang, I’m sorry, I really can’t make it this time.