Betrayal

I married a man three years my senior, and everyone said he was head over heels for me.

But not long after our wedding, he cheated.

He smoked, he drank, he got into fights, and he even kissed other women right in front of my face.

He did everything I hated most.

Duan Yi took a drag from his cigarette, looking down at me through hooded eyes. “What? Regretting it now?” Clutching the divorce papers in my hand, I took the glowing, red-hot cherry of his cigarette and ground it hard into his palm.

“Duan Yi, you ruined me. You should have died back when you loved me most.”

Duan Yi acted as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “That actually hurts.”

In my previous life, a woman armed with a conquest system won over my parents, my brothers, and my fiance one after another.

They adored her, indulged her, and let everything go her way until she stood at the height of favor.

As for me, everyone despised me.

I was imprisoned in a secluded palace alley for life, forbidden to take even half a step beyond its gates.

Only after I died did I learn that she had come from another world, and that every bit of my suffering fed her luck. Reborn, I traded away a lifetime of love for a single wish.

The Bodhisattva asked me, “What do you want?”

I whispered, “I want everyone she targets to know that she is here only to conquer them.”

And from that moment on, they could all hear her conquest alerts.

I paid a fortune to reserve an incubus with advanced skills and excellent stamina, only to receive a defective product named Mo Heng-one who was obsessed with my younger sister and thought I was disgusting.

The brand informed me that disobedient incubus units were never resold; they were destroyed. After I agreed to an exchange, a new high-grade incubus, Jin, came to my side and uncovered the truth: my sister, Sun Zhenni, and Mo Heng had conspired to set me up.

Since they both took my tolerance for granted, it was time they paid the price of being destroyed.

I was the founding Imperial Tutor of a dynasty.

I came here burdened with a mission from the System: to save a collapsing, chaotic realm.

In the end, all I earned was the hatred of countless people.

The young chief minister I had known since our youth became a stranger to me, standing against me at every turn.

The Guardian General I had personally promoted despised me for monopolizing power and ruling the court as a dictator.

And the Young Emperor, the boy I had raised with my own hands… He hated me most of all for tearing him away from the one he loved.

So they laid a trap for me and forced me to drink poisoned wine, driving me to take my own life.

Then, after my death… They summoned a shaman to call forth my memories.

They wanted to expose every evil deed I had ever committed to the world.

But later, after each of them had seen my memories… Every last one of them went mad.

After my Imperial Mother Consort died, I was given three foster mothers in succession.

Of those three foster mothers, some were deposed, and the others were ordered to die.

In the end, I landed in Beauty Lin’s care.

For three years, she and I lived together in peace, without incident.

Until she offended the wrong person and was thrown into the Office of Punishment.

My heart gave a jolt. Oh no. It looked like I was going to have to change foster mothers again.

Worse still, this time, she was the only one I wanted.

The Battle for First Seat.

Just as the match between my junior sister and me was about to be decided, my life-bound sword suddenly turned its edge on me and gravely wounded me.

The sword spirit said, “Your swordplay is too fierce. You would have hurt her. I didn’t want you to bear the infamy of injuring a fellow disciple, so I had to act as the situation demanded. I’m sorry.”

They all say swords have souls, and that they are loyal to the masters they acknowledge.

But I had rescued the Muyuan Sword from the abyss, then carried it to fame throughout the world. For decades, we were inseparable.

Even so, he remained proud and untamed. Everyone advised me.

A bond with a divine sword could not be forced. What was not mine would never belong to me, no matter how tightly I held on.

In that case, I might as well give the Muyuan Sword to my junior sister.

I thought they were right. After all, in all these years of using the Muyuan Sword, I had never been able to draw out even seventy percent of my strength.

It was time to choose a new sword.

I found a chat log on Sheng Jing’s phone.

He had sent his female assistant a video of me helping Jiu Jiu with her homework and losing my temper.

“This is why I’d rather work overtime at the office than come home.”

The young assistant replied with a “poor you, sending hugs” sticker. “Manager Sheng, you have it so hard.

Work is exhausting enough, and then you have to deal with all that when you get home.”

My stepmother had been my mom’s best friend, and she had always doted on me.

She spoiled me so thoroughly that Dad became utterly disappointed in me and turned to grooming his stepdaughter instead.

After Dad died, my stepmother swallowed up the inheritance and threw me out of the house.

I died on the streets one snowy night.

When I opened my eyes again, my stepmother was secretly stuffing money into the hands of my soon-to-be second-year high school self.

“Don’t worry about your dad. I support you studying music and chasing your dreams.”

Mom had a Leather Handbook that recorded every woman Dad kept on the side.

One of them, Aunt Wei, was marked in particular.

In Mom’s delicate handwriting, she had written: This is the little toy I’m leaving you. Enjoy this life to your heart’s content, my daughter.

After Mom died, that woman buzzed into my life like a fly.

And I swatted her straight down into hell.

The day my interview results came out, I came across a post: “How lethal can a white moonlight really be?”

The top-voted answer had only been posted a little while ago.

“I’ll tell my own story. He had a crush on me in high school, and we ran into each other a few days ago while I was job hunting.”

“Even if I’m not as capable as the others, he’ll still make me the one-in-ten-thousand choice.”

Attached was a graduation photo of them at eighteen.

The girl wore a white dress, her slim back quiet and well-behaved.

The boy had his head turned, looking at her intently, his profile clean and… familiar.

My phone trembled faintly. It was the message rejecting me after the interview.

Only then did I understand. She was Xie Qingyue’s white moonlight-and what she had killed was my future.

I would rather be a tree waiting for spring than a bird that turns back.

I could allow my feelings to fall apart completely.

But my future, my freedom, my life-none of them could afford the slightest mistake.