Betrayal

In the fifth year since he took me for himself, the powerful young heir finally grew tired of me.

He handed me a bank card with a lazy smile. “Your childhood sweetheart isn’t actually dead.”

“Go find him.”

I stared at the address in my hand for a long time—so long that he lost patience, hauled me out of bed, and drawled, “I’ll give you a ride. Move your things out after today.”

He had just pulled on his coat and started looking for his car keys when his phone rang.

On the other end, his childhood friend was sobbing anxiously. “If you break up with her, what’s going to happen to Xu Xinghe and me?”

A group of tourists travels to an island for a vacation, only to be forced into a deadly game with enormous rewards and their lives at stake. Over the days that follow, one special contest will be held each day, and the event will be chosen by a randomly selected Featured Player. At least one person will be eliminated in every contest. There is only one way to end this brutal game early: identify the Mastermind hiding among them.

Chen Nuo is terminally ill and had planned to end his life during the trip. But once he is drawn into the game, desperation rekindles his will to survive, and he joins the other contestants in one unexpected, heart-stopping contest after another. As the number of survivors plummets, the game’s rules grow increasingly cruel, laying bare the best and worst of human nature in a struggle between life and death. They have three Mastermind votes. Can they unmask the Mastermind? And what astonishing secret lies behind The Missing Game?

In the third year of Jiang Yan’s affair, I met a fresh-faced college boy.

He wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans.

His brows held a rebellious slant, his thin lips were pressed together, and his fringe fell a little too long over his eyes.

He bore more than a passing resemblance to Jiang Yan when he was young.

My car had broken down halfway to my destination.

He haggled me up to five hundred yuan and promised he could fix it.

Halfway through the repair, he took a call.

It seemed to be the hospital chasing him for payment.

He held the phone in silence for a long time before pleading in a low voice, “I’m doing everything I can to raise the money.”

“I promise I’ll have it all by the day of the surgery.”

“Please.”

“Just give me a little more time, okay?”

Standing beside him, I suddenly remembered the day I first learned Jiang Yan had been unfaithful.

He had sat slumped on the sofa with his face in his hands.

“Xiuxiu, I swear I never meant for this to happen,” he rasped.

“But she looks so much like you did when you were young.”

“Do you understand?”

“Whenever I look at her, I remember how much you suffered back then—and how powerless I was to help you.”

“I have the means now.”

“I want to help her.”

“I want to give the younger you the care I couldn’t give you the first time.”

“Please don’t blame me.”

At that moment, I suddenly stopped blaming Jiang Yan.

Because at last, I understood him.

After my divorce, I married the woman I had cheated with.

She was gentle and considerate, the kind of woman who always knew how to make me feel valued.

Her only drawback was that she came with a son.

But that was all right.

I had promised to love her, and I would love her child too.

As for my ex-wife, apart from the three thousand yuan I sent in child support every month, we had nothing more to do with each other.

Until the day I saw a hanging chair at a friend’s house—a chair that had once belonged to me.

Switched at birth to repay her father’s debt, Li Yuanxi endures ten brutal years at the northern frontier while another girl grows up as a noble heiress.

When she returns to the capital, her family sends her to die in a political marriage and deceives her betrothed, Fu Qingchuan, into marrying the favored daughter instead.

After Yuanxi’s death, Qingchuan turns his grief into a patient revenge, using love, ambition, and an old imperial conspiracy to destroy everyone who betrayed her.

Yet even when justice is done, the ghost beside him knows that nothing can cross the distance between the living and the dead.

Li Furong spends three years saving Xie Qingheng through exile, only to be dismissed before his powerful friends as nothing more than a loyal servant.

When the man who promised her a future breaks his word and forces her into a nameless place in his household, she turns every lesson in survival against him.

Trapped among noblewomen as dangerous as the men who command them, Furong must decide how much of herself she will sacrifice to win the one thing she has always wanted: a life that belongs to her.

The man I was to marry was a young general who had lost the use of his legs.

Rumor had it that he suffered from an unspeakable ailment and didn’t have long to live.

Later, behind the bed curtains, I discovered just how vigorous he truly was. Face burning, I shouted, “Stop bullying me!”

The man laughed hoarsely and caught my hand. “Then how about Qingqing bullies me this time?”

A girl had been secretly in love with my boyfriend for years, using “business trips” as an excuse to see him four times a year-once in each season-and spending the rest of her life longing for him.

On the night before my boyfriend and I were to get engaged, she finally decided to let go, offering him her virginity as a parting gift.

My boyfriend told me he had only done it because he pitied her.

I was born face-blind, yet the crown prince of Beijing’s elite circle had always stood by me.

Until one day, when I overheard him talking about me with his friends.

“A whole month, and she still hasn’t noticed. Shen Jin, you’ve really got talent.”

“But your girlfriend looks like she’s close to figuring it out. Shouldn’t we switch back?”

In the corner, the man called Shen Jin pinched a cigarette between his fingers and shook his head.

“I’m afraid that won’t work. Yin-yin is still waiting for me to come home for dinner.”

I stood in the doorway and sighed, disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting someone new after all.

I had already grown tired of sleeping with both of them.

He Qiong was hailed as the strongest Demon King the demon realm had seen in a thousand years, and every demon expected him to lead them in an assault on the Nine Heavens.

Unfortunately, before that grand ambition could be realized, a beautiful young phoenix lured him into the Celestial Emperor’s ambush and his soul was destroyed.

I fought desperately to seize one fragment of his soul, then hid across the mortal realm like a hunted dog and nourished him with my heart’s blood for five hundred years until I finally brought him back.

Surely hardship revealed true devotion, and after everything I had sacrificed to save him, He Qiong would finally understand who truly loved him and who deserved to stand at his side.

I thought his return would begin a tale of the Demon King bathing the Nine Heavens in blood, but instead it became a tortured romance between him and the Goddess of the Nine Heavens-the little phoenix who had stabbed him in the back a thousand years ago killed herself for love afterward, and the moment he learned the truth, he forgave every betrayal.

Fine, they could keep their tragic, undying love; I knew when I had lost, and I wanted no part of it.

But the love belonged to them while the suffering belonged to me, because just before I left, He Qiong held the phoenix’s last soul fragment and said, “Du Nan, your heart’s blood brought me back after five hundred years, so you can bring her back too, can’t you?”