Black Belly

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 my fifth year by the side of that charming, reckless young playboy, someone snapped a photo of me that made it look like I was pregnant.

For a while, rumors flew through our circle. Everyone thought I was going to use the baby to force my way up and marry into a wealthy family.

When his long-estranged first love heard the news, she came charging back from overseas.

I thought a bloody storm was about to break loose.

But by the time Lu Heran returned from his business trip, all he heard was that I had gotten rid of the baby and slipped back to my hometown.

Sigh. Good girls like us can fool around all we want on ordinary days.

But if we really got pregnant with a child and no proper status, our parents would beat us to death.

I was never born to be harmless.

At three, I stabbed the young master next door in the eye with a hairpin, simply because he had peeped at my mother while she was bathing.

At five, I set fire to a theater, merely because I saw the troupe buying and selling children.

At ten, I secretly brought people with me and crippled the censor’s grandson.

Who told him to harass my elder sister in the street?

There were countless incidents like these… Later, I married a good man.

Everyone in his family was kind and decent, and I nearly died of boredom in the inner household.

When I was reborn on the day the Emperor granted marriages to my elder sister and me, I decisively swapped marriages with her.

In my previous life, less than two years after my sister married into the Duke’s Mansion, she passed away like a withered flower.

My sister had been reborn too.

With tears in her eyes, she said, “Second Sister, the Duke’s Mansion is a death trap! You can’t marry into it!” I was thrilled. “But… Sister, I was born a bad seed.”

I was the heroine of an erotic webnovel, and my job was to seduce the poor campus heartthrob.

But Shi Yan always stopped just short of going all the way.

Crying, I hit him. “What else can you do besides get drool all over me?”

Then I decisively ran away.

Later, Shi Yan wrapped an arm around my waist, his voice low and dangerous.

“Looks like I held back too much before.”