Child Abuse

My husband brought home a child.

I raised him as my own, teaching him poetry, books, and proper etiquette.

I molded him into a noble young gentleman skilled in both letters and arms.

Years later, when he had risen to the highest ranks of court, he locked me away in a dark dungeon.

With both hands, he crushed my jaw. “My birth mother was Shuang’er, the woman you murdered.”

“A venomous woman like you thinks she deserves to be my mother?”

My husband stood by and watched, his palms pressed together in prayer.

“Shuang’er, may your spirit finally rest in peace.”

After being tortured to death, I was reborn.

Faced with the child my husband had brought home, I still smiled and said, “Of course. From now on, he will be my own son.”

The boy I loved died in the prime of his life.

So, I traveled back twenty years, giving everything I had to bring him even a single glimmer of hope.

Gu Zhixian, you probably won’t believe me, but I’m your future wife…

Gu Zhixian, the future you is a wonderful, kind-hearted person.

Gu Zhixian, we’re going to have a precious child in the future. They’ll have your eyes and my eyebrows.

So, please don’t give up on yourself, okay?

The boy I loved believed me.

As the clock prepares to strike midnight, it’s time for me to go.

I’m sorry. I lied to you. I am not your wife.

And in our future, we will never meet again.

I was in the middle of feeding the pigs in my village when I suddenly saw a Danmaku.

[Is this bystander the villain’s younger sister?]

[She still thinks she’s an orphan. She has no idea that the villainous Chancellor is actually the brother she got separated from back then.]

[It’s a pity the villain lost to the male lead. He’s about to hang himself.]

[The villain only became an official to find his sister in the first place. If they could just meet once, maybe he wouldn’t have to die.]

What?!

I immediately sold my pigs to scrape together some travel money and rushed to the Capital overnight.

I knocked on the gates of the Prime Minister’s Mansion.

A pale man draped in a heavy cloak stood at the entrance, his gaze deep and haunting.

I lunged forward and threw my arms around his legs, wailing, “Brother! Wang Ergou from the village is trying to force me to marry him!”

I once saved a pregnant noblewoman. She smiled and told me that once the child was born, they would recognize me as their godmother.

But later, as I led my troops to station at the border, we gradually lost touch.

Until one day, eight years later, my subordinates reported that someone had come all the way from Jinling, specifically asking to see me by name.

“Who is it?” I asked as I walked toward the entrance.

There, I saw a young girl sitting atop a pony, threatening the group of soldiers surrounding her.

“Song Yunying is my mother! If you dare bully me, you’re all finished!”

I am Song Yunying.

While I was hauling cement at a construction site to pay off my debts, the scrolling comments said I was the villainess.

The year I was most desperate for money, I copied the female lead, Su Wanwan, and got close to the male lead, Gu Zhiyan, before she could.

Because Young Master Gu was just that rich.

Even a little money slipping through his fingers would be enough for me to pay off my debts and cover my tuition.

I was a penniless wretch willing to do anything for money.

To win the favor of that cold, aloof young master, I spent a whole year pretending to be a pure, fragile Little White Flower.

Just when I was about to succeed in capturing his heart and marry into wealth, Su Wanwan suddenly appeared in front of Gu Zhiyan.

I thought my strategy had failed, but my debts were paid off anyway.

So I stopped pretending and went back to the slums.

On the night I had nowhere to go, I met a mission-taker.

He mistook me for the female lead and took me home.

When I was six years old, I first discovered I could see things that didn’t belong to this world.

My grandfather passed away that year, and we moved into his home in the Grain Bureau Residential Compound.

A week after he died, I saw him at home again. He was leaning on a dragon-head cane, tottering toward the bathroom all by himself.

I followed him, only to find the bathroom completely empty.

I told my dad about it, and he slapped me hard across the face.

Grandma said I was seeing “unclean things.”

But later, I realized I could see more than just the dead; I could see the living, too.

For instance, Aunt Chen from the compound had been away on a business trip to Beijing for several days. Yet one afternoon, I ran into her in the stairwell-just a fleeting glimpse.

I ran off to tell the adults who were outside enjoying the cool air. As a result, when Aunt Chen finally did come home, she and her husband had a massive row.

After an argument with Zhou Mingyu, I jumped from the thirtieth floor with my five-month-old daughter in my arms.

When I opened my eyes again, time had actually returned to yesterday.

On this day, because the baby wouldn’t stop crying, Zhou Mingyu snapped at me for the first time: “Chen Ran, you don’t have a mother yourself, so it’s no wonder you don’t even know how to take care of a child!”

Our relationship had always been good, so I thought he hadn’t meant it; I blamed it on my own volatile temper and for taking things too hard.

But time continued to flow backward, and I discovered that this wasn’t the first time Zhou Mingyu had said such things: During my postpartum recovery month, he joked, “If your mother were still alive, my mother wouldn’t be so exhausted.”

On the day I was hospitalized to give birth, in response to the nurse’s questions, he said with a smile, “Her mother passed away, so who else could be her caregiver but me?”

At our wedding, he held my hand and vowed, “Chen Ran, I will definitely take good care of you in your mother’s stead!”

… It turned out he had always cared about the fact that I didn’t have a mother.

But the strange thing was, why didn’t I have any memory of my mother at all?

Had she ever truly existed?

If time continued to flow backward, would I eventually see her?

Dad didn’t like me. I knew this from a very young age.

Because I wasn’t the boy he wanted.

To have a son, he sent me away, saying, “Sons are the roots, and I don’t lack daughters.”

Never having been loved, I was upset about it for a long time.

But when it came time for him to need support in his old age, he said, “Sons are unreliable; daughters are the most caring.”

“Second Sister, when Dad gets old, it’ll all be up to you!”

On the day of my hairpin ceremony, my brother-in-law, tipsy from wine, barged into my room.

That same night, my mouth was gagged and I was taken to the Marquis’s Mansion.

My legitimate elder sister told me she could not bear children and needed to borrow my womb.

A year later, I gave birth to a son.

My legitimate elder sister brought me to the Bamboo Garden, where four old maids covered my mouth and buried me in a pit they had dug long before.

Before I died, I kept wondering what the point had been of someone like me coming into this world.

But I never imagined that I would be dug up again.

The person who found me was small and thin, yet he staggered along with me on his back for ten miles.

He covered me with the only clothing he had and gave me a chance to live.

An old man took me in. From that day on, I changed my name and became someone else.

Five years later, my wonton shop opened in Capital City, and I happened to run into my legitimate elder sister and her family being sold off.

She begged me to save her son.

But I pointed to the young man kneeling off to the side and said, “I’ll only save him.”

My Mother was a courtesan, earning money with her own flesh and blood to support my father’s studies and imperial examinations.

Five years later, my father succeeded and was granted marriage to a princess by the Emperor.

Yet, in the Golden Throne Hall, he refused the marriage at the risk of his own life, and with great fanfare, married my Mother with ten miles of red bridal procession.

The princess was displeased.

Three days later, Mother was found abused and disheveled, dying at the entrance of an alley.

Half a year later, the princess finally married my father as she wished.

She did not know that this was the beginning of her misfortune.