Cunning Protagonist

When the master hosts a banquet, he often has beautiful women serve wine.

If a guest refuses to drink, the beauty is executed on the spot.

Unluckily, I am that unfortunate beauty.

Tonight’s guest of honor is an aloof and distinguished scholar, Yan Xuan.

First cup: he complained the wine was cold and wouldn’t drink. A sword swung, a head fell.

Second cup: he complained the server was vulgar and wouldn’t drink. Blood splattered on the spot.

By the third cup, the serving maid pleaded pitifully, but his expression never changed.

Now it’s my turn to offer wine.

The swordsman beside me sharpened his blade ominously.

I raised my hand and splashed the wine across his face.

“Are you just asking for it?”

From childhood, Lin Qingcai copied case files and transcribed testimonies in her father Lin Huaizhang’s study, yet she was always kept hidden behind the Lin Family’s spotless reputation. By chance, she discovered a confession in a secret compartment that had been forged to match her handwriting, and learned that her father, elder brother, and mother were preparing to make her take the blame for the Luo Family’s old case.

She was afraid of dying, and long since afraid of being cast out by her family. So before they could speak first, she beat the drum and brought her accusation before the court, charging her father and brother with falsifying testimony and shifting the blame onto her. Using the copied case records she had secretly preserved over the years, along with witness leads and fragments from the old case, she gradually exposed the truth in the prefectural yamen: the Lin Family and Duke An’s Mansion had colluded to alter statements, take silver, and frame innocent people.

Her father was exiled, her brother was stripped of his status, and her mother finally came to see the rift her favoritism had created. Lin Qingcai left the clan and opened Qingcai Writing Service in West Lane, turning the pen she had once used to help others conceal evidence of their crimes into one that wrote the truth for the weak.

The year I came of age, Father gave me three marriage choices.

I could become the lawful wife of a penniless scholar, the honored concubine of the Marquis of Pingnan’s heir, or the second wife of a wealthy merchant.

I wanted none of them.

Marriage negotiations always came down to the woman’s family, and my father held a modest post while I was merely a concubine-born daughter, so no truly eminent house would consider me.

Still, low birth had never cured me of high ambition.

If I could not marry up, I would sooner hang myself.

Twenty years into Wen Lishu’s widowhood, her bedridden mother-in-law reveals a secret: her husband faked his death and eloped with her sister.

Even the children Lishu raised supposedly belong to that treacherous pair.

The old woman expects despair, but Lishu calmly offers another spoonful of medicine.

Her husband really is dead—and his ashes have been in his mother’s medicine all along.

In my last life, Xie Wujiu stormed the capital, and blood ran like rivers before the palace gates. In this life, before he could fall into darkness, I forced him into a private school and made him recite The Analects every day.

Only later did I understand: asking a starving person to speak of benevolence and righteousness can itself be cruel.

I was the eldest daughter of the family-the one no one favored.

From childhood, I was taught to be composed and proper, to serve as an example for my younger siblings.

And yet my fiancé was stolen away by my seemingly innocent and adorable legitimate younger sister.

My younger brothers remembered none of the good I had done for them. They only resented me for disciplining them too strictly. Even my parents saw me as nothing more than a tool to polish the family name, wholeheartedly taking my legitimate younger sister’s side.

Faced with all this, I spread my hands and gave up. From then on, I refused to involve myself in anything happening in the manor.

I let them flounder through one petty mess after another, gradually falling apart until none of the old warmth remained. Even that innocent and adorable legitimate younger sister, once she lost my support, was no longer the treasure of their hearts.

In the eighteenth year after I transmigrated, I finally became a proper maidservant.

When Old Madam and Second Master quarreled, I was the one who stepped in to smooth things over.

I knelt on the floor, clinging to Second Master’s leg, and begged him not to say things in anger.

Second Master pinched my chin and sneered. “I know Third Brother has his eye on you. But I insist on making you my concubine. Even if he finds out, what of it?”

Of course Third Master would not do anything to Second Master.

He would only kill me without a word.

I belonged to Third Master. He would rather have me dead than defiled.

In their eyes, I was a maidservant, a plaything to be fought over and snatched around.

The real princess consort was back.

It was time for me, the impostor, to go home and farm.

Before leaving, I gave everyone careful instructions.

When the vegetables in the back garden sprouted, they were to whittle stakes and put up supports for the vines.

When the fruit in the grove ripened, they mustn’t pick it all.

Leave some on the branches for the birds to get through winter.

Leave the swallows’ nest over the residence gates alone, too.

They would be back next year.

I said a great deal.

Everyone stood with their heads bowed, and no one answered.

Then I understood.

Ah.

Of course.

The princess consort came from a rich family.

Surely the money she had brought back would feed the entire household.

I no longer had to worry about keeping a dozen-odd people alive.

The steward asked, his voice thick, “Won’t you leave a word for His Highness?”

I thought about it.

“Well… tell him I hope he eats a couple more bowls of rice.”

I was fighting someone in the street when Young Madam took a liking to me on the spot.

She gave me fifty taels of silver and asked if I was willing to become her husband’s concubine.

They say a debt of recognition should be repaid with one’s body. Fair enough.

But was this really the way to repay it?

Still, I was desperately short on silver, so I gritted my teeth and agreed.

Only after entering the manor did I learn that my husband was introverted, my mother-in-law was tyrannical, and my sister-in-law was insufferably arrogant.

Young Madam hadn’t bought me back to serve anyone at all.

She had brought me into this family to be King Yan.

I had always thought I was the heroine’s sworn enemy.

Only when I saw her willingly confine herself to a husband’s household for love did I realize how terrifying blind devotion could be.

Stroking her belly, she urged me to find a good man and discover the pleasures of love.

I shook my head, as determined as ever to follow my own path.

In time, she lost sight of her dreams in that household, all for love, while I made love itself a stepping-stone and climbed to the highest seat of power.