Cunning Protagonist

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.

After transmigrating into the body of a CEO’s stand-in for his unattainable first love, I started playing mind games with him.

“Since you’re treating me like her, why don’t you send me a picture of your abs first? Let me see what I’m working with.”

“You can’t even seduce me, and you think you can seduce her?”

The villain was rich, but depressed.

I was poor, and worse, I was the heroine of an angst novel.

My parents were destined to die, leaving me and my grandmother to depend on each other.

Then, when Grandma fell seriously ill, I would have no choice but to grovel at the male lead’s feet.

He would torment me physically and emotionally, lock me up, make me miscarry, and in the end, I would die in despair.

Only then would he be filled with regret.

I figured all of it came down to being broke, so I decided to throw my lot in with the villain.

I found the villain quietly slitting his wrists and, fighting off the dizziness from low blood sugar, tried to talk him down.

“I’m not here to stop you. I just wanted to discuss whether you could maybe die a little later.”

“You don’t want your assets to go to your dad’s illegitimate son, do you? Are you really okay with them inheriting your money, buying yachts and private jets, and traveling the world?”

“All you have to do is hold on for a few more years. Then you’ll found your own company, become the new darling of the tech industry, and multiply your wealth more than tenfold.”

“I’ll help you take a shortcut. When the time comes, give me a cut, and I’ll help you get rid of Xie Xun.”

The villain’s eyes lit up, but he still looked disdainful.

“You?”

“Be grateful. Besides me, who else is on your side? Your dad? Your mom?”

That stabbed the villain right where it hurt.

Because he was an orphan with both parents still alive.

I found a Bluetooth remote control in my husband’s bag.

I didn’t make a scene. I didn’t even confront him.

I just secretly paired it with my phone.

The next day,

at my younger brother-in-law’s wedding,

my husband’s scream rang out from beneath the bride’s skirt.

My husband is someone who transmigrated into a novel.

What a coincidence. So am I.

He said, “I’m the protagonist of a male-oriented webnovel, so what I’ve gathered isn’t a harem, but various factions.”

I said, “I’m the protagonist of a female-oriented webnovel, so all those various factions of yours love me but can never have me.”

He said I was joking.

I burst out laughing. “You caught me. I was joking. The truth is, they’ve already had me.”

Everyone said I was blessed by fate.

Born behind vermilion gates, I rested my head on jade and wrapped myself in brocade.

At three, I began my education, studying essays on how to govern the realm.

At five, I held an abacus, calculating the empire’s grain and coin.

At twelve, I debated the scholars in the clan school and, though I was a girl, took first place above them all.

At fifteen, during my coming-of-age banquet, warlords from three regions offered mountains and rivers as my betrothal gifts.

And yet, I chose the hardest road of all.

The day I eloped with a lowly soldier who guarded the city gate, the entire city laughed at me for debasing myself.

After one night of passion, I was stricken from the Yin Clan’s rolls, my spotless reputation ruined.

No one knew that the soldier was the last surviving bloodline of the imperial house.

They were fighting for the realm.

What I was fighting for was the right to take history’s iron brush in hand and rewrite the world with a name that could not be questioned.

The emperor woke from a nightmare in the dead of night. In his dream, he had a daughter who had been lost among the common people. So he offered a handsome reward for any news of the princess’s whereabouts.

Everyone said His Majesty was a man of deep feeling.

But I knew there was another reason behind it.

The capital had gone a full year without rain. National Preceptor Xuanxiu advised the emperor that the only way to end the drought was to sink a princess into the river as a sacrifice to the gods.

The emperor had only one daughter, born of the Empress, and he treasured her like the apple of his eye.

And so, at long last, he remembered that sixteen years ago, when he had been living among the common people, he had once had another daughter.

He offered a great reward to find her so that daughter could take Princess Mingzhu’s place.

And die.

Chen Mu hated me.

Because I bullied and framed his precious childhood sweetheart.

Again and again, he saw through my schemes with cold eyes and watched me reap what I had sown.

“Bad seed,” he called me.

But when I kissed him in the dark, he panicked.

“Brother Chen Mu, shouldn’t a bad girl deserve a little punishment?”