Death of Loved Ones

In the year I was desperately poor, I deliberately fed two of my fingers into the factory machinery and had them crushed, all for the thirty thousand yuan my grandmother needed for surgery.

The factory manager frowned with such pain that he wanted to compensate me eighty thousand yuan. I was too guilty to take it, so I only asked for thirty thousand.

Years passed. My grandmother had been gone for many years.

Then I saw a trending news report: the factory from back then had been swallowed by a fire.

The factory manager had died of a heart attack. His wife had vanished.

Their twelve-year-old son had been sent to an orphanage.

Looking at those helpless, terrified eyes on the screen, I poured the medicine I had been about to swallow down the drain.

Then… let me live once more.

For that thirty thousand yuan from back then.

At seventeen, the old madam gave the head maids in the courtyard two choices.

Either become concubines to the masters of the various branches, or become the wife of a steward from the outer quarters.

There were four of us. Three chose to be concubines; only Yuchuan chose the steward.

She asked me why. I lowered my head and thought silently:

Because I don’t want my children to be servants anymore.

On Xu Anran’s wedding day, my lover jumped from the eighteenth floor.

When I opened the door to his studio, it was filled with portraits of Xu Anran.

The brushstrokes were rough and intense, yet carried the fervor of his boundless love.

A friend said, “Shen Qingqie loved Anran for ten years. She was his only light.”

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Shen Qingqie being cornered by the school bully in the classroom. I silently closed the door.

Later, he knocked on my window in the rain, his voice hoarse and full of despair.

“Ranran, don’t you want me anymore…?”

My Elder Sister and I have been bitter rivals since we were children.

At three, we fought over our mother’s attention; at five, we fought over the little boy across the street.

When we were six, people from the Marquis Manor came to claim her, saying my Elder Sister was their long-lost legitimate daughter who had been taken away as an infant.

I was so furious I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Later, my father-who had been away fighting at war for fifteen years-returned with a promotion and a fortune to take me away as well.

Once I arrived at the General’s Manor, the first thing I did was rush over to the Marquis Manor.

I stood there shouting for Gu Ruan to come out and face her doom, when suddenly, a small head poked out from the entrance.

She had my Elder Sister’s face. She toddled toward me, swaying unsteadily on her feet. “Mother is dead. Auntie, hold me~”

The day I found out I had cancer.

He Wei frowned and said coldly to me, “Do you think anyone would be sad if you died? No one would feel bad about it.”

I said, “Whatever.”

Then I sincerely wished him, “I hope you’ll do as you say.”

After all, the year my brother died saving me, everyone looked at me and said:

“Why wasn’t it you who died?”

Later, I stood on the rooftop of the abandoned building where my brother passed away and jumped off.

But He Wei, why were you crying?

Pei Qi traded cities for a beauty, a grand gesture that became a legendary romance. Unfortunately, I was not that beauty, nor was I Pei Qi; I didn’t even know him.

My husband was merely a soldier defending the city. Because he refused to surrender, he died in that war, though the city was ultimately held.

The following year, when Pei Qi traded cities for his beauty, I became that beauty’s Foot-washing Maid.

On the night I was crowned Empress, Lu Yuheng personally handed me a cup of Poisoned Wine. He said that since the Ye Family’s name had been cleared, I should spend one night as a glorious Empress before going to meet my kin with a clean slate. But what he didn’t know was that the most painful wound of my life was never death-it was him.

I held my little sister’s hand as we crossed the street.

A police officer stopped me and asked, “Whose hand are you holding?”

I glanced at the empty space behind me and smiled.

From the moment I decided to become a criminal, I never thought of regretting it.

My sister has a Koi Birthmark on her face.

After receiving her blessing, my father won five million in the lottery, and my mother regained a stunning, slender figure.

I was the only one who wanted nothing from her.

Because I knew that what was on my sister’s face was a Black Koi.

Whatever you take from her, you must pay back double.

There is a palace rule in the Great Sheng Dynasty: regardless of rank or status, whoever gives birth to a child must raise that child.

Mother was the most insignificant Cairen in the harem.

Ever since I was born, I lived with her in the neglected Chengze Hall.

When I was eight, the Imperial Physician diagnosed Mother with a severe illness and said she did not have long to live.

That day, Mother jumped into the Taiye Pond and saved the drowning Third Prince.

She saved the Third Prince’s life, but lost her own in the waters of Taiye Pond.

Rumors spread throughout the palace. Everyone said, “The Third Prince stepped on Cui Cairen’s head, pushing her underwater so he could climb ashore.”

They fanned the flames, but I knew in my heart that Mother did it on purpose.

She used her own life to ensure that, after her death, I could be taken in by the Third Prince’s birth mother, Consort Qi.

Mother was so foolish.

She thought she had paved a path for me.

She forgot.

A child without a mother leads a bitter life.