Family Conflict

Meng Fanyu carried himself with effortless distinction.

I thought that even if we eventually broke up, having him as my first love would leave me with no regrets.

So I pursued him with everything I had.

Eventually, I won him over, and he laid down three rules: we would date, never marry, and break up when we graduated.

For three years, we loved each other with abandon.

On graduation day, I was the one who ended it, but he went back on our agreement.

Our conversation fell apart, and Meng Fanyu lowered his proud head with a bitter laugh.

He told me I had better pray we never met again.

From then on, I did everything I could to avoid him.

But with the slightest turn of fate, the world can become very small, and two people who once belonged to each other are bound to meet again.

On the first day after my wealthy birth family found me, my biological parents gave me a warning.

“Now that you’re back, don’t go thinking you can compete with Nian for anything.”

I surveyed the family’s opening show of hostility, smiled, and pulled out an employment contract.

“I think you two have misunderstood something: a parent-child relationship is a legal fact.”

“But asking me to play the sweet, obedient daughter while serving as your adopted daughter’s stepping stone would qualify as premium emotional labor.”

“It’ll cost extra.”

My father was once the best-known peddler on Qingyun Street.

He walked from lane to lane selling everything from thread to malt candy.

Then he became addicted to opium.

He sold Mother back to a brothel and stuffed my little sister and me into the baskets on his carrying pole.

The last time he shouldered that pole, the rest of our lives swung from either end.

My legitimate elder sister and I joined the Wuji Sect on the same day, and our master taught her the Carefree Dao.

When it was my turn, Master gave me a sidelong glance and told me to seek my own Dao.

But I could not read, so I thought he wanted me to learn the way of theft.

Thirty years later, he emerged from seclusion, took one look at the boundless emptiness where our sect had once stood, and was struck dumb.

“Have the demons invaded?!”

I took an arrow for my husband and suffered grave internal injuries.

After four years recuperating on an estate in the south, I returned to the capital and found another woman had taken my place.

My son relied on her, my daughter adored her, my mother-in-law valued her, and even in our marriage bed, my husband called out her name.

I could not bear it and made a scene.

Together, they drove me to my death so the obstacle I had become would disappear and they could live happily as one family.

For twenty years, I wandered as a ghost and watched the end they brought upon themselves.

Then I was reborn on the road home.

I had returned.

“Don’t go back to the estate yet; I want to visit the Empress Dowager in the palace,” I said.

My elder sister disappeared when she was little, but fortune favored her: the Yong’an Marquis household took her in and raised her with every comfort.

By the time she returned to us, our mother had already arranged one marriage for her, while the marquis household had promised her to someone else.

One man was the adoptive brother who had grown up beside her; the other, her childhood betrothed.

Unable to let either go, she proposed a compromise: she would marry whichever man found the jade hairpin she hid.

The day she hid hers, however, she hid mine as well.

In my last life, Wei Heng found a hairpin first, but the one in his hand belonged to me.

The smile had barely touched his lips when her adoptive brother said coldly, “You cannot even recognize Ah Zhi’s hairpin. I suppose that leaves you no choice but to marry Ranran.”

After we married, every quarrel between my sister and her husband sent her running to Wei Heng in tears.

His heart ached for her, and his old regret never faded.

“If you had married me,” he would murmur, “I would never have made you cry. Not even once.”

I found them together beneath the moon, composing poems, and side by side among the spring blossoms.

Whenever I showed the slightest displeasure, Wei Heng called me jealous and narrow-minded, saying I could never match my sister’s poetry or painting.

Now I had returned to the day Wei Heng picked up my hairpin.

I held out my hand.

“Young Master Wei, Mother is already considering matches for me. Please return my hairpin.”

My parents had always told me that the less I spoke, the fewer mistakes I would make, so I became a girl of few words.

At the same time, they adored my older cousin’s bright, gracious manner and told me to imitate her in everything.

They loved her so much that when she refused to marry her impoverished fiancé, they did not hesitate to offer me in her place.

Smiling obsequiously at my uncle, my parents assured him, “Han’er is willing to help her sister out of this difficulty.”

My uncle stared at me in surprise and asked, “Han’er, are you truly willing?”

My parents frantically signaled for me to answer.

I nodded and gave them what they wanted.

“I am.”

Relief washed over their faces.

With no expectations of them left to lose, I finally spoke from the heart.

“Anywhere would be better than staying with a pair of fawning, spineless, shamelessly biased parents.”

While I lay unconscious after giving birth, my husband’s cousin swapped her daughter for mine.

The moment she fell asleep, I switched them back.

From then on, she tormented her own daughter every day while lavishing all her love on mine.

I watched with tears in my eyes—what a tragedy.

Served her right.

Born a princess yet treated as the sacrificial “flower” for her twin brother, Lou Guanqi grows up with her health, fortune, and future quietly drained away.

After enemy soldiers carry the twins beyond the border, she survives humiliation and abandonment before finding a real family in Yunhuai Village, where Lou Sibao becomes the devoted elder sister she never had.

When the court drags Guanqi back into imperial power, every betrayal pushes her closer to vengeance—and every victory costs another piece of the love that once saved her.

As an ancient gu curse begins to reverse, Guanqi must decide whether a stolen throne can heal a life built on sacrifice, or whether power will devour everyone who still calls her family.

I am the real heiress who was deliberately switched at birth by a nanny.

Raised among the worst people at the very bottom of society, I grew up seeing nearly every shade of darkness this world had to offer.

After I returned to my biological family, everyone expected me to give way to the fake heiress and stop competing with her for their affection.

What they did not know was that shallow affection could never satisfy my ambition.