Family Conflict

Mom had a Leather Handbook that recorded every woman Dad kept on the side.

One of them, Aunt Wei, was marked in particular.

In Mom’s delicate handwriting, she had written: This is the little toy I’m leaving you. Enjoy this life to your heart’s content, my daughter.

After Mom died, that woman buzzed into my life like a fly.

And I swatted her straight down into hell.

In my third year of disguising myself as a man and sneaking into the Prince’s Mansion to work as a guard, I got involved with the prince’s male favorite.

I had meant to cut things off with him and sever all ties for good.

But whenever he took my hand during our secret meetings, my resolve would crumble.

And just like that, spineless and useless as I was, I committed a capital offense.

My father rebelled, and I became the most honored legitimate princess.

No, wait-the Grand Tutor said it’s not rebellion.

How can it be rebellion when it’s the act of a founding emperor?

It was the descent of the Imperial Star, the gods and buddhas blessing the people, rescuing the masses from misery!

As the Grand Tutor taught, one should say:

The previous dynasty was tyrannical and unjust, the common people were in a living hell, suffering unbearably. My father the Emperor led a group of righteous men in uprising, successfully ended the chaotic times, and established the Great An Dynasty.

So I, an ordinary farmer’s wife in the previous dynasty, inexplicably became the one and only legitimate princess of the An Dynasty.

That’s right, I’m married, my husband is alive and well, I have both a son and a daughter, my life is happy and fulfilling, and for years I’ve topped the list of happiest young wives in the village.

Before becoming a princess, my biggest worry was that my son didn’t like meat and only ate vegetables, while my daughter didn’t like vegetables and only ate meat.

Now my biggest worry has become: being a legitimate princess and all that-I have no experience with it…

In the second year of the famine, just before my father was about to sell me at the human market, my mother secretly ran back to her maiden home.

The night she returned, she was covered in blood.

There was a hole in her belly, and one of her legs was gone.

She handed my father the tripod cauldron she had carried on her back.

“Take it. With this, you won’t go hungry. Don’t sell Ah Yu.”

The tripod cauldron was not very large, but it was packed full inside.

With one tug, a snow-white leg came out.

If you threw in a piece of cloth, an identical piece of cloth would come out.

If you threw in a chicken, another chicken would come out too.

My father was so overjoyed he nearly went mad.

He never noticed that, before my mother breathed her last, she said one final sentence to me.

My archenemy found my Empathy Doll.

I went to get it back from him, only to unexpectedly see a barrage of comments.

[Come on, crush me with that body of yours!]

[Nothing beats watching archenemies get hot and heavy. Delicious!]

That night, I was too terrified to sleep.

I couldn’t stop imagining my arms and legs being smashed to a pulp before I was tossed into a wok and stir-fried over high heat.

But just as my nerves stretched to the breaking point…

I felt someone tenderly press a kiss to my fingertip.

On the second day of the tenth lunar month, the great warlord Lu Zhi took a second concubine: Song Anran, the youngest daughter of the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce.

Lu Zhi had made a name for himself in recent years.

He had won battle after battle, commanded a formidable army, and wielded immense power—but surely not so much that the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce would deliver his own daughter to him as a concubine.

Oh, but it was.

My father did exactly that.

Every night, Chen Youlan’s grandmother kowtows backward before a red-draped Buddha, cursing the family whose prosperity was bought with her blood.

When Grandma dies smiling and Youlan is chosen to inherit the ritual, the old house begins exposing every bargain, every stolen life, and the true firstborn hidden behind the family’s lies.

To survive until dawn, Youlan must decide whether the weeping statue is a god, a demon, or merely the patient judge of a debt generations in the making.

While we were fleeing the famine, my elder brother, He Peizhi, insisted on taking in a mysterious mother and daughter, heedless of the danger to our whole family.

Later, the young woman was carried off by bandits and vanished without a trace, and my brother blamed me for refusing to save her.

Years afterward, his success brought us neither relief nor reunion, only Bai Yuanqing’s merciless revenge.

Given another life, I will no longer work myself to the bone for a brother who cares only for his precious Qingqing.

A year ago, on a whim, I told my wife a story.

Because the content was bizarre and the details were too realistic, she was scared out of her wits.

Afterwards, I deeply regretted it and emphasized countless times that the story was made up. But her trust in me had already collapsed, and the look in her eyes was filled with fear.

That night, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and called the police.

As a result, I ended up in jail.

Now, I am sorting out the whole incident as follows.

Because he was poor, Zhou Jinyan never brought up the subject of marriage.

That was until the day I saw him casually open a bottle of wine that cost as much as my entire annual salary.

It turned out that being born into royalty and living a life of luxury was the true Zhou Jinyan.

His friend asked, “Aren’t you tired of playing the pauper after five years? When do you plan to come clean with her?”

Zhou Jinyan flicked his eyelids open with nonchalance. “On the day of the engagement, I suppose.”

I didn’t get hysterical. On the day of his engagement, I boarded a plane and crossed the ocean.

I later heard that on the day of his engagement,

He suddenly had a change of heart midway, driving back to an old rental apartment.

When he saw that the place was empty and I was gone, he completely lost his mind.