Farming

Six years after our divorce, I ran into my ex-husband on a street corner while holding my three-year-old daughter.

He stared blankly at the girl in my arms for a long time before knitting his brows. “She’s almost six years old,” he said, his voice laced with accusation. “Why does she look so thin and small?”

Ha!

He actually thought the child I was holding was his.

I suppose he believed I loved him so deeply that even after he cheated and divorced me, I would have gone off and raised his child all on my own.

I was the famous beauty for miles around.

Oval face, shapely figure, hardworking. Suitors came asking for my hand from one end of the village to the other.

After weighing my options again and again, I chose Shen Jingzhi.

He was the only scholar in the several villages near us, with clean, handsome features, a gentle way of speaking, and a scholarly air no one else had.

My parents said he had a bright future ahead of him.

If I married him, maybe I’d even end up a government official’s wife someday.

They were only half right. Shen Jingzhi did indeed earn an excellent ranking later on.

But he was also unexpectedly taken back by the General’s Mansion and, in the blink of an eye, turned into a young master from a powerful family.

He didn’t want anything to do with his past anymore.

Neither I nor my mother-in-law was wanted anymore.

Zhao Qingzhu and I were betrothed through an exchange marriage.

The agreement was that his older sister would marry my older brother, and I would marry him.

He was a scholar, which meant his education was a money pit.

My family had to tighten our belts to provide for him, and the entire village laughed at us for being fools.

But five years later, he passed the imperial examinations with top honors and became the most sought-after bachelor around.

Suddenly, everyone was saying I was no longer worthy of him.

I lost my mother at seven and my father at ten, leaving me with only Grandma to depend on.

Grandma made a living sewing and doing laundry for others, while I spent my summers farming and my winters heading into the mountains.

We managed to scrape by.

When I was fourteen, I had a dream.

In that dream, I was a princess.

After being brought into the palace, I engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the Impostor Princess.

In the end, we were both killed by the transmigrator, becoming nothing more than stepping stones on her path to power.