Female Protagonist

The couple living across from me fought until midnight every single day, while their child wandered around scavenging for trash to eat.

Anyone who dared to give the boy food was met with a barrage of verbal abuse at their doorstep, or even targeted with malicious sexual rumors.

One day, as I was passing through the stairwell, I spotted the boy hiding in a corner, too afraid to look at me. “Hey kid, want something to eat?” I asked.

He claimed he wasn’t hungry, but his stomach was growling like thunder. “Big sister, just leave me alone,” he sobbed. “My mom isn’t a good person.”

I leaned down and looked him in the eye. “Well, neither am I.”

While I was offering prayers to Buddha on the mountain, a young gentleman suddenly intruded upon my solitude.

He apologized, his face flushing a deep crimson.

Yet, I heard his inner thoughts: [I have heard the Princess is kind and benevolent; I wonder if she will blame me.]

[I only ended up in the wrong place because I was trying to escape my eldest brother’s schemes.]

[How should I apologize to make the Princess happy?]

He did not know that I had experienced a dream.

In that dream, I followed the guidance of his inner voice to investigate his claims, only to walk step by step toward a dead end.

In the end, my Imperial Father grew to loathe me, my eldest brother was deposed, and I was drowned in a pond.

Only after my death did I learn that this young gentleman could choose who heard his heart’s voice.

It was by relying on this trick alone that he rose from being an Outer Chamber Son to the legitimate second son of a Marquis’s manor.

Now. I looked at the fair-skinned, red-lipped young gentleman before me, who appeared shy and timid.

I gave him a gentle smile. “Someone, come. For trespassing in the Forbidden Courtyard, give him thirty strokes of the cane.”

I have been selling wontons in the capital for twenty years.

Prince Cheng’s Heir was galloping through the city when his horse’s hooves trampled my wonton stall. He even struck me with his whip.

The heir was incredibly arrogant. “You’re just a lowly commoner,” he sneered. “Even if I don’t pay you a copper, what can you possibly do about it?”

The next day, I went to the Capital Prefecture to beat the drum and cry for justice.

The Six Ministers of the Six Boards arrived in person, and the Left and Right Censors were present to observe the proceedings.

Marquis Ningzhao hauled the heir into the hall. “I’ve caught the little brat!”

The Emperor, seated upon the main throne, declared, “Beat this boy until even his father won’t recognize him.”

The Crown Prince’s White Moonlight, the woman he’d pined after for ten years, had finally returned.

She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “You. Go back to where you came from.”

I lifted my skirts and stepped into the carriage, then turned back to smile at her. “Sorry,” I said lightly, “but this seat? You’re never getting it back.”

Before we married, my husband had a girl who had spent five years chasing him with everything she had, but he fell for me at first sight.

Three years later, that girl returned to the country, successful and famous. She was now an internationally renowned photographer, dazzling and breathtakingly beautiful.

As for me, I was a stay-at-home mom, weighing over 130 pounds, with nothing to show for myself.

At a gathering, someone teased Lu Huaixu.

“Qin Shuang is still a virgin for your sake…”

He snapped at the person immediately, “Don’t talk nonsense!”

But that night.

He stayed out on the balcony, smoking for the entire night.

Vice Minister Ye and I had become bitter enemies. We were constantly at each other’s throats, neither of us willing to yield an inch.

One night, completely wasted, I even started shouting in the tavern: “Hey! Brothers! Tie up Beauty Ye and carry him to this Young Master’s room! I’m going to show him a real good time!”

In my drunken stupor, I thought I heard his hoarse voice roaring: “…You were the one who provoked me first. Why do you keep messing with me… We’re both men, what am I supposed to do…”

Men?

But I’m a girl!

I spent eighteen years in a Buddhist temple.

Eighteen years later, I returned as Princess Chang’an. To compensate me for those lost years, the Empress Mother made a public promise: she would grant me any one thing I desired.

I looked around the room, my gaze landing on Wei Zhao, who shone brilliantly amidst the unremarkable crowd. Pointing at him, I declared, “I want him to be my Imperial Son-in-Law.”

Only later did I discover that Wei Zhao and my younger sister, Princess Kangle, were childhood sweethearts. They were a mere imperial decree away from being wed.

But what of it?

Even if I had known from the start, I still would have claimed Wei Zhao as mine!

The Sect Cannot Disband Today I was toiling away in the Accounts Office until the hour of the rat when a crisp notification suddenly rang out overhead.

“Ding! Detecting the imminent and simultaneous start of ‘The Stand-in Junior Sister’s Bitter Love,’ ‘The Yandere Junior Sister’s Imprisonment,’ ‘The Amnesiac Junior Sister’s Wife-Chasing Anguish Arc,’ and ‘The Salted Fish Junior Sister’s Flat Life.’

If no intervention occurs, the Guiyuan Sect will suffer a total collapse of its reputation due to a series of Love-Struck Mind incidents in three hundred days.

Its assets will be liquidated, and it will officially go bankrupt.” I looked down at the bright red debt of 1.03 million High-grade Spirit Stones recorded in the ledger.

Closing the book, I seriously wondered for the first time if the Heavenly Dao was specifically out to get me.

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.

For three nights in a row, my maid said the same thing in her sleep:

“It seems one of the chickens in the backyard is missing.”

I simply assumed she was exhausted from her daily chores and thought nothing of it.

That was until we encountered a landslide on our way to the Capital. My maid was killed in the disaster, but I was rescued by soldiers who arrived just in time.

Trembling and lost, I sought out the commanding officer, intending to reveal my true identity as the daughter of the Provincial Commander.

He glanced at the maid’s clothes I was wearing and suddenly asked:

“Are the hens still brooding lately?”