Female Protagonist

After disguising myself as a man and joining the army in my husband’s place, I failed to endure the loneliness and kept a lover on the side.

When the war ended and I returned home, I discovered that my husband had taken a concubine too.

Well, now I didn’t feel guilty anymore. We were even!

But then I saw that beautiful concubine.

I was utterly stunned.

Can someone please tell me why my lover had become my husband’s concubine?

When we were kids, I told my childhood friend, “I like your best friend, but don’t tell him.”

Then came his best friend’s wedding.

I grabbed my childhood friend by the throat. “Wow, you really can keep a secret.”

He let out a cold scoff. “Say you like him one more time, and I’ll beat your ass.”

I grew up in the countryside until I was seventeen. Then people from the capital came and told me I was the young lady of a marquis’s household.

But the moment I arrived in the capital, they hurriedly married me off to a spoiled wastrel.

Later, that wastrel caused a disaster and had his family estate confiscated. I was the only one who tossed him a sickle and said,

“Husband, come home with me and farm the fields.”

In the dead of night, only after I let out a satisfied sigh did Wei Che gently roll off me.

He had been putting in so much effort lately that I figured he was probably about to leave me.

With a faint sigh, I turned over and went to sleep.

After all, everyone knew it.

I was the most useless kind of lovesick fool.

When the sky wanted to rain and a man wanted to leave, what could I possibly do about it?

Beg him bitterly? Threaten suicide and make a scene?

That was what a real lovesick fool would do.

But I was a fake.

A long time ago, I had already understood one simple truth-

Everyone despised a lovesick fool.

Pretending to be one, however, was the advanced strategy.

After my fiancé, Xie Zhao, left on a long journey, I wrote him two letters asking him to make a decision.

The first was about my stepsister, who wanted my betrothal goose and had been crying and throwing tantrums over it.

The second was about his younger brother, who had taken a fancy to me and was being far too attentive and far too hard to shake off.

Xie Zhao had never liked my meek, timid nature to begin with. He had always wanted to call off this engagement.

So on the very day I sent the second letter, he had an old man bring me a message:

“Since she wants it, just indulge her.

“She’s young and doesn’t know any better. Surely you do?”

W-who was he talking about?

Seeing that I suspected him of delivering the wrong message, the old man lost his temper too.

“From ancient times to now, I’ve heard of giving away a wife, but never of giving away a betrothal goose!

“Besides, Second Young Master Xie is half a month younger than your sister.

“He obviously means for you to marry someone else!”

I stole my sister’s man.

During the year she was abroad, the man she’d been longing for all these years came to me with her photo in hand.

“Do you know the girl in this photo?”

I took off my mask, revealing a face identical to my sister’s, and smiled sweetly.

“Are you looking for me?”

“I’m going to be the Empress someday!”

Ten-year-old Song Weiwei stood on a dirt slope facing the imperial city in the distance, shouting those words with all the swagger she could muster.

As for me, I sat on a dirt mound with my chin propped in my hand, speechless.

“Song Weiwei, you still haven’t paid back the two copper coins you owe me.”

Song Weiwei turned around and rapped me on the forehead.

“What’s the rush? Have you ever seen an Empress who welshes on her debts?”

She hopped down from the slope and turned to coax me.

“Just think about it, Du Zeyi. If I become the Empress, you’d be my sister. You can have anything you want. Why worry about those two copper coins?”

As if becoming the Empress of a nation could be that easy.

I muttered under my breath, rubbed my forehead, and raised my voice. “My mother’s calling me home for dinner!”

Then I slipped away as fast as I could.

Leaving only Song Weiwei behind, stamping her feet in exasperation.

I transmigrated and became an ancient beast of burden, with signs that I might be headed toward the life of a chicken or duck next.

My major didn’t teach me how to make soap or explosives, and the market’s invisible hand wasn’t about to scoop me up either.

Maybe if I’d transmigrated into the ruling class, I might have wanted to stay in this dynasty.

But I know one thing very clearly: I just want to go home.

I was born on the First Day of the Eighth Month in the Year of the Wood Rooster. I came into this world with a single tuft of white hair on my head. The midwife said I was a solitary Yan bird born in mourning, and that if my family kept me, one of us would die every three years.

To save my life, my grandmother pawned me as a Dead Pawn to a pawnshop in Wufu Town to serve as a sacrificial offering.

After being cast aside so many times and living under the roofs of others, I learned from a young age to be sweet and obedient.

Who would have thought that eighteen years later, I would become the true Manager of that pawnshop?

I speak the softest words, cling to the strongest allies, and collect the most powerful Yin Evil Objects!

Welcome to Spirit Snake Pawnshop!

Liu Junyan (Snake Lord): “Xiao Jiu, you were the one who provoked me first this time! If you try to run, I’ll break your legs.”

Hu Yulin (Fox Lord): “Xiao Jiu, no matter what happens, you can always come to me. I’ll be waiting.”

Feng Xianqiu (Phoenix Master): “Xiao Jiu, you’ve had your fun. It’s time to come home.”

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…