Female Protagonist

The first time I killed someone, the blade was dull.

I was fourteen that year. It was winter, and the north wind whipped against my face with a stinging bite.

Three bandits had scaled the wall of my grandfather’s courtyard, intent on stealing the last half-sack of millet he had hidden in the cellar.

My grandfather was blind. Hearing the commotion, he called out my name: “Shen He, Shen He!” He was using my alias.

My real name is Shen Heyi, and I am a girl. But the bandits didn’t know that, and Grandfather pretended not to know either.

He just kept calling, his voice urgent and hoarse, sounding like an old crow being strangled by the neck.

I fished out that Bone-Cleaver from beneath the stove.

Its edge was curled and nicked, so dull it couldn’t even slice through sheepskin cleanly.

But a human neck is softer than sheepskin.

I didn’t think about that day again for a very long time-not until I met Xie Changgeng.

Fu Qiu had always accepted her lot in life.

When she was a child, a blind man read her fortune through bone-weighing and said her bones were light, her fate was lowly, and that in this life she could only sell her body.

As it happened, her family was going through hard times, so her father simply sold her to a brothel.

When she was still young and first put on display, the madam said that although she was beautiful, her face carried a pitiful, sorrowful look, and the customers she attracted would never be decent men.

Sure enough, every few days, she suffered another bout of abuse.

By middle age, her looks had withered, and she married a merchant. The neighbors said her thin lips and fox-like eyes meant she would never be the faithful sort.

Before long, rumors were flying everywhere. The merchant could not bear it, and on a rainy night, he drove her out of the house.

Even so, she never hated anyone. She only hated that her own fate was so poor.

As she lay on the verge of death, the Old Blind Man happened to pass by drunk, bragging to the crowd.

“Twenty years ago, I saw a little girl in another town. She was so young, but she already had the looks to topple a kingdom.

“So I pretended to be blind, did a bone-weighing for her, and told her she had a lowly fate-that in this life, she could only become a whore.

“And guess what? Her whole family believed me!”

In the unluckiest year of my life, a wandering Daoist priest came to town.

He gave my father an idea: have me worship a Household Guardian Immortal to suppress my bad luck, and maybe I would live past the age of ten.

My father was a rough man who had made his fortune in troubled times by the barrel of a gun.

He called his adjutant over and did the math for him. “One Household Guardian Immortal keeps her alive to ten, two keep her alive to twenty, and twenty keep her alive to two hundred. Right?”

The adjutant counted on his fingers. “Marshal, your math is absolutely correct.”

My father hardened his heart and rounded up all the pigs, cattle, and sheep from miles around as offerings.

“My damn girl is going to live ten thousand years!”

That year, my father rode into the old mountain forest on a pig with me and took eleven Household Guardian Immortal into our household.

He flew into a rage. “Damn it, that’s still one short of the twelve zodiac animals!”

Later, who knew where he bought a Daoist boy from, but that made the twelfth.

Everyone in my family had sickly bones.

My eldest sister coughed three times for every three steps, spat blood every third day, and fainted every fifth.

My brother’s bones broke at a touch—one a month, seven or eight times a year.

I alone had a head of iron and a body of bronze.

I could ram a peach tree with my forehead to bring down the fruit.

The tree shook, the peaches fell, and I was perfectly fine.

When I was seven, an eminent monk passed by.

One look at me, and he blurted out: “Bronze skin over bone.

A demon born.”

I couldn’t be bothered to listen.

I charged him headfirst and knocked him flat on his back.

It took him ages to wake up.

When he did, he laughed instead of getting angry and asked my parents: “Would you have your children live long lives, sound in body and bone?”

“Take one bone each from your eldest daughter and your son.

Nurture them beside your youngest daughter’s heart, then cut them out when she turns eighteen.”

“Your eldest daughter will then rise like the sovereign moon, and your son will be the richest man in the realm.”

My parents trembled.

“And this girl?”

The monk held my wrist, half closed his eyes, and chuckled out a little song: “No future as a human.

As a beast, she’ll have plenty of room to roam.”

During the autumn hunt, my fiancé’s precious first love deliberately shot an arrow through my hair.

The ladies around us went white with shock.

But her eyes reddened, and she shrank behind my fiancé.

“My arrow went astray.

I didn’t mean to hurt her.

But she stood in front of my quarry and wouldn’t move.

Surely she bears some of the blame?”

My fiancé shielded her and shouted at me: “Weapons don’t have eyes.

If you can’t dodge them on a hunting ground, that’s your own incompetence.”

I merely murmured assent.

Then I raised my bow.

Three arrows whistled from it at once.

They pierced the left sides of the pair’s chests and the venomous snake behind them.

The two collapsed into pools of blood, their faces paper-white.

I picked up the snake and gave them a cold smile.

“Why didn’t you dodge?

Didn’t feel like it?”

Shen Yuze and her nemesis Jiang Xing have spent nine years fighting, dating, breaking up, and reconciling at the command of a ruthless Couples System.

On the eve of their wedding, they discover that Zhao Fei’er—the supposed villainess wrecking their relationship—is trapped by a system of her own.

With three fortunes and their freedom on the line, the unwilling actors join forces to stage one last spectacular melodrama and finally beat the systems at their own game.

I’ve spent five years trying to win Shi Juan’s heart.

As long as he proposed to me on my birthday, I would have been allowed to stay in this world.

But I waited until the early hours of the morning, and only then did the System’s voice finally ring out.

[It is all over.]

[Shi Juan’s “white moonlight” returned today. He has been with her this entire time.]

After staying by my side for so long, the System decided to grant me one final request.

It would let me choose the manner of my death.

Fine. Since I have to leave sooner or later anyway…

I want to die right in front of Shi Juan.

I want him to kill me with his own hands.

And then, I want him to regret it for the rest of his life.

I was the worst student in the Joyful Union Sect.

And yet the Chief Disciple of the Sword Sect claimed me as family, saying I was his long-lost little sister.

The cool, otherworldly Immortal Lord Xie said he wanted to make it up to me.

So I lied and told him I was gravely ill, and that I needed dual cultivation with him to stay alive.

Just like that, I landed the number one spot on my must-eat list.

Later, when I truly couldn’t take another bite, I had no choice but to confess:

“I’m not sick at all. I just wanted your body. But now I’m tired of sleeping with you.”

I thought Xie Lingyu would hate me to death once he learned the truth.

But when I turned around, I saw him holding a huge bag of aphrodisiacs, expressionlessly pouring them down his own throat.

“It’s all right. Now it’s Yanyan’s turn to help her big brother with his illness.”

Me: “???”

At a family gathering, my younger sister, holding my boyfriend’s arm, beamed as she announced they were getting married.

With a room full of guests, I, dressed in monastic robes, faced their gazes with a calm expression.

Amitabha, I am a monastic.

The story of Lin Wei, the eldest daughter of the Lin Family, being forced into monastic life by her family, had long been known to all.

I was the concubine Madam forced on the General.

She was testing whether his heart had strayed.

He remained perfectly unmoved and ordered me to copy scriptures all night to prove his devotion.

And me? My hand ached. So did my heart.