Female Protagonist

When my mother married Wang the Mute, she was already carrying me.

Everyone in the neighborhood had advice for him.

Some told him to get rid of the bastard with a strong dose of medicine.

Others told him to write a divorce letter and throw my mother out.

Wang only smiled, turned around, and sent for the best midwife for miles.

Then I was born.

Everyone in the industry knows that a certain A-list actress whose surname starts with J keeps a ghost child.

In my last life, I saved He Yan, the young master of a marquis manor.

He took me as his wife, and for a time, our marriage was the talk of Shangjing.

But I had been born and raised in the countryside.

My manners were crude, and my reputation gradually soured.

He Yan, too, slowly grew distant from me.

I wept day after day, and before I even reached thirty, I died in misery.

Given a second chance, I swore I would never live that way again.

Only, after eating wild greens for three days straight, I realized I simply could not let go of the marquis manor’s soy-braised pork knuckle, sticky rice chicken, crab roe lion’s head meatballs, scallion-fried lamb…

On the second day after learning that I was the impostor daughter, I finally lost control of my unhealthy obsession with my big brother.

I locked him in the basement, kissed him, and climbed all over him.

Then, during the day, I pretended nothing was wrong and helped the whole family search for their long-missing eldest son.

Like a rat in a sewer, I let myself sink deeper and deeper into a mire of despair.

An impostor daughter was unlikeable enough already.

Once they found out I was a pervert in love with her own brother, they would surely be disgusted by me too-wouldn’t they?

Then one day, my entire family began plotting right in front of me.

“Zhexue, your big brother has to appear at an international conference, so can I let him out for a little while?”

“Just half an hour. I promise we’ll lock him back up before you get home!”

Me: “?”

Nan Tao, an enslaved maid in a wealthy household, discovers that the baby-shaped ginseng fruit her mistress orders buried is alive.

As the fruit reveals the truth behind the household’s miracle heir, Nan Tao uncovers a cycle of trafficking, forced pregnancy, and women transformed into trees harvested for profit.

With a holy monk and his three disciples, she must uproot the dead tree that holds her soul—even though destroying it will erase her forever.

A dark feminist reimagining of a mythic delicacy, Ginseng Fruit turns supernatural horror into a haunting story of inherited violence, motherhood, and liberation.

Yang Bufan never took anything seriously.

Not even marrying me.

An auspicious date for the betrothal?

Too much trouble to choose.

How much to offer in betrothal gifts?

Too much trouble to think about.

He left every last detail to his cousin.

He would sooner spend an entire afternoon beneath the flowering trees, stringing jasmine for our dear Miss Meng, than spare a second glance at the marriage contract I had sent him.

He was getting annoyed.

“She’s changed it twice already.

Last time, I left two strokes out of her name.

What is it now?

Did I leave something out of mine too?”

The servant who had brought it faltered.

“The names have been corrected, sir.

It’s just that Miss Lu would still like to know what you think…”

Yang Bufan propped his chin on his hand, already losing interest.

“As long as it’s fixed.

Tell her to stop hurrying me.”

“The sixth day of the sixth month, isn’t it?

I’ll be back.”

The crown prince married me because I seemed content to ask for nothing.

He made me promise that when my elder sister changed her mind and returned, I would surrender my place as crown princess.

What did he know?

Asking for nothing could be the surest way to gain everything.

After the wedding, I wore myself out in his service, at court and within his household alike.

I even nearly “died” for him several times.

The day my sister returned, I kept our agreement: I took off the crown princess’s robes and handed over the phoenix seal.

He was the one who began to hesitate.

I was a widow starved for a man.

While I was burning incense and praying for a good match, some villain broke into my boudoir.

I knocked him out with a vase.

Then I took a look and-oh. A beautiful man.

So I tied him up, hid him in my little courtyard, and had my way with him every day…

Later, he ran off.

When we met again, I knelt on the ground and stammered in terror, “Th-this humble woman greets His Royal Highness the Crown Prince…”

My father was famous throughout the surrounding villages for being a good man.

One freezing winter during a famine, he gave the last of our rice to a mother and child passing by.

After they left, they told everyone they met that my family still had grain.

The starving refugees, driven mad by hunger, came to our door to steal it, only to find an empty rice jar.

Humiliated and enraged, they forced my three-year-old sister into their arms and carried her away.

“If there’s no rice, then your daughter will do!”

I ran after them. In the end, all I found in the ruined temple was my sister’s mangled remains.

When I returned home, my father wailed through his tears, “I was trying to save people! It’s not my fault… That was just her fate!”

He saved someone else. In the end, my sister died, and I died too, in the bitter winter when I was fifteen.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw my father handing the freshly cooked rice to that mother and child.

I picked up the flower hoe beside me and stepped up behind him.

My younger sister and I were twins—the legendary Yin-Yang twins.

The uglier I became, the prettier she grew.

The worse my grades were, the better hers became.

The weaker my body was, the healthier she grew.

One waned as the other waxed, like two ends of a scale.

So our parents decided to sacrifice me and pour everything they had into raising one perfect daughter.