Female Protagonist

I was born with a rebellious streak. The more someone tells me not to do something, the more I insist on doing it.

When my older sister demanded I give up my spot in the dance competition and shoved me down the stairs, I carved up her face.

When my younger brother framed me for stealing money, and my parents slapped me across the face in the middle of the street without even asking what happened, I burned both their wallets.

When my parents refused to let me study out of province, I moved thousands of miles away just to spite them.

Later, my sister brought home a handsome, wealthy brother-in-law.

She warned me not to act like a slut in front of him.

That very night, I put on a pair of black Balenciaga stockings and red-bottom heels, then rubbed my leg against my brother-in-law’s under the table.

After transmigrating into the body of a CEO’s stand-in for his unattainable first love, I started playing mind games with him.

“Since you’re treating me like her, why don’t you send me a picture of your abs first? Let me see what I’m working with.”

“You can’t even seduce me, and you think you can seduce her?”

On the day His Majesty traveled south to Jiangnan, the Empress Dowager took a liking to Miss Xu of the Xu Family in Yangcheng.

“Such a lovely, fresh-faced child ought to become a daughter-in-law of our imperial family.”

As she said this, the Empress Dowager’s gaze seemed to drift, intentionally or not, toward Fu Yanli at my side.

Fu Yanli was the current Fifth Prince, and also my husband.

Later, on the day Miss Xu was to be invested as consort, I stood at the palace gates, clinging to a sliver of hope. “Not even I may enter?”

The guards at the gate all knew me. One by one, they lowered their heads, not daring to meet my eyes. “The Empress Dowager said it wouldn’t matter if anyone else came, but Your Highness, as Crown Princess… you absolutely cannot enter the palace today.”

I nodded, returned to the manor, and picked up the bundle I had packed long ago.

The capital blazed with lights. All at once, I remembered Fu Yanli from that year, when everyone had turned their backs on him.

He had held me tightly, refusing to let go no matter what. “Jianxi, even if I die, I will never betray you.”

Disciples knelt all across the mountain, crying out in unison, “We respectfully send off the Patriarch on his ascension!”

But what I saw was a silvery-white hook piercing Master’s throat, dragging him up into the clouds.

His feet had left the ground. He couldn’t make a sound.

Like a fish.

I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around Master’s legs. “Let him go!”

Eldest Senior Brother struck me with his palm and sent me flying. “You madwoman! Can you bear the consequences of ruining the Patriarch’s ascension ceremony?”

Blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.

I laughed.

“Ascension? Are you all blind? That’s fishing!”

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.

In the seventh year of having a crush on my childhood friend, encouraged by my best friend,

I carried flowers and a cake onto an overnight train to confess my feelings to him.

But on a basketball court roaring with noise and people,

I ran straight into the sight of the two of them kissing.

With his arm around my best friend, my childhood friend asked coldly, “What are you doing here? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Disheveled and humiliated, I was just about to explain

when his roommate beside him let out a soft laugh. “My girlfriend came to bring me a cake. What’s it got to do with you?”

After five years of marrying into my family, my penniless scholar husband passed the imperial exam-and suddenly decided I, his butcher wife, reeked of grease and blood.

For half a month, he hemmed and hawed and refused to do his husbandly duties.

So I used the silver I’d earned selling pork to buy him two ink sticks and a ream of fine paper, then scraped together the last of my coins for a tiny bar of scented soap.

When I made it home through the rain, the big yellow dog under the eaves had one of the meat dumplings I’d wrapped dangling from its mouth.

From inside the house came a coy, wheedling voice.

“Father, the magistrate’s daughter smells so nice. Not like Mother.”

“And these pastries taste better than meat dumplings too.”

I took all the bits and pieces I’d hidden against my chest and threw them out-along with the father and son.

When Zheng Huaishu signed the divorce papers, he held our son in his arms and glared at me with resentment.

All the neighbors in the village laughed at me for letting a future official go.

The very next day, the matchmaker introduced me to a fair, slender stutterer.

A little girl trailed behind him.

Father and daughter gave me timid looks.

I asked irritably, “How often can you do your husbandly duties?”

“And how much meat will you eat in a day?”

The stutterer’s face turned bright red. The matchmaker yanked his clothes down over half his shoulder, and he said in a slow, gentle voice, “As long as my child gets a mouthful of rice… as her father, I’ll do anything…”

Chapter 0

After my father beat me to death in a drunken rage, I was reborn as my grandmother’s best friend-an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Grandma asked anxiously, “Xiao Fang, is the baby healthy?”

I said, “It’s brain-damaged. I recommend aborting it.”

On the day Song Cheng and I got married, his ex-girlfriend showed up in a wedding dress to steal him away.

“Song Cheng, I’m only going to be this brave once in my life. Are you coming with me or not?”

I looked at the panic all over Song Cheng’s face and was just about to marvel that this kind of ridiculous soap-opera scene was actually happening to me.

Then Song Cheng grabbed the emcee’s microphone and shouted, “Who the hell are you? Did you wander onto the wrong set?

“Mess with my wedding again, and I’ll punch your left eye into your right socket.”

After eating a poisonous mushroom, I thought I’d transmigrated into an erotic novel.

I was the female lead, working as a little maid in the home of a Beijing Elite Young Master.

When I woke up and saw the male lead, I was slightly disappointed.

I muttered, “Why are there only six people? Do they get Sundays off?”

The Young Master was so angry he laughed. “If I’d known you were this wild, I never would’ve gone easy on you.”

After I sobered up, I burst into tears. “Honey, I was wrong, waaah…”

He leisurely tugged his tie loose and said darkly, “Don’t worry. On Sundays, we don’t rest. We’ll just follow the pace of that trashy little novel of yours.”