Female Protagonist

My younger sister eloped with a penniless scholar, and her cold-hearted fiancé broke down my door, demanding that I take her place.

I was so scared I clutched my waistband and begged for mercy.

“Brother-in-law, how can you blame this on me?”

The two cinnabar moles beneath his eyes were as red as blood, and his tone was utterly indifferent.

“An elder sister is like a mother. In other words, every grievance has its culprit, and every debt has its debtor.”

“So, are you coming with me on your own, or am I dragging you away?”

Th-thrilling. Was this the domineering forced-love plot they wrote about in storybooks?

The weak could not fight the strong, so I was just about to get out of bed when I realized my sister had run off wearing the only pair of padded winter pants in the house.

Left with no choice, I lay right back down.

“Forget it. It’s freezing out, so let’s not move.”

“If you’re going to seize me, then seize me. Hurry up, while the blankets are still warm…”

“…”

-A laid-back heroine who sleeps through the abduction x an action-oriented hero who carries on abducting while she sleeps.

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: “???”

I am blind.

Inside the refrigerator, I felt my boyfriend’s corpse.

And someone was standing right behind me,

waiting to see how I would react.

At seventeen, the old madam gave the head maids in the courtyard two choices.

Either become concubines to the masters of the various branches, or become the wife of a steward from the outer quarters.

There were four of us. Three chose to be concubines; only Yuchuan chose the steward.

She asked me why. I lowered my head and thought silently:

Because I don’t want my children to be servants anymore.

Three days after I married the Foolish Prince, he started making a fuss about moving out of the bedchamber.

I grabbed him and demanded to know why. Blushing, he stammered, “When Ah Heng sleeps with my wife, Ah Heng always wets the bed.”

My gaze slid downward, and realization struck me at once.

As I helped him, my own face burning, I couldn’t resist teasing him. “Only children wet the bed. Why is Your Highness just like a child?”

Later, the clingy fool recovered and became the cool, aloof prince he truly was.

Day and night, he pressed close to me, his breath warm against my ear. “Only children wet the bed, Princess Consort… Why are you just like a child?”

The day my childhood sweetheart and I had our worst fight,

he slapped me for the sake of the young woman he loved.

And I, in a fit of rage, broke three of his ribs.

He screamed that he wanted a divorce, but I refused.

I thought we would keep dragging each other down like this until the day we died.

But reality proved me wrong far too quickly.

Three months later, I fell head over heels for a sweet, innocent younger guy.

He kept chasing me for an official title.

So I had no choice but to pull that familiar number out of my blacklist.

When the call connected, the young woman’s playful voice came from the other end.

“Su Yi, you’re too late. Even if you crawl over like a dog and beg for forgiveness now, Ah Xu won’t spare you a second glance.”

Faced with her provocation, I only said calmly, “Tell Zhou Xu I want a divorce.”

The next second, the phone on the other end seemed to be snatched away. A burst of rustling static followed before Zhou Xu’s voice finally came through, trembling despite his best efforts to restrain it.

He said, “Su Yi, don’t you dare.”

I wanted to stroke the aloof campus heartthrob’s…

cat.

In the middle of the night, I finally couldn’t hold back anymore and sent him a message:

[Hey, classmate, can I stroke it? Just once!]

Campus Heartthrob: [Classmate, that’s a little forward of you.]

I refused to give up.

[I’m really good with my hands. I guarantee I’ll make it comfortable! You just run one hand from head to tail, right?]

The other side went silent.

An hour later, the campus heartthrob finally replied:

[One hand won’t work.]

[You can’t get a proper grip.]

When bandits swept through our village, every man in the family vanished without a trace.

The women, hobbled by their tiny bound feet, could not keep up and were abandoned to die.

Before he left, Father handed Mother a knife.

“If they violate your chastity, use this to kill yourself.”

“When I return, I’ll see you enshrined in the Chaste Women’s Hall.”

After Father left, Mother smashed the memorial tablets in that hall and used the wood to build several beds.

Then she and my sisters-in-law went into business with the bandits.

That night, every woman suffered worse than death.

But every one of us survived.

When Father finally came home, he asked Mother how she wanted to die.

Mother set down the knife, raised a pistol, and aimed it at his head.

When I married into the Shen family, I already knew my husband had one great love.

She was the fisherman’s daughter who had saved him after he was gravely wounded while suppressing bandits.

They had sworn themselves to each other through life and death and privately pledged to marry.

But his mother threatened to take her own life and would only permit the woman to become his concubine.

On the eve of my wedding, Mother wept with worry and asked, “How will our Zhen’er ever live like this?”

How else?

He could play the devoted lover.

I would be the lady of the household.

Shen Yunfeng and I were merely two people traveling the same road toward entirely different ends.

Li Furong spends three years saving Xie Qingheng through exile, only to be dismissed before his powerful friends as nothing more than a loyal servant.

When the man who promised her a future breaks his word and forces her into a nameless place in his household, she turns every lesson in survival against him.

Trapped among noblewomen as dangerous as the men who command them, Furong must decide how much of herself she will sacrifice to win the one thing she has always wanted: a life that belongs to her.