Female Protagonist

My family has one enormous, very public secret.

Ever since she was born, my mother has been bound to a system: the Beauty System.

Apparently, if she ever drops out of the top three on the Beauty Ranking of the Four Seas and Eight Realms, she will die.

At first, neither of my parents was remotely worried.

With Mother’s looks, holding her place for another few hundred thousand years would be no trouble at all.

But sometimes the unexpected arrives without the slightest warning.

When my parents joyfully welcomed their first child, a floating Beauty Ranking of the Four Seas and Eight Realms appeared out of thin air beside the bed.

And there, in first place, was my eldest brother, whose name had only just been decided: Zhou Yi.

My parents were a little bewildered, but didn’t think much of it.

Until they had their second child.

My parents and big brother once again greeted the new baby with delight.

Once again, the ranking appeared in midair.

First place changed hands again.

It now belonged to my elder sister, Zhou Er.

That was when Father panicked.

He moved out of their bedroom that very night.

For several years afterward, he didn’t dare set so much as one foot inside after sunset.

Every evening, they would hold hands in the corridor, gazing at each other as they lingered over their farewell.

Then my brother and sister would each take one of them by the hand and escort them to their separate rooms, with my parents looking back every few steps.

They pined so badly their eyes practically glowed green, but at least Mother’s life was safe.

Seven years after he forced me into marriage, my domineering CEO husband fell in love with someone else.

I wasn’t worried.

His sister, on the other hand, was so anxious she burst into tears.

“If you get divorced, what are Song Yu and I supposed to do?”

Song Yu.

The name sounded so familiar.

He was, if I remembered correctly, the childhood sweetheart I’d been dating before I married Gu Zeyan.

My mistress kept a Kunlun slave.

Even after she married, she found ways to keep him at her side.

Later, she conceived what was to be her husband’s legitimate son, and spent her pregnancy pampered like a princess.

But when her ten months were up, the baby she bore was black.

Every maid and midwife who attended the birth vanished that night.

My elder sister was among them.

That night, the birthing room floor was slick and scarlet, as though it had been washed in blood.

By dawn, the black infant carried out of that room had become a white one.

Having borne the first legitimate son, my mistress was given control of the household.

I was quick-witted enough to offer her schemes, to have servants beaten and old women punished.

I helped secure her position as mistress of the house, and rose to become a first-rank maid.

Behind my back, the servants called me her dog.

When I heard, I merely curved my lips in a smile.

I meant to be a dog, all right.

A mad dog that killed its master.

I was a coward by nature, timid as a quail.

Mother taught me the secret to making a living when you were poor— Do whatever people ask.

I never forgot.

At fourteen, my sister-in-law sold me to a brothel.

As she was leaving, she wiped away her tears.

“Xiaoqiao, I truly can’t bear to part with you.”

So I begged the madam to take her in too.

At seventeen, one of the girls stole my money to run away with a man.

When I caught her, she sobbed, “Xiaoqiao, cut off my hand!”

That night, blood covered the floor.

At twenty, I had saved enough to buy my freedom.

I gave every last coin to Lü Buyu.

We had been lovers for six months, and he had promised to take me away.

Instead, he used the money to redeem Qingyue, who had only just arrived.

He knelt before me.

“Xiaoqiao, she’s so pitiful.

I can’t watch her sink into this mire.”

“Or you could just kill me.”

For twenty years, I hated Shen Rou for stealing my husband.

I outlived her, rich and honored, yet on my deathbed I remembered that she had been only fifteen.

Given another life, I returned determined to expose her scheme and send her far away to a better fate.

But when I reached the pavilion, the hand sprinkling powder into the incense burner belonged to my husband.

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.

My husband found my long-lost cousin in a brothel, dying of a venereal disease.

She took one look at my happy life and decided I had stolen it from her.

I was never an impostor: my mother had given me to my grieving aunt in adoption when I was five.

For nine years, I had been made to soothe a woman who resented my happiness.

Now my husband expected me to sacrifice myself for my cousin too.

I was done paying for everyone else’s guilt.

This time, I would take what they owed me—and leave with my daughter.

The day I decided not to get married, Chen Shuo was at the market buying a bass.

He sent me a photo and asked, “This one’s nine hundred grams.

Too big?

Mum said you liked it steamed.”

I stared at the fish lying in its plastic basket for ten or fifteen seconds, then replied, “Chen Shuo, let’s not register our marriage next week.”

He probably thought I was stressed about the wedding again.

After a while, he replied, “Sure.

We can push it back.

You’ve been busy with your project lately anyway, haven’t you?”

I said, “I don’t mean push it back.”

There was nothing from him for two minutes.

“What do you mean?”

I put my phone facedown on my desk and didn’t answer.

At 4:27 that afternoon, I was sitting in a windowless meeting room with a final account for a construction project worth forty-seven million yuan spread out before me.

The printer kept spitting out paper next door.

The air vent hummed overhead.

My supervisor, Wei, was arguing with the contractor’s people over a hundred and seventy thousand yuan in additional works claims.

Everything was ordinary.

So ordinary it hardly seemed like the afternoon a woman had decided to cancel her wedding.

No one had been caught cheating.

There had been no slap, no other woman, no sudden revelation of anyone’s true colours.

Chen Shuo hadn’t betrayed me.

He was, by most standards, a decent man.

He didn’t smoke, didn’t throw money around, wasn’t violent, and had no interest in going out for what men called “a night with the boys.”

If you drew up a job specification for a suitable husband, he’d score eighty-five out of a hundred.

So everyone asked me, “Then why on earth won’t you marry him?”

That turned out to be the hardest question to answer.

Because when an adult truly wants to leave a relationship, there often isn’t one devastating piece of evidence against the other person.

Just one small bill after another.

And suddenly you realise that, for seven years, every one of those bills has had your name on it.

A scandal spread through the household about Xue Rao, our family’s adopted daughter, and my eldest brother.

She had him so thoroughly bewitched that for days he neglected his younger siblings.

My second brother was furious and went to confront her.

Before long, he too was constantly visiting her waterside pavilion, with no thought for anyone else.

I decided to see this scheming creature for myself.

Gauze curtains veiled the pavilion, and laughter filled my ears.

Xue Rao greeted me with a smile.

“Why, Third Miss.

Which brother have you come to see?”

They called me a witch who bewitched men’s minds, and put me to the sword.

Later, they tried everything they could to bring me back to life.

It turned out that the prodigy I had supposedly bewitched had gone mad.

He meant to slaughter the whole world and send it to the grave with me.