Female Protagonist

By the tenth year of failing to find a human skin, I was ready to flay even the old yellow dog at the temple.

Then I met a beautiful concubine who had been thrown out of the marquis’s estate.

She knelt beside my white bones and burned paper money at the altar.

“The Immortal Lady likes the skin of beauties, and I hate this pretty face of mine. Let’s trade.”

My imperial sister’s tomcat set his sights on my female cat and was rejected.

My mother consort ordered me to apologize, so I did.

The tom still refused to give up, and my cat’s other suitors beat him up.

Then Mother Consort told me to kill my “femme-fatale cat” to appease my sister…

This time, I refused.

“Think about who she is and where you stand,” Mother Consort advised.

Understanding dawned on me. “Oh. It’s because my mother is a coward.”

My mother might be a coward, but I was not.

Neither was my cat—she was, in fact, the greatest feline beauty in the entire imperial harem.

I am an old palace maid.

I have spent thirty-five full years in this deep palace.

The Chinese parasol tree before Qingliang Hall flourishes year after year, while I grow older with each passing year.

In this lifetime, I have seen the young and inexperienced Consort Zhen pass away, the Consort Yu in the prime of her beauty pass away, and even the white-haired Empress pass away.

They all died in the bloom of youth, crushed beneath the weight of imperial power.

Within these deep palace walls, how many beautiful women’s skeletons lie buried?

I had studied immortal arts under my master since childhood.

A sharp pair of scissors and a sheet of white paper could bring anything in the world to life.

With that gift, I cut out ten thousand swallows and sparrows when locusts ravaged the fields.

In moments, they devoured the swarm and saved an entire town.

The townsfolk bowed to me as an immortal maiden.

The county magistrate offered to submit a memorial on my behalf.

I waved him off.

“I hear someone in this town once slew a snake demon.

I would marry that man and bring a thousand pieces of gold.”

Fang Liang emerged from the crowd in filthy rags, reeking of wine.

He grabbed my hand and grinned, baring a mouthful of yellow teeth.

“Little immortal, don’t you go back on your word.”

I looked at him and smiled, with a coldness beyond words.

My master had been a snake immortal.

Mortals had tortured him to death as a demon and used him to make a secret elixir of everlasting life.

Blind and arrogant creatures.

How could they know whether the woman they took home was an immortal—or a monster?

When my father died, he left me a pawnshop called Pawnshop Number Whatever.

By day, it had no customers.

By night, it was packed with souls, trading kindness, malice, and years of life for what they desired.

Tonight, my last customer was my husband, away on campaign.

He looked at the masked shopkeeper without recognizing me.

“I’d like to pawn my wife outright.”

I am the future Crown Princess.

One day, a woman who has traveled a thousand miles in search of her husband stops my carriage in the middle of the street.

She produces the Crown Prince’s personal jade pendant and declares that he married her while living among the common folk.

Unfortunately for her, she does not understand that making me Crown Princess is the Emperor’s way of proclaiming his favor before the realm.

This is not a position she can take.

In the third year after I married Zhao Yan, he made me Empress.

On one condition: I was not to lay a finger on the Imperial Noble Consort he held so dearly in his heart.

He seemed to have forgotten that I was his lawful wife first.

I worked as a maid at Marquis Manor for ten years. Then, simply because the young lady lost a Peach Blossom Hairpin, I was driven out of the household.

In the blink of an eye, many years passed. I had nearly let go of all the grudges and grievances between me and Marquis Manor.

But to my surprise, one night, the young lady of Marquis Manor knelt before me in utter disarray, begging me to take her in.

Her husband’s family had cast her out. In all the vast world, she had nowhere left to go.

And now, I was the only person she could turn to.

The year I turned eight, I was trampled to death beneath the Crown Prince’s horse.

His guards paid my parents one tael of silver to make the matter go away.

My parents did not even retrieve my body; they took the money with ingratiating smiles and said, “For our daughter to die beneath His Highness’s horse is a blessing she could never have hoped for.”

Before my first seven days of mourning were over, Father divorced Mother and took another wife.

Mother remarried with every appearance of joy.

It seemed they had forgotten me.

Later, just as I was about to be reincarnated, Father and Mother dragged the Crown Prince to my grave and made him pay for my death with his own.

Song Qi drew a dare: check his phone.

Of everyone in his contacts, who had he told “I love you” the most?

The class beauty: three times.

Me: 972 times.

The jeering around us died at once.

The class beauty burst into tears.

In front of everyone, Song Qi deleted my contact information, then smiled as he coaxed her.

“That’s worth crying over?”

“You know I only dated her for three months to keep up an act.”

“Nothing I said to her was real.”

Those nine hundred-odd declarations had all come from one drunken night.

Song Qi had crouched by the roadside, impossible for anyone to pull away, his head bowed as he sent me the same three words over and over.

“Once I send you ‘I love you’ 999 times, the bet is off.”

“Then we’ll be together for real, okay?”