Female Protagonist

At my birthday banquet, my husband presented me with a portrait of myself on horseback.

The face in it was an ugly pig’s head.

The young woman holding it laughed at my scars, and he asked me to forgive her: immortals, he said, knew nothing of mortal rules.

I drew my sword and cut off her arm.

Now she knew mine.

On the night of the empress’s funeral, His Majesty and I spent the entire night together in a side hall.

Everyone in the capital called me shameless.

After all, the empress was my own aunt, and His Majesty was her husband—my uncle by marriage.

Before that, I had been meant to marry the crown prince.

But Yuan Xiujin did not like me.

He despised my coarse origins, sneered at the Meng family’s rustic ways, and thought us unworthy of the Eastern Palace.

As if I thought any better of him.

Father and son, yet so different.

Yuan Xiujin let a woman lead him by the nose.

Yuan Zhaoyu already held the empire in his hand.

Since he would not let me become his crown princess, I would simply have to become his father’s consort instead.

My mother, a concubine, wanted me to marry honorably: “A woman must be a proper wife.”

I made vague noises of agreement, but inwardly I didn’t take it to heart.

Being a proper wife to a peddler or servant meant poverty and beatings from the man.

Being a proper wife in a wealthy household meant constant scheming and exhausting yourself managing the family.

So as soon as my mother passed on, I went to Yujing Tower and registered as a prostitute.

Sixty taels of silver a night, absolutely no haggling.

Fu Yanxiu’s younger sister was still growing, his mother lay half-paralyzed on the kang, and he still had to study for the imperial examinations.

For all seven years of our engagement, I worked his family’s fields.

The day he passed the provincial examination, Fu Yanxiu came to break off our engagement, his face grim.

“Sui Zhu, the capital isn’t a place for someone like you,” he said.

Ever since I was little, I had been slow and lacking in wit, while Elder Sister was extraordinarily gifted.

At a poetry gathering held at Marquis Manor, she was afraid I would embarrass myself, so in private, she composed a poem for me.

None of us expected that the true purpose of the gathering was to choose a wife for the Second Young Master of Marquis Manor. And the poem she wrote for me was the very one that caught the Second Young Master’s eye.

Later, I married into Marquis Manor.

After the wedding, Pei You discovered just how dull and ignorant I truly was.

Only then did he realize I was not the person who had written that poem that day.

Pei You resented me, blamed me, despised me.

He said his wife should not be someone like me, a woman with nothing but a pretty face and not a drop of learning inside her.

Whenever we were intimate, he would lean close to my ear and mock me, saying I had none of the dignified bearing of a proper main wife, only a body full of vixenish allure that was of some small use in bed.

I was terrified.

So when I returned to the day of that poetry gathering, I stopped Elder Sister before she could write a poem for me. My voice trembled as I said,

“Thank you, Elder Sister, but there is no need.”

My family had three daughters, each lovelier than the last.

When we came of marriageable age, suitors nearly wore our threshold smooth.

Even the Emperor decided to interfere.

He insisted that one of us marry the great general, Xie Yuan.

Father and Mother could do nothing but sigh.

My two elder sisters exchanged uneasy looks, so I rose with righteous resolve.

“What’s there to worry about? Marrying a general would be glorious, and I might even get to ride a great stallion!”

“If neither of you will marry him, I will.”

Later, Xie Yuan pinned me in his arms and coaxed me again and again:

“Are you shirking again, Mianmian? Why won’t you ride your great stallion tonight?”

The boy who loved me more than anyone else in the world was dead.

His name was Jiang Yan. He was a police officer, stabbed seven times by a rich second-generation heir while trying to save a girl from domestic abuse.

Afterward, the girl tearfully claimed that Jiang Yan had molested her, and that was why her boyfriend had stabbed him.

The killer even got off scot-free with a psychiatric evaluation declaring him mentally ill.

As I stared at their faces, I suddenly laughed.

A psychiatric evaluation, huh?

What a coincidence.

I had one too.

After we broke up, I ran into my ex at the mall.

My hair was a mess, and I was in the middle of a frantic struggle to change a diaper.

He, on the other hand, was impeccably dressed, surrounded by a fawning entourage as he inspected the premises.

Our eyes met. When he saw the fussy child in my arms, his expression shifted instantly. “Is he mine?”

I gave a cold laugh and turned the baby’s face toward him. “Do you think he looks like you?”

He studied the child for a long moment before nodding with certainty. “He does.”

“Xue Chang, we broke up over three years ago.” I gave him a mirthless smile and bounced the little one in my arms to remind him. “My baby is only six months old.”

Before the zombie virus broke out, I could barely lift a thing.

After the apocalypse hit, I was taking out zombies with a single swing.

When that two-faced bitch threatened me, I had one answer: Then we die together.

The moment my daughter was born, Old Madam Lu of the Yongchang Marquis Estate took her away.

There was only one reason: I was once the most celebrated courtesan in Yongning, and the kept mistress of the marquis’s heir.

A filthy, lowborn prostitute like me had no right to raise the estate’s precious young lady.

Not even when I was the one who had given birth to her.