Found Family

I am a Bone Demon, trapped for countless years within that cold, desolate graveyard.

No one can see me, and no one can hear me. I have spent centuries in solitary silence.

Until one midsummer, when the sun was shining just right.

A young girl came to sweep the graves, but she mistakenly offered her tributes to me.

I took a bite of a crisp peach and said, “Truly sweet.”

She froze for a moment, then covered her mouth and stifled a giggle.

“Next year, I’ll come again.”

True to her word, she returned year after year, bringing me crisp peaches every time.

Later, she died, and her remains were carelessly tossed into the graveyard.

Her five-year-old daughter, clutching the hand of a younger brother who had only just learned to walk, came to the graveyard day and night to wail for their mother.

I couldn’t stand the noise.

I possessed her body, crawled out from the straw mat, and clumsily gathered those two little brats into my arms.

“Keep crying, and Mother will eat you.”

All four of my Junior Sisters received a mission at the same time: to win our Master’s heart.

As the Eldest Senior Sister, I spent my days busy watching the drama unfold while enjoying my snacks.

One day, I accidentally overheard Master speaking:

“System, have you lost your mind? There are five female disciples here, and you won’t tell me which one is the Female Lead?”

On the very first day I hung up my sign offering a “Protection Charm for a Happy Marriage,” the handsome guy from next door came to make a wish: he wanted to be a normal person.

That night, he collapsed beneath the Torii of my home, drenched in blood that shimmered like liquid gold.

My small shrine, which hadn’t seen a single offering in three months, had suddenly picked up a deity on the verge of being reclaimed by the heavens.

The Sect Cannot Disband Today I was toiling away in the Accounts Office until the hour of the rat when a crisp notification suddenly rang out overhead.

“Ding! Detecting the imminent and simultaneous start of ‘The Stand-in Junior Sister’s Bitter Love,’ ‘The Yandere Junior Sister’s Imprisonment,’ ‘The Amnesiac Junior Sister’s Wife-Chasing Anguish Arc,’ and ‘The Salted Fish Junior Sister’s Flat Life.’

If no intervention occurs, the Guiyuan Sect will suffer a total collapse of its reputation due to a series of Love-Struck Mind incidents in three hundred days.

Its assets will be liquidated, and it will officially go bankrupt.” I looked down at the bright red debt of 1.03 million High-grade Spirit Stones recorded in the ledger.

Closing the book, I seriously wondered for the first time if the Heavenly Dao was specifically out to get me.

From a very young age, I knew I was a Villainess Supporting Character.

I knew because of a strange palace maid by my side named Sui’an. Sometimes, she would stare blankly at the top of my head as if there were words written there.

Later, after spending enough time with her, I managed to piece together the truth from countless minor details: There really were words floating above my head, and those words were: Villainess Supporting Character.

When my Adoptive Father first saw me, I was eating a bowl of spoiled rice.

Hungry flies were fighting me for the food, and I couldn’t even spare a hand to shoo them away.

Later, he took me home. He threw me a party for my seventh birthday.

He said, “Xiao Jue, today is your new beginning. From now on, this day will be your birthday every year.”

Everyone smiled at me. Only my Adoptive Mother roared after the banquet had ended, “She’s your illegitimate daughter, isn’t she?”

Three months after I moved into Old River Bend, the old lady next door died. While I was helping clear out her belongings, I found a diary.

The first page read: “My daughter died three years ago. The person living next door to me is a ghost.”

But I knew there was something wrong with her daughter from the very first day, because I’m a ghost, too.

The celebrity Zhu Yuan is dead. I still hate her. She always made me feel as wretched and hidden as a rat scurrying across the street.

And yet, I found her third gift. It was a plain music box sitting in the hospital corridor.

I casually handed it to the child in the neighboring bed.

She was dying, too.

When I was four, a fortune-teller said I was fated to bring misfortune upon my parents. So they sent me away to a rural estate. For ten years, they never came to see me, nor did they care whether I lived or died.

At fourteen, they brought me home-so they could marry me off.

My legitimate elder sister laughed. “A fool marrying a sickly wretch. A match made in heaven.”

My parents said, “If this engagement weren’t impossible to break, and if your sister weren’t about to marry into a noble family, you wouldn’t even be worthy of carrying his shoes.”

“A married daughter is water poured out. Once you’re gone, don’t come back for anything.”

Only he held my hand and taught me to write my own name.

And then he taught me to write: “A woman, too, must respect and cherish herself, strive without ceasing, and press ever forward.”

On the day of my hairpin ceremony, my brother-in-law, tipsy from wine, barged into my room.

That same night, my mouth was gagged and I was taken to the Marquis’s Mansion.

My legitimate elder sister told me she could not bear children and needed to borrow my womb.

A year later, I gave birth to a son.

My legitimate elder sister brought me to the Bamboo Garden, where four old maids covered my mouth and buried me in a pit they had dug long before.

Before I died, I kept wondering what the point had been of someone like me coming into this world.

But I never imagined that I would be dug up again.

The person who found me was small and thin, yet he staggered along with me on his back for ten miles.

He covered me with the only clothing he had and gave me a chance to live.

An old man took me in. From that day on, I changed my name and became someone else.

Five years later, my wonton shop opened in Capital City, and I happened to run into my legitimate elder sister and her family being sold off.

She begged me to save her son.

But I pointed to the young man kneeling off to the side and said, “I’ll only save him.”