Found Family

Before my father, Zhao Yong’an, left to join the army, he said that if he died out there, my mother was allowed to remarry the village hunter.

But though the hunter had a crippled leg, he was the fiercest man around. They said he could kill a tiger with a single punch, and that he had even beaten his previous wife to death.

If my mother married him, it would be no different from sending her to her death.

Three years later, sure enough, news came that Father had died.

Grandmother and the clan elders took twenty taels of silver from the hunter and forced my mother to be sold off to him.

If you read a lot of historical romance novels, then I’m sure you’re familiar with this scene: An assassin draws his blade and lunges at the male lead.

At the critical moment, the female lead rushes forward and takes the stab for him.

She collapses into his arms, and he cries her name in panic…

When I transmigrated, this exact scene was unfolding.

You think I was the female lead? Nope.

And of course, I wasn’t the male lead either. I was the assassin.

I grew up without a father or a mother.

When the widow at the east end of the village lost her son, I ran over and asked if she wanted to be my mother.

When I saw how strong the rough woodsman at the west end was, I asked if he wanted to be my father.

That was how the three of us pieced together a family.

After I transmigrated into a household-intrigue novel…

My mother-in-law demanded that I follow the rules and get up early to serve her tea.

I couldn’t get up. So that very night, I slipped her a sleeping pill.

Then I made sure she slept in with me until the sun was high in the sky.

I thought I was going to be severely punished.

But then floating comments appeared before my eyes: [Haha, this is the first time in decades that Madam Qin has slept this long. She’s feeling refreshed and in a great mood right now.]

[She never got enough sleep before. No wonder she had such a bad temper.]

[Modern technology really is amazing. It directly eased the insomnia and anxiety that Madam Qin spent a fortune trying and failing to cure for years.]

[The female lead really stumbled right into Madam Qin’s heart by accident.]

Me: ? Is this how it’s supposed to go?

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.

In a year of famine, I sold myself to a brothel for the sake of my family.

My little sister came to see me with dried melons and vegetables on her back.

One patron had a taste for very young girls, and the madam tried to tempt her.

My sister believed every word and refused to leave: she wanted silk every day and fish and meat at every meal.

I said no, took out the silver I had secretly saved, and asked a man from our village to escort her home.

After that, not a single letter came from my family.

Five years later, when my beauty had begun to fade, I persuaded a cloth merchant to redeem me and make me stepmother to his two children.

Then my sister returned.

We looked seven or eight parts alike, but she was alluring and uninhibited, far more so than my dull, quiet self; within three days of raising her banner, men crowded the door.

The cloth merchant hired a sedan chair to collect me, and my sister crooked one beguiling finger at him.

He hesitated for only a moment before laying the silver meant for my freedom at her feet.

I could hear the Noble Consort’s thoughts.

Inside her head, she cursed the emperor: “That decrepit bastard!”

“He’s much better at lecturing me than he ever is in bed!”

I looked up in shock.

She was nestled sweetly in the emperor’s arms, feeding him a slice of pear.

Inside her head, she was still raging: “Would someone please poison him already?”

“I’m so damn tired of serving him…”

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.”

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.