Happy Ending

I was my birth parents’ third child.

While my birth mother was pregnant with me, the village fortune-teller swore I would be a boy.

They could hardly wait.

They hid from place to place throughout the pregnancy and finally brought me into the world in the bitter cold of the twelfth lunar month—

a girl.

My sister-in-law and the youngest daughter of General Zhao were carried to the wrong bridal sedans.

By the time everyone realized it and wanted to switch them back, the woman who should have been my sister-in-law had already completed the wedding night elsewhere.

And just like that, my rough-and-tumble brother somehow ended up with a refined young lady from a noble household as his wife.

But later, when I saw him in the courtyard using a broadsword to cut a thread for her, I suddenly felt the two of them were actually a perfect match.

I transmigrated into a cultivation novel as its vicious supporting woman.

The system told me that if I kept courting death, I could die and go home once my true colors were exposed.

So I devoted myself to making trouble for the heroine.

I seduced the senior brother she loved, poisoned her medicine, and deliberately injured myself in a secret realm so I could accuse her of attacking me…

At last, the day of judgment arrived.

Senior Brother produced the evidence and tore away my hypocritical mask.

The elders sentenced me to endure forty-nine bolts of heavenly lightning, have my immortal bones stripped away, and be cast down as a mortal.

I was overjoyed. My exit scene had finally come.

Then I heard the heroine say, “Senior Sister didn’t mean it.”

I whipped around in shock.

Her cheeks were faintly pink, almost as if she were shy.

“Senior Sister only did all that because she loves me too much.”

“It was her way of testing me.”

When newly crowned Qin Bai casts Yun Qing aside for his first love, her formidable family stops holding his empire together.

As the frontier falters, the capital descends into chaos, and the treasury runs dry, the emperor discovers too late that the people he betrayed were the ones propping up his throne.

While the Yun family watches his favorites fail spectacularly, a battle-hardened prince with an old debt to Yun Qing quietly begins rewriting her future.

I married Prince Shu in my elder sister’s place, figuring that if he discovered the truth, the worst that could happen was a fight between us.

Little did I know that Prince Shu was not only blind, but also determined to pamper the “wife” he had brought home.

Now he is knocking outside my door. “Little Qiao, we have been married for half a month. May I sleep in the bed tonight?”

Er… How am I supposed to tell him that his bride is actually his male, cross-dressed nemesis?

I spent three years simping for Jiang An.

I cooked for him, did his laundry, and even wrote his elective-course assignments.

Then one day, someone asked him, ‘Jiang An, Lin Wanyue has been chasing after you for so long. Haven’t you ever felt anything for her?’

In the dim light, I heard him chuckle.

‘Huh? She’s just my housekeeper. Why would I fall for her?’

The whole room burst out laughing.

What none of them knew was that Jiang An paid me sixty thousand yuan a month.

The truth was… I really was the highly paid campus housekeeper he had hired.

After five years of marrying into my family, my penniless scholar husband passed the imperial exam-and suddenly decided I, his butcher wife, reeked of grease and blood.

For half a month, he hemmed and hawed and refused to do his husbandly duties.

So I used the silver I’d earned selling pork to buy him two ink sticks and a ream of fine paper, then scraped together the last of my coins for a tiny bar of scented soap.

When I made it home through the rain, the big yellow dog under the eaves had one of the meat dumplings I’d wrapped dangling from its mouth.

From inside the house came a coy, wheedling voice.

“Father, the magistrate’s daughter smells so nice. Not like Mother.”

“And these pastries taste better than meat dumplings too.”

I took all the bits and pieces I’d hidden against my chest and threw them out-along with the father and son.

When Zheng Huaishu signed the divorce papers, he held our son in his arms and glared at me with resentment.

All the neighbors in the village laughed at me for letting a future official go.

The very next day, the matchmaker introduced me to a fair, slender stutterer.

A little girl trailed behind him.

Father and daughter gave me timid looks.

I asked irritably, “How often can you do your husbandly duties?”

“And how much meat will you eat in a day?”

The stutterer’s face turned bright red. The matchmaker yanked his clothes down over half his shoulder, and he said in a slow, gentle voice, “As long as my child gets a mouthful of rice… as her father, I’ll do anything…”

I wanted to stroke the aloof campus heartthrob’s…

cat.

In the middle of the night, I finally couldn’t hold back anymore and sent him a message:

[Hey, classmate, can I stroke it? Just once!]

Campus Heartthrob: [Classmate, that’s a little forward of you.]

I refused to give up.

[I’m really good with my hands. I guarantee I’ll make it comfortable! You just run one hand from head to tail, right?]

The other side went silent.

An hour later, the campus heartthrob finally replied:

[One hand won’t work.]

[You can’t get a proper grip.]

Bai Qiqi once saved a woman from another time, only to watch that woman claim the achievements, husband, and son Qiqi had spent years protecting.

When her husband and six-year-old son dismiss her medicinal cooking and household work as worthless, Qiqi walks away from the Prince of Qi’s estate without looking back.

Inside the palace, her healing soups win the trust of the Empress Dowager and the imperial women, while the brilliant younger official Jiang Pu insists that the warmth he feels around her is love, not gratitude.

As Liu Yan’s reckless schemes endanger Qiqi’s child and shake the court, Qiqi must expose the men who steal women’s work—and decide whether she is ready to accept a gentler life of her own.

For three years after I entered the Eastern Palace as a concubine, I had never even seen the Crown Prince.

I took it in stride. After all, I was face-blind.

If I mistook someone else for the Crown Prince and committed a capital offense, I would rather have no favor at all.

But after so long without his favor, even my food, clothing, and daily expenses became a problem.

To live a little better, I simply found three lovers to support me.

Zhang San worked in the Imperial Kitchen and could always bring me plenty of delicious food.

Li Si guarded the Garment Bureau and often sent me beautiful clothes.

As for Wang Wu, he was a skilled craftsman in the workshops. Every time we met, he gave me some clever new toy.

Lately, though, all three of them seemed short on money.

So I began thinking that I should try to please the Crown Prince and ask for some rewards to help support them.