Military

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

After disguising myself as a man and joining the army in my husband’s place, I failed to endure the loneliness and kept a lover on the side.

When the war ended and I returned home, I discovered that my husband had taken a concubine too.

Well, now I didn’t feel guilty anymore. We were even!

But then I saw that beautiful concubine.

I was utterly stunned.

Can someone please tell me why my lover had become my husband’s concubine?

I once saved a pregnant noblewoman. She smiled and told me that once the child was born, they would recognize me as their godmother.

But later, as I led my troops to station at the border, we gradually lost touch.

Until one day, eight years later, my subordinates reported that someone had come all the way from Jinling, specifically asking to see me by name.

“Who is it?” I asked as I walked toward the entrance.

There, I saw a young girl sitting atop a pony, threatening the group of soldiers surrounding her.

“Song Yunying is my mother! If you dare bully me, you’re all finished!”

I am Song Yunying.

I disguised myself as a man and spent twelve years in the barracks as a no-good soldier-only to suddenly learn that I was the Prefect’s true daughter.

The impostor daughter clutched my sleeve, sobbing as she shook it.

“Sister, I know I stole the place that should have been yours. I only beg you not to take away the love Father, Mother, and our brothers have for me.”

What she didn’t know was that I had no interest in stealing her love.

All I wanted was to get my brothers-in-arms some military pay.

My father was a treacherous official.

The man who raided my home was my fiancé.

When he slipped the iron chain around my neck, his touch was even more tender than the year he placed a flower wreath upon my head.

On the day my father was beheaded in public, I was calmly picking lice off my mother. I remarked, “If I had a fire, I could stir-fry these lice and pair them with a pot of wine.”

Unexpectedly, my words drew a laugh from the young general in the neighboring cell, despite the hooks driven through his collarbones. Was it that funny?

My father successfully overthrew the throne, and he didn’t know how best to gloat:

“The Deposed Emperor still has his charms, and the Former Crown Prince is quite the beauty. I bestow them both upon my daughter!”

The father and son were so enraged they spat blood.

I was even more agitated: “Why give them to me? Give them a death sentence!”

The first time I killed someone, the blade was dull.

I was fourteen that year. It was winter, and the north wind whipped against my face with a stinging bite.

Three bandits had scaled the wall of my grandfather’s courtyard, intent on stealing the last half-sack of millet he had hidden in the cellar.

My grandfather was blind. Hearing the commotion, he called out my name: “Shen He, Shen He!” He was using my alias.

My real name is Shen Heyi, and I am a girl. But the bandits didn’t know that, and Grandfather pretended not to know either.

He just kept calling, his voice urgent and hoarse, sounding like an old crow being strangled by the neck.

I fished out that Bone-Cleaver from beneath the stove.

Its edge was curled and nicked, so dull it couldn’t even slice through sheepskin cleanly.

But a human neck is softer than sheepskin.

I didn’t think about that day again for a very long time-not until I met Xie Changgeng.