Mother-Daughter Relationship

The day Father strangled Mama to death, a fox spirit took over her body.

I caught her just as she was digging out Father’s heart.

She fumbled around trying to hide it, then deliberately let her fox muzzle show.

“I killed him, not your mother. Your mother was a good woman.”

“Oh,” I said, bringing over a clay pot.

“Wouldn’t that heart taste better stewed?”

My stepmother was a hopeless romantic with an unusually clear head.

Over nine years, she invested in a hundred men.

Every last investment failed—my father included.

After placing third in the imperial examination, he was snatched up as a son-in-law right beneath the honors board.

When the news reached Gaoyou, my grandmother was beside herself with joy.

She promptly threw both my stepmother and me out of the house.

“It’s all right,” my stepmother said.

“I’ll find you another father.”

“Haven’t men cheated you badly enough?” I asked.

She took my hand and strode on.

“What is there to fear?”

“Whoever I love, I love with everything I have!”

And she meant it.

On the day she finally avenged her family, her passion kept the Duke of Zheng from leaving his bed for three days.

After dying a hero, I used the merit I had earned in life to make a wager with the King of Hell.

I would be turned into seven different animals, and if I could get my family to recognize me every time, I would be allowed to return to life.

If I failed, I would stay in the underworld and work there without complaint.

The first animal I became was a giant southern cockroach.

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.