Revenge

There was a fool in my village who was always muttering: “Rock, scissors, cloth…”

The order had to be right.

If anyone got it wrong, he flew into a rage.

One day, a body turned up in the abandoned mud-brick house beside mine.

Even I became a suspect.

When the police carried the body out, it was still wrapped tightly in coarse cloth.

But when the fool saw it, his muttering changed to: “Cloth!

Cloth!

Cloth…”

I thought I understood why his rock, scissors, cloth had to come in that order.

I was the capital’s famous sickly beauty.

When I married into the marquis’s household, everyone was betting on how long I would live.

Everyone knew the young lord had a beloved concubine.

He married me because I would die soon and stay out of her way.

In the bridal chamber, he watched without a flicker of concern as his concubine kicked over my medicine bowl.

“She won’t live long anyway.

Don’t waste good things on her.”

What he didn’t know was this: that bowl had never held medicine to keep me alive.

It held the muscle-weakening powder my father had been dosing me with.

Without the medicine, I was perfectly well.

My mother was the finest embroiderer in the capital.

Even the emperor praised the wedding gown she made for the Princess Royal.

The princess rewarded her lavishly.

That very night, she severed Mother’s hands with golden scissors.

“One gown like this in the world, for me alone, is quite enough.”

Mother’s blood covered the floor.

The princess found it filthy, so she burned our entire residence to the ground, saying the blaze was festive enough to suit her.

On her wedding day, the princess became the most beautiful bride in the capital.

That same year, she became pregnant.

I entered her residence carrying the golden scissors that had killed my mother.

“Your servant has come to offer Your Highness the most beautiful garment of all.”

I was the queen, confined to the ancestral temple for a grave crime.

The king despised me, and for fifteen years he never came to see me.

The world said I had lost my mind.

Then the diviners foretold that my child would bring the four corners of the realm to submission and become sovereign of all under Heaven.

Taken from me on the day he was born and raised by the king’s favorite consort, he had never even seen his mother’s face.

Day and night I prayed, waiting for him.

At last, he came.

The boy was grown now, his brow bearing all the cold majesty of an heir to the throne.

Calmly, he laid a dagger before me.

“Your son asks only one thing.

Grant it to me.”

Jiang Yue was the stand-in my family had chosen to bear my misfortunes.

She ate and slept beside me, raised as though she were the marquis’s second legitimate daughter.

She won Grandmother’s favor and Father’s affection, and she and my fiancé fell in love.

Only when she urged Pei Yu to push me into the fire did I learn that she was the cherished daughter of Father’s mistress.

I had been the one bearing her misfortunes all along.

She took my place, inherited my mother’s dowry, and married into the Duke of Yan’s household.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day she was first brought to our estate.

She took my hand and promised to protect me.

At twenty-five, I arranged for Bighead Xiao to take his first concubine.

Her dowry was an entire city.

At twenty-six, I arranged the second.

Her dowry was ten li of granaries.

At forty-two, he took his eighteenth.

There were so many women that I could no longer remember their names.

And I had gone from a farmer’s wife to the founding empress of Great Zhao.

My husband claimed to despise one of his concubines, while treating me, his lawful wife, with perfect devotion.

I pitied her and protected her at every turn.

After I died in childbirth, he made her his wife and handed her my entire dowry.

Reborn on the second day of our marriage, I decided to stop shielding his so-called true love—and see what their devotion was really worth.

The third time my parents came to order me to pay my brother’s gambling debts, I tossed a dagger onto the ground.

“Fine.

One finger for a thousand taels.”

As they had so many times before, they cursed and lunged to beat me.

A guard caught them by the backs of their necks and pinned them to the ground.

I raised an eyebrow.

The guard kindly taught them to kowtow.

“Repeat after me—We greet Her Highness, the noble consort.”

I had studied immortal arts under my master since childhood.

A sharp pair of scissors and a sheet of white paper could bring anything in the world to life.

With that gift, I cut out ten thousand swallows and sparrows when locusts ravaged the fields.

In moments, they devoured the swarm and saved an entire town.

The townsfolk bowed to me as an immortal maiden.

The county magistrate offered to submit a memorial on my behalf.

I waved him off.

“I hear someone in this town once slew a snake demon.

I would marry that man and bring a thousand pieces of gold.”

Fang Liang emerged from the crowd in filthy rags, reeking of wine.

He grabbed my hand and grinned, baring a mouthful of yellow teeth.

“Little immortal, don’t you go back on your word.”

I looked at him and smiled, with a coldness beyond words.

My master had been a snake immortal.

Mortals had tortured him to death as a demon and used him to make a secret elixir of everlasting life.

Blind and arrogant creatures.

How could they know whether the woman they took home was an immortal—or a monster?

I worked on a pleasure boat, making my living at the bottom of society.

One day I found a woman’s body.

While searching her for valuables, I discovered a letter tucked out of sight.

Only then did I realize who this battered, broken girl had been.

I laid a hand over her staring eyes, her body crisscrossed with bruises.

“Don’t worry.

I won’t take your name for nothing.

I’ll avenge you.”