Revenge

On the eve of our wedding, I discovered a spreadsheet on Ji Qing’s computer.

It was filled with information about every girl he had ever dated.

In my column, it read: [Law-abiding and dutiful; suitable for marriage.]

Meanwhile, the entry for his first love read: [You are a bird of the air; you should fly proudly toward the horizon.]

He once said he would never marry her.

Because being his wife meant laboring over three meals a day, raising children, and serving one’s in-laws.

He couldn’t bear to subject her to that.

I didn’t argue, and I didn’t make a scene.

The next day, I went back to the television station.

Ji Qing didn’t know that I had a form of my own.

It was an application for a transfer to Africa to serve as a war correspondent.

The person I truly love is still there.

I’m going to find him and bring him back.

I died of a sudden asthma attack while being bullied.

My family sent my bruised and battered body straight to the incinerator; no one went to my school to demand justice for me.

Later, my brother started dating the girl who bullied me.

He turned her into the blade he would use to avenge me.

Pei Qi traded cities for a beauty, a grand gesture that became a legendary romance. Unfortunately, I was not that beauty, nor was I Pei Qi; I didn’t even know him.

My husband was merely a soldier defending the city. Because he refused to surrender, he died in that war, though the city was ultimately held.

The following year, when Pei Qi traded cities for his beauty, I became that beauty’s Foot-washing Maid.

When I was a child, my father once gave me a ten-yuan bill as pocket money.

He said he had picked it up on the road.

I remember very clearly that on the back of that bill, written in black ink, was a line:

“There is a pyramid scheme on the fifth floor. Help.”

I took the money to show my father, and he smiled and told me,

“Who knows how many people have used this bill? Who knows when those words were written? Maybe the person who wrote them has already been rescued.”

I was in a hurry to buy chocolate, so I didn’t think much about it.

Because chocolate is sweet, after all.

Not long after, there was a piece of news on TV.

“A man mistakenly entered a pyramid scheme den, was beaten to death, and then dismembered.”

As a child, I stared blankly at the television.

My father also stared blankly at the television.

I asked him what was wrong.

He shouted at me angrily, telling me not to meddle in his business, and then left the house.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on; I just felt confused.

It wasn’t until the New Year, at the family dinner, that my father got drunk and cried uncontrollably. In front of all the relatives, he confessed to picking up that bill.

The place where he found the money was directly below the den mentioned in the news.

In other words, the words on that ten-yuan bill were very likely written by someone who had fallen into that pyramid scheme, possibly even the person who was dismembered.

He sobbed, clutching a bottle of liquor, saying that it was his fault that the man died. The whole family comforted him, but I just stood aside, dumbfounded and at a loss.

So… I used that money to buy chocolate…

Something indescribable seemed to awaken within me.

Throughout my later life, I would often think of that ten-yuan bill.

I wondered, was the original owner of that money alright? Was he really rescued? Or… did that money really come from the man who was dismembered?

If it really came from him, he must have endured painful beatings and inhuman torture before finally seizing a chance one day to write those words for help on the bill and toss it out the window.

He must have clung to hope for rescue until the very moment he died.

Yet my father ignored that hope.

I always ask myself, if I had been the first to find that bill, could I have saved him? Or would I have overlooked the writing, just like my father?

This thought haunts me like a ghost, tormenting my mind more and more as I grow older.

Until that day.

A new “bill” appeared before me.

…

The Crown Prince’s White Moonlight, the woman he’d pined after for ten years, had finally returned.

She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “You. Go back to where you came from.”

I lifted my skirts and stepped into the carriage, then turned back to smile at her. “Sorry,” I said lightly, “but this seat? You’re never getting it back.”

When I was a child, I fought with wild dogs for food. On the verge of starvation, someone shared half a steamed bun with me.

To repay his kindness, I disguised myself as a boy and stayed by his side as a servant.

This man was once the most noble Crown Prince of the dynasty.

One day, he fell from grace, reduced to ruin, and was humiliated and trampled by his lifelong enemy.

Later, he became the mad emperor whom everyone feared.

Yet on a snowy night, he took his own life, and before his death, pleaded desperately:

“Yunling, don’t look at me… I’m so filthy.”

When I opened my eyes again, time had rewound twenty years.

The Imperial Tutor harbored the ambitions of a Wolf, the general eyed the throne like a tiger, and the imperial brother plotted in secret.

Only the Little Highness remained innocent and pure, completely unaware.

In this life, I have come only to protect him.

My husband cheated on me.

My best friend has it even worse-her husband turned out to be gay.

I was raring to go: “Wanna get revenge?”

She clenched her teeth. “Yeah, let’s do it. Make them suffer.”

So, I swapped the lube with superglue.

She smeared chili extract all over their little toys.

That night,

our husbands ended up glued together, shaped just like the letter H.

I was trapped in the company building, dying in a loop ninety-nine times.

The ways I died were varied: the elevator falling, electrocution from the copier, a pen tip piercing my brow…

Each time I opened my eyes, it was nine o’clock sharp on the same morning, just as I sat down at my desk.

After seeking help multiple times, my Physics Professor Husband finally believed me.

Following his instructions, I searched step by step for a way to escape the cycle of death.

But on the hundredth time, I saw the Jade Bracelet my husband had secretly bought, worn on the hand of an Aloof Female Colleague beside me.

…

On the 101st attempt, I decided to face the desperate situation head-on, determined to leave the building alive!

My husband had an affair with the Married Woman downstairs.

I hid in the hallway, smoking with the Married Woman’s husband.

We didn’t dare return until they’d finished.

Later, they became even more brazen.

The Married Woman’s husband said, “I’m going to catch them in the act. What about you?”

I kept nibbling on my skewer, unconcerned.

“You go catch them, I’ll come too!”

During an online meeting, the new intern accidentally turned on her camera.

Just as I was about to remind her, her boyfriend appeared on screen.

Oh, isn’t that my husband who’s been away on a business trip for a week?