Revenge

Qiu Yue learned young that in troubled times, only a hard heart and a ruthless hand could keep a woman alive.

When the innocent Jiang Wanning searches an entire city and saves her from death, Qiu Yue vows to protect her for the rest of her life.

So when a scheming scholar tries to ruin Wanning’s reputation and force his way into her family, Qiu Yue quietly leads him into a dark alley.

The scholar dies, a tale about a pig demon spreads through the capital, and her trusting young mistress believes every word.

Anyone who wants to hurt Jiang Wanning should understand one thing: Qiu Yue may wear the sweet smile of a harmless maid, but she has never hesitated to kill.

Sold into a marquis’s estate at seven, Fugui survives by becoming a living screen, a beautiful servant trained to endure heat, cold, and pain without moving.

When another screen maid is condemned to serve as beauty paper merely for attracting the heir’s gaze, Fugui realizes she will be next.

To avenge the woman who raised her and escape a household that treats servants as objects, she turns the nobles’ forbidden desires, jealousies, and schemes against them.

The boy who loved me more than anyone else in the world was dead.

His name was Jiang Yan. He was a police officer, stabbed seven times by a rich second-generation heir while trying to save a girl from domestic abuse.

Afterward, the girl tearfully claimed that Jiang Yan had molested her, and that was why her boyfriend had stabbed him.

The killer even got off scot-free with a psychiatric evaluation declaring him mentally ill.

As I stared at their faces, I suddenly laughed.

A psychiatric evaluation, huh?

What a coincidence.

I had one too.

Imperial Father has six daughters.

I am the fifth.

Mother Consort was once a kitchen maid at the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

She received the Emperor’s favor only once in her life, and that one night gave her me. She treasured me above all else.

When I was seven, Noble Consort Lan framed her for infidelity, and she died.

A few months later, by every means at my disposal, I became Noble Consort Lan’s “adopted daughter.”

Before the Second Young Master of Duke’s Manor was executed, the Old Madam wanted to leave him an heir.

She summoned all the maids to the rear courtyard and asked which of us was willing to make a trip to death row.

The girls exchanged uneasy glances.

If they wanted to climb into a young master’s bed, there were plenty of young lords in the manor to choose from. Why throw away their future on a man who was about to die?

I was the only one who stepped out of the crowd.

The others called me a fool for ruining my prospects when I had already been chosen for the First Young Master.

But what they didn’t know was that I had been lusting after the Second Young Master for ages.

He was going to die anyway. Once the deed was done, I would run.

After he was gone, I would burn plenty of spirit money for him to make amends.

But just as I was gleefully packing my bundle, news arrived that Second Young Master Jiang had escaped from prison.

I fled in a panic with the simple-minded young lady and the elderly Old Madam in tow.

Until one day, Second Young Master Jiang tracked us down with a sword in hand and bared his gleaming white teeth at me.

“Jinque, you and I have a score to settle.”

Men with big butts are good at bearing children. That’s what my mom always taught me.

She said that no matter how disobedient a man was, once you got him pregnant, he’d do whatever you said.

As luck would have it, my boyfriend abducted me and took me deep into the mountains, demanding that I bear children for his bachelor buddies.

“You’re not allowed to stop until you’ve had eight sons!”

Eight? I passed out from sheer delight.

Well, in that case, don’t mind if I do…

The auspicious hour had arrived. The wedding rites were complete, yet the bride remained kneeling in her blood-red wedding dress.

A gust of wind lifted her bridal veil, revealing a woman’s half-rotted head. Her lifeless eyes stared straight at me.

I tried to flee, but an icy hand clamped tightly around my wrist.

“Where are you going, my lady?” the wedding attendant asked with a smile. “It’s time for the banquet.”

Dark purple corpse spots stood out starkly on his powder-caked wrist.

So none of the guests at the wedding banquet were alive.

Myself included.

A girl had been secretly in love with my boyfriend for years, using “business trips” as an excuse to see him four times a year-once in each season-and spending the rest of her life longing for him.

On the night before my boyfriend and I were to get engaged, she finally decided to let go, offering him her virginity as a parting gift.

My boyfriend told me he had only done it because he pitied her.

I was born face-blind, yet the crown prince of Beijing’s elite circle had always stood by me.

Until one day, when I overheard him talking about me with his friends.

“A whole month, and she still hasn’t noticed. Shen Jin, you’ve really got talent.”

“But your girlfriend looks like she’s close to figuring it out. Shouldn’t we switch back?”

In the corner, the man called Shen Jin pinched a cigarette between his fingers and shook his head.

“I’m afraid that won’t work. Yin-yin is still waiting for me to come home for dinner.”

I stood in the doorway and sighed, disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting someone new after all.

I had already grown tired of sleeping with both of them.

He Qiong was hailed as the strongest Demon King the demon realm had seen in a thousand years, and every demon expected him to lead them in an assault on the Nine Heavens.

Unfortunately, before that grand ambition could be realized, a beautiful young phoenix lured him into the Celestial Emperor’s ambush and his soul was destroyed.

I fought desperately to seize one fragment of his soul, then hid across the mortal realm like a hunted dog and nourished him with my heart’s blood for five hundred years until I finally brought him back.

Surely hardship revealed true devotion, and after everything I had sacrificed to save him, He Qiong would finally understand who truly loved him and who deserved to stand at his side.

I thought his return would begin a tale of the Demon King bathing the Nine Heavens in blood, but instead it became a tortured romance between him and the Goddess of the Nine Heavens-the little phoenix who had stabbed him in the back a thousand years ago killed herself for love afterward, and the moment he learned the truth, he forgave every betrayal.

Fine, they could keep their tragic, undying love; I knew when I had lost, and I wanted no part of it.

But the love belonged to them while the suffering belonged to me, because just before I left, He Qiong held the phoenix’s last soul fragment and said, “Du Nan, your heart’s blood brought me back after five hundred years, so you can bring her back too, can’t you?”