Revenge

Five years after forcing me into his palace, Xiao Heng finally tired of me.

His new favorite stared at me with innocent curiosity.

“Is this lady one of Your Majesty’s consorts too?”

Xiao Heng gave a contemptuous laugh.

“Her?

Used goods who’d already been married.

A woman like that has no place among my consorts.”

I said nothing, merely lowered my head and bowed respectfully.

At that inopportune moment, I remembered his hand around my throat, his eyes red as he enunciated every word: “You and I are going to torment each other for the rest of our lives.

Even if you die, you’ll die here beside me.”

After I was brought back to the household as its true-born daughter, my parents were full of guilt, and my brother doted on me.

Even the girl who had taken my place was truly kind and virtuous.

Tears on her lovely face, she knelt and bowed her head to me.

“I took your place and left you to suffer all those years.”

I smiled and said it was all right.

Then, before long, I ended up in the pond with her impeccably virtuous fiancé.

Not long after I married the crown prince, he was deposed.

We spent ten years imprisoned together in a derelict garden.

I tilled the soil and planted vegetables, doing everything I could to stay alive.

Half out of his mind, he kicked my vegetables to pieces, muttering, “Thank goodness it isn’t Qianyi locked up in here.”

Qianyi was the cousin who had come to live with my family.

She was now Prince Cheng’s consort.

I had never known the deposed crown prince had feelings for her.

His ravings made a mockery of the ten years I had spent at his side.

Later, Prince Cheng ascended the throne and issued two decrees.

One sentenced the deposed crown prince to death by poisoned wine.

The other sent me to cultivate the Way in a Taoist temple.

I became Master Taihui of Purple Cloud Temple.

Less than two years later, I became the new emperor’s Consort Yu.

People sneered at my wiles, saying I had bewitched the emperor so thoroughly that he neglected even his lawful wife.

My cousin demanded bitterly to know why I had stolen her husband, why I had not followed the deposed crown prince to the grave.

The new emperor hated me too.

He hated me because, years before, I had seen him wounded and left him there to attend the consort selection.

His grave injuries had failed to heal.

He had lost his chance and spent years scheming before he finally won the throne.

Yet later, when a deadly poison left me confined to my sickbed, he cast aside his entire harem and used blood drawn from his own heart to save me.

As I lay dying, he held me and wept in anguish.

“As long as you live, I’ll agree to anything.”

“I’ll make you empress.”

“I’ll let your parents come back to the capital.”

“Your brother, your sister-in-law, your nephew—all of them.”

“Only live.”

Tears blurred my sight.

I did not even have the strength to cry.

Too late.

Why couldn’t he have granted my wish sooner?

Why had he made my whole life so miserable?

Then I was given another life.

Mother told me joyfully that the empress had specifically summoned me to the consort-selection banquet.

I looked at my cousin, who could hardly contain her eagerness, then lowered my eyes and said softly, “I don’t want to go.”

I had been able to see the floating comments since I was very small.

They told me I would spend seven bitter years beside a fallen prince, only to be cast aside when he became emperor.

He would regret it when I was dying, turn back time, and treasure me in another life.

The comments told me to hold on.

But if happiness was certain, why couldn’t I have it in this life?

When the Fifth Prince fell from favor, I was the first maid to pay for a transfer.

The comments went wild.

Without me, how was their story supposed to continue?

I was a condemned slave, due to be beheaded in the autumn.

To buy myself a little more time, I decided to get pregnant.

I set my sights on the cold, aloof jailer.

With my slender waist and full hips, I tried every trick I knew to seduce him.

At first he scorned me.

Once he’d had a taste, he came back night after night, unwilling to let me go.

The day a physician confirmed my pregnancy, a curtained sedan chair was carried into the dungeon.

As they helped me inside, I still had no idea what was happening.

“What is this for?”

The warden beamed at me.

“Miss Liu, you’re carrying His Grace’s child.

They’ve come to take you home to a life of comfort.”

After her noble family falls, Si Lan and her elder sister are sold into a duke’s household.

Si Lan fights for every meal, every quilt, and every chance to survive, while her sister gives away the rewards and accepts the praise for her generosity.

In her first life, Si Lan’s sacrifices make her sister the heir’s concubine.

When his wife has Si Lan framed, the sister she protected refuses to save her.

Beaten to death, Si Lan wakes at the beginning of their servitude with every memory intact.

This time, her sister can fend for herself.

Armed with a sharp tongue and knowledge of the future, Si Lan begins working toward something far more valuable than a master’s favor: her freedom.

Pei Yizhi was the boy my father had taken in to raise as my future husband.

But after he placed first in the imperial examinations, he married a princess.

I should have stormed up to their gates on their wedding day.

Then the princess’s vicious servants would have beaten me out into the street, where I would die a miserable death.

This time, though, I didn’t.

Mom brought home the dead crabs our neighbor had thrown away and cooked them with the live ones.

“One for your big sister, one for your little brother, and one for your little sister.

See how fair Mommy is?”

But my little sister spat out her first mouthful of crab roe.

“Mom, I think this crab smells bad…”

Mom slammed down her bowl in a rage.

“Why would yours be the only bad one?

Don’t waste food.

Finish it!”

That night, my sister got food poisoning.

But Mom insisted on making our neighbor pay the medical bills, delaying treatment until my sister died.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that same evening.

I immediately switched my sister’s crab with Mom’s.

“Hers is much too big.

We should give it to Mom!”

Then I shelled the dead crab in my own bowl and handed it to my brother.

“You’re still growing, Xingxing.

Have mine!”

There was a sorceress in the capital.

Every wish made to her came true.

But her price was steep.

One life for one wish.

I went to her door.

In exchange for my life, I wanted every member of my husband’s family to die a wretched death.

The sorceress was so beautiful and ethereal she might have been an immortal.

Only the crimson dot between her brows carried a hint of menace.

She told me, “Go home and wait seven days.

In seven days, I promise you, not even a dog or chicken in his household will remain alive.”

I was a midwife.

Up in the hills, I found a pregnant woman.

She claimed to be the wife of the Marquis of Yongning.

She begged me to save her, promising to repay me a hundredfold.

I said nothing and quietly took her home.

To everyone else, she was my cousin, a rich merchant’s concubine who had come to me for shelter.

Because I had just returned from the Yongning estate.

Where I had delivered the marchioness’s baby.