Revenge

Father said I had an affinity with the immortals and sent me up the mountain to become a nun when I was little.

Only as I grew older did I learn that the place where I lived was Mount Tai.

And the nuns of Mount Tai were no proper nuns.

Just as the “slender horses” of Yangzhou were not horses, and the boatwomen of West Lake did more than row boats.

Men came for the thrill of doing the most profane things in a sacred place.

Then the emperor himself climbed the mountain to pray for an heir.

And I became pregnant with his only child.

The prince’s heir acquired a famous sword.

A fine sword deserved a beautiful woman.

My looks earned me the position of his sword-bearing maid.

Later, he took me to Taicang for the Sword Trials.

Someone saw me and remarked, “Baseborn to the bone.”

Everyone roared with laughter.

Only years later did they understand.

What the man had actually said was, “Blade-born to the bone.”

I am a princess.

I think everyone around me has something wrong with them.

My half sister entrusted her daughter to me after her husband’s family was convicted.

The day Cui Yuying arrived, scarlet characters appeared above her head: Female Lead.

Above my own daughter, I saw Villainous Supporting Character.

I had rescued this girl, but I would never let her turn my children into stepping stones.

If the plot insisted on calling us villains, it would have to contend with their mother first.

The first wife said that a concubine’s daughter ought to become a concubine herself.

She used my mother’s life to force my obedience.

A little sedan carried me into the prince’s household, where I was to help my elder sister secure his favor.

I schemed and plotted, watching every step, until my hands were steeped in blood.

My sister, meanwhile, remained pure and unsullied, radiant as the moon.

In that life, I harmed far too many people.

And others harmed me in return.

On the day I died, Mother told me she was not my birth mother.

The first wife had poisoned my real mother the very day she gave birth to me.

The woman who raised me was merely a pawn the first wife used to keep me in her power.

Given a second life, I turned my schemes upon my sister instead.

Have you ever seen the moon fall into the mud?

It must be a lovely sight.

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.

I was the late emperor’s younger sister, the reigning emperor’s own aunt, and the only Grand Princess of Great Jin.

On my sixtieth birthday, my husband’s supposedly dead first wife appeared at my door with the daughter she had borne late in life.

“The first wife is the lawful wife; her successor must take a concubine’s place.

But Your Highness is far too exalted for me to ask that of you.

I am willing to become a concubine myself.

I ask only that you show mercy and allow Mian to be entered in her father’s clan register, so that father and daughter may be reunited.”

Only then did I learn that the husband who had shown me such love and devotion had been keeping her in another household for forty years.

During the autumn hunt, my fiancé’s precious first love deliberately shot an arrow through my hair.

The ladies around us went white with shock.

But her eyes reddened, and she shrank behind my fiancé.

“My arrow went astray.

I didn’t mean to hurt her.

But she stood in front of my quarry and wouldn’t move.

Surely she bears some of the blame?”

My fiancé shielded her and shouted at me: “Weapons don’t have eyes.

If you can’t dodge them on a hunting ground, that’s your own incompetence.”

I merely murmured assent.

Then I raised my bow.

Three arrows whistled from it at once.

They pierced the left sides of the pair’s chests and the venomous snake behind them.

The two collapsed into pools of blood, their faces paper-white.

I picked up the snake and gave them a cold smile.

“Why didn’t you dodge?

Didn’t feel like it?”

My mother was exquisitely beautiful.

But during the years my father studied abroad, another man kept her in his power and abused her.

On the day Father returned, he stumbled upon what was happening.

I thought he would be horrified.

Furious.

Instead, he merely closed the bedroom door.

And heartlessly shut my mother inside with her humiliation and her tears.

After I was exiled to the frontier, my fiancé took up with my younger half sister.

Everyone in the capital said she was my replacement.

Then she shattered a keepsake my late mother had left behind, and he stepped forward to protect her.

I drew my sword and pointed it at his throat.

If he loved her so much, he could die with her.