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Vengeance Across Time

July 14, 2018. My flight was delayed due to weather, and I didn’t land until three in the morning.

As soon as I turned on my phone, I received a call from my senior. He told me to get to Baoshan Hospital immediately. Now!

I asked him what was wrong, telling him to explain himself first.

“Xiaoyu,” he said. “Something happened to Xiaoyu.”

My ears began to ring, and a splitting headache took hold.

That day was the third anniversary of my relationship with Qiu Xiaoyu. If the plane hadn’t been delayed, I would have proposed at midnight.

At four-thirty in the morning, I saw her at the hospital.

She was covered with a white sheet. Her exposed skin was deathly pale, and when I took her hand, it was cold and stiff.

It didn’t feel like Xiaoyu’s hand at all.

But the autopsy report stated it clearly: Qiu Xiaoyu had died in a car accident at 6:10 PM at the intersection of Qinghe Road and Wenshuo Road.

“It was a truck. The driver was exhausted and didn’t slow down before… Li Tong!” My senior suddenly grabbed my hand tightly.

My hand was just about to lift the white cloth covering Xiaoyu’s face.

“Let go,” I said.

“Li Tong, it’s better… if you don’t look.”

Choking back a sob, I repeated, “Let go.”

He stopped blocking me.

I slowly pulled back the sheet.

She was still beautiful, her features soft, just like when she tried to sleep in every morning.

Only, there seemed to be a wound on her neck.

And that wound extended downward. It grew deeper and larger, until her entire body…

Was completely destroyed.

I collapsed to my knees.

It felt as if a knife had been driven through my heart. My eyes stung, but there were no tears, and I couldn’t make a single sound.

“Did you forget our anniversary? You have to make it up to me tomorrow.”

I knew it was an auditory hallucination; those were the words from the WeChat message Xiaoyu had sent me.

The final WeChat message of her life.

Our entire story had somehow ended on such an unremarkable sentence…

Suddenly, my throat tightened, and I retched, vomiting up mouthfuls of bile.

Vicious Canary Relies on Bullet Comment Spoilers to Turn the Tables

I was He Xingxiao’s kept canary. In bed, I slacked off with a terrible attitude.

After a while, I’d start whining that it hurt, that I was tired.

But when it came to shopping, I could speed-walk for miles, spending his money like my life depended on it.

Then one day, I saw a row of floating comments: [The vicious supporting female character’s good days are almost over. The beloved, universally adored heroine is about to meet the male lead.]

[She’ll scheme against the heroine again and again, and the male lead will gradually grow disgusted with her.]

[The male lead hasn’t even dumped her yet, but she’ll run off with his money and a fake rich heir. In the end, that fake rich heir will steal all her savings, harvest her kidney, and she’ll die miserably in a rental apartment.]

[She deserves it! Only a kind, non-materialistic good girl like the heroine deserves a tycoon’s love!]

I did not want to lose this job that paid three hundred thousand a month.

From then on, I stopped slacking.

In bed, I performed like I’d been injected with pure adrenaline, refusing to leave even the tiniest opening for the heroine.

He Xingxiao looked at me with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Are you trying to make me die in bed so you can inherit everything I own?”

West Third Institute

While everyone else was fighting for the Emperor’s favor, I built an intelligence station in the cold palace.

Until the day he died, the Emperor never knew that the woman stirring up the hidden currents of his harem was someone whose name he could not even remember.

I died in Yongxiang Alley during my third winter there.

Not truly died-only the kind of death where your name is crossed out in vermilion ink on the registry.

They said Noble Lady Li, who had once worked in the imperial garden and was later favored by His Majesty for her beauty, had gone mad.

Because on the late Empress’s memorial day, I let my hair hang loose, went barefoot, and sang a rousing rendition of “Liangzhou Ci.”

In truth, I was not mad. I had simply calculated that the Chief Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial would pass through the imperial garden that day.

Madness was the best pass in the cold palace, and the best armor.

On the day I moved into the West Third Institute, only one lame old eunuch came to lead the way.

The weeds in the courtyard rose past my knees, and the moss on the well curb was as thick as a velvet blanket.

My roommate, Attendant Li, had been thrown in here three years ago after offending the Imperial Consort.

When she saw me arrive, she did not even lift her eyelids. She only kept rubbing a length of hemp rope in her hands, its edges worn fuzzy.

I set my only bundle down on the crumbling earthen kang.

Inside were two sets of worn palace clothes, a bald writing brush, and half a ream of yellow paper.

The paper pasted over the window lattice had a hole in it the size of a fist. The north wind poured in with a howl, carrying the faint sound of pipes and flutes from far away.

I stared at that hole, but in my heart, a sliver of light slipped through.

In a madwoman’s world, there were the fewest rules.

Here, perhaps, I could live.

When He Tore Off His Prayer Beads

I had profaned the divine after all.

The aloof, ascetic monk from the altar now stood inside my red-draped bedchamber, tearing off his prayer beads as he clasped my ankle, his Adam’s apple shifting.

“Little Highness, this humble monk has broken his vows.”

When the Grass Blossoms in Rage

After my eldest sister took her own life, her marriage to the Heir of the Marquis of Changping was passed down to my second sister.

After my second sister took her own life, the original betrothal landed on my head.

Less than half a year after marrying into Changping Marquis Manor, I wanted to take my own life too.

Just as I was hesitating over whether to hang myself like my eldest sister or swallow gold like my second sister, the heir returned from disaster relief.

And he brought back a concubine.

I looked at the delicate, beautiful concubine and nearly wept with joy.

Wonderful. In this grand, suffocating mansion, I was finally not the only unlucky one anymore.

When Will the Autumn Moon Rise?

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.

Where Did the Princess Go?

I was a spoiled princess with an elder sister who came from another world.

With her indulgence, I escaped marriage and raised horses on my border fief while she remained at court and shouldered every responsibility.

Then one day, she vanished.

Everyone thought her era was over.

They did not expect the princess they called useless to ride back to the capital overnight and reveal the strength she had hidden for years.

If my sister was gone, how was I supposed to enjoy being useless in peace?

Where Do Dreams Return?

Everyone in the capital envies He Jingyao, the only wife of the powerful Chief Minister Shen. Yet she alone knows that her distant husband has filled a treasured sandalwood box with love letters to her elder sister.

When death sends Jingyao back to the day Shen Yanchu first proposed, she returns his betrothal jade and refuses to repeat their loveless marriage. But Shen has also returned with memories of their first life—and this time, he begs her not to leave him.

Caught between a calculating sister who sees marriage as a political bargain and a remorseful man who understood his heart too late, Jingyao walks away from the capital. In the freedom of Quliang City, she finally meets the love that had been waiting for her all along.

Wildvine

When I was thirteen, in order to serve the distinguished guest who had come from afar, I smeared lard on the soles of the lead dancer’s shoes, making her slip and embarrass herself on the spot.

After that, the beauty sent to his room became me, just as I had wished.

Yet that impossibly refined nobleman merely looked me over twice, then said a single sentence that left me chilled from head to toe, as if a basin of ice water had been poured over me.

“I saw everything just now.”