Short story

At my ten-year high school reunion, I showed up bare-faced, wearing an outfit that cost less than three hundred yuan from head to toe, with a child in my arms.

And the poor boy I had once dumped, my ex-boyfriend, was now the CEO of XX Group, dressed in a sharp suit and sitting right across from me.

I was doing fortune-telling on livestream when I connected to Qin Shi Huang.

“I wish to know what became of my Great Qin in the end,” he asked.

I opened a history book.

“After your death, Zhao Gao and Li Si joined forces to put Hu Hai on the throne, then forced Prince Fu Su to take his own life.

“One year after your death, chaos swept the realm, and Liu Bang and Xiang Yu rose in rebellion against Qin.

“Three years after your death, the Qin dynasty fell.”

The more Qin Shi Huang listened, the angrier he became. He raised his hand and smacked Hu Hai, who was playing with mud off to the side, twice upside the head.

“Look at the mess you made!”

I transmigrated into the story as the male lead’s sex-crazed wife. Every day, I pestered him to do it with me, endlessly demanding and never knowing restraint.

The couch, the bedroom, the kitchen, the floor-to-ceiling windows…

Only when the hatred value soared to 99 did I realize in horror that I hadn’t transmigrated into a smut novel at all, but a clean romance!

Su Yu was actually the kind of male lead who was cold and abstinent when it came to sex!

From then on, I lived in constant fear, treading on eggshells and never daring to cling to him again. As soon as night fell, I’d head to a hotel and not come home.

I even took the initiative to ask for a divorce.

I hoped it would make him hate me a little less.

But the man finally snapped. Eyes red, he erupted and locked me down in a pathologically unrestrained grip, every word crazed:

“Why don’t you cling to me anymore?”

“Is it because I’m getting old, or because that XL one outside has already satisfied your appetite?”

My older brother was eighteen when he was married off as a live-in son-in-law to my sister-in-law.

My sister-in-law said that if he gave her a child, she’d reward him by letting him continue his studies.

Later, the day my brother passed the imperial exam, Father still refused to give up and asked,

“Son, now can my grandson change his surname back to mine?”

After rescuing my young nephew from the water, I went to the east wing to change my clothes.

But my brother-in-law, Zhao Hong, chose that exact moment to shove the door open and barge in, forcing me into a marriage with him as his second wife.

On the night before the wedding, my legitimate mother personally brought me a bowl of Sterilization Decoction.

I pushed the bowl away and looked up at her. “If you dare force me to drink it, the first thing I’ll do is make sure the Zhao Family has no descendants. Do you believe me?”

My legitimate mother flew into a rage and immediately went to complain to Zhao Hong.

Zhao Hong sneered. “Scheming women like her aren’t fit to bear my children.”

My eight-year-old nephew shouted too,

“Bad woman! You’re not fit to be my mother!”

I looked at Zhao Hong. “Since I’m not fit to bear your children, then don’t come to my bed.”

“From now on, the child’s food, clothing, lodging, schooling, future prospects, and dignity in front of the nobles… none of it has anything to do with me.”

“If my lord thinks I’m so scheming, perhaps he should raise the child himself.”

Before I transmigrated here, I worked in HR at a major tech company.

Aside from competence, the job also required knowing how to spot workplace PUA when you saw it.

Xu Man is forced into the Crown Princess Academy with only one goal: get her tuition back and save her ailing father.

When the academy uses rules and money to grind its noble students into submission, she joins forces with her classmates, exposes its corruption through a single ledger, brings the bride-training institution to a halt, and balances the books for women determined to win back their freedom.

The day I married into the Gu marquis’s household, my father-in-law died and my mother-in-law fell ill.

The wedding feast became a funeral banquet, and I was forced to take charge in the midst of the crisis, assuming control of the household and carrying the funeral through with composure.

My husband thanked me for preserving the Gu family’s dignity, yet never set foot in my room again.

In time, he filled the household with concubines and fathered a brood of sons and daughters by them.

I raised them conscientiously and planned for their futures.

Then I overheard my husband speaking to them behind my back.

“I have never met anyone as coldhearted as your mother. Your grandfather died, and she did not shed a single tear. You may call her Mother, but never learn from her. She is unworthy of the name.”

By then, a physician had already told me I did not have long to live.

Not one of those children came to visit me or bring me medicine; they simply left me to die.

With my last strength, I set fire to the Gu residence and burned that cold, loveless place to the ground.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn.

The Gu family came to propose marriage, and as I looked at the refined, handsome man before me, we spoke the same words at the same time.

“I refuse.”

It turned out I was not the only one who had returned.

When bandits swept through our village, every man in the family vanished without a trace.

The women, hobbled by their tiny bound feet, could not keep up and were abandoned to die.

Before he left, Father handed Mother a knife.

“If they violate your chastity, use this to kill yourself.”

“When I return, I’ll see you enshrined in the Chaste Women’s Hall.”

After Father left, Mother smashed the memorial tablets in that hall and used the wood to build several beds.

Then she and my sisters-in-law went into business with the bandits.

That night, every woman suffered worse than death.

But every one of us survived.

When Father finally came home, he asked Mother how she wanted to die.

Mother set down the knife, raised a pistol, and aimed it at his head.

When my mother died, she entrusted me to the Yu family in the capital.

Only after I arrived at their gates did I discover that the “madam” she had named was merely one of the master’s concubines.

In high school, the boy seated behind me had a crush on me, so he put glue in my hair, punctured my bicycle tires, and threw away my homework.

He would even snap my bra strap while I was concentrating in class.

Snap-the sound rang out with humiliating clarity through the classroom.

I spun around, red with shame and fury, and he grinned at me. “New style today, huh?”

His friend immediately joined in. “Xia Xin! He only does it because he likes you!”

“You two are going to get married someday anyway, so who cares if your future husband touches you? Hahaha!”

The tips of Zhou Qi’s ears were bright red, but the sight only made my stomach turn.

Later, in the cafeteria, I dumped a tray of food over his head and smiled into his furious face. “I like you!”

His friend leaped up to defend him. “How is dumping food on his head supposed to mean you like him?”

See? They knew exactly what they were doing.

So I yanked down his pants with one hand and said flatly, “There-now I like you.”