Short story

The good news: I’d landed in a Journey to the West fanfic.

The bad news: I was a snake spirit who survived exactly one episode.

To stay alive, I lied that Guanyin had sent me and became Tang Sanzang’s disciple.

Eldest Brother was stunned.

“We’ve already cleared fifty-four of the eighty-one trials, and you’re only joining us now?”

“Ha ha.

That’s what having connections gets you.”

My first love, a man who had clawed his way out of poverty, murdered me.

Then I was reborn inside his beautiful, wealthy wife’s womb.

If nothing went wrong, once I survived the pregnancy, that bastard would lift me tenderly into his arms and say, “Look at this little darling.

Daddy’s sweetheart from a past life.”

That’s right.

I was your sweetheart.

And I’ve come to collect.

At sixteen, Fu Zhiya wakes on the day she finished her high school entrance exam, decades before her husband, sister, and mother shattered her life.

This time, she refuses to carry anyone else’s debts.

As she cuts ties with a family that never truly chose her, faces old betrayals in their earliest forms, and fights for her education, she begins to discover what it means to live for herself.

But freedom is never given freely—and every boundary she draws forces the people around her to reveal who they really are.

Everyone in my family was a villain.

In my last life, my father was impeached by Xie Linyuan, the emperor’s brother-in-law.

So Father drugged him and hired several men to ruin his chastity.

After Xie Linyuan rose to power, he had my entire family arrested and our estate confiscated.

In this life, I was determined to be a good person.

I reached Xie Linyuan in time to save him after he was drugged.

He reclined against the bed, his face flushed, but his tongue remained as sharp as ever.

“What shameless temptress is this?

How dare you resort to such vile tricks to harm me?”

My fault.

I had been in such a hurry to save him that I had not even dressed properly.

I said awkwardly, “Well, Lord Xie… should I fetch a girl from next door to cure you?”

“A virgin courtesan would do too?”

My younger sister and I were both princesses of a fallen kingdom.

The day our capital fell, enemy soldiers came to violate us, and my sister shoved me forward.

She thought I was certain to die.

Instead, the enemy’s young lord rescued me, and I later became his Noble Consort.

My sister was reduced to slavery and suffered every day.

Consumed by hatred, she killed me—and was reborn alongside me.

This time, she rushed to leave with the enemy soldiers first.

“Sister, this time, I will be the Noble Consort.”

What she did not know was that I had never wanted to be a consort.

With royal blood in my veins, if I was to become anything, I would become the empress who restored our kingdom.

My best friend and I ended up inside the same novel.

She was the scheming second male lead’s hopeless admirer.

I was the obsessive villain’s substitute lover.

In public, we pined for men who didn’t love us.

In private, we spent their money like there was no tomorrow.

After three years of living it up, the heroine—the woman they supposedly truly loved—came back.

Once we learned that both men would lose their minds over her, my best friend packed a little bag and knocked on my door late at night.

“I’ve saved enough.

Have you?”

“Not quite,” I said.

“But I can spend yours.”

So we faked our deaths and ran away together.

Three years later, she had the misfortune to run into her ex-husband.

“I’ll cover for you!”

I told her.

“Run!”

Then I turned around and walked straight into a solid chest.

The obsessive villain calmly undid his tie and bound my hands.

“Try getting away yourself first.”

My mother was a woman from another world.

Right beneath my imperial father’s nose, she taught me that all people are equal and that women hold up half the sky.

Because the emperor doted on her, he made an exception and let me, a princess, attend the imperial school.

Once I learned to read, everything became clear.

I understood exactly why my brothers fought for the throne.

Artifact-conservation student Lin Fu wakes in the body of the lowest-ranking maid in the imperial harem, where saving a priceless cup brings her to the attention of Emperor Qin Zhi.

Protected by the kind Empress Shen Chenxiang, she finds purpose restoring paintings, porcelain, and other damaged treasures inside a palace that destroys people far more easily than objects.

After tragedy takes her benefactor, Lin Fu is pulled into a dangerous struggle among the Emperor, the Shen clan, and the Yan clan.

To avenge the dead and protect the children entrusted to her, she must survive as the Emperor’s favored consort without allowing the harem to turn her into another weapon.

From shattered porcelain to broken friendships, every relic she repairs reveals a history of love, betrayal, and the things no pair of clever hands can ever restore.

On the day my husband ascended to immortality, a shaft of divine light struck me in the eyes.

From that moment on, I was blind.

The light coursed through my body day after day.

The pain left me unable to hold my chopsticks or even walk.

Every breath felt like needles piercing me.

Only later did I learn the truth.

My husband’s junior martial sister resented me for being his mortal love trial, so she had decided to teach me a lesson.

My husband knew exactly what she had done, yet he gathered her into his arms and sighed indulgently.

“How could you be so willful?”

“You must never do this again.”

“And in three years, you will lift the spell from her.”

His junior sister threw herself happily into his embrace and declared that he was the best senior brother in the world.

My heart felt carved apart, but my eyes were so dry I could not shed a single tear.

Once, I had still held out hope for my husband.

I had thought he did not know.

It turned out he knew everything.

He had simply chosen her and abandoned me.

Later, I ascended too.

On my first day in the immortal realm, I borrowed the power of the welcoming light and destroyed his junior sister’s eyes.

After being lost for fifteen years, the prime minister’s true daughter, Song Weilan, finally returns home and comes face-to-face with the false heiress who took her place. Beneath Song Jinyu’s tears and feigned innocence lies a vicious campaign to ruin Weilan, but this time Weilan refuses to remain a helpless victim. Armed with a sharp tongue, an unyielding will, and memories of suffering, Weilan fights for her family, exposes every scheme against her, and claims the freedom to live on her own terms.