Short story

My cousin was so determined to stay with her bleached-blond bad boy that her parents locked her at home and refused to let her out.

I saw the light: all I had to do was fall for a blond, and I could become a shut-in with a perfectly legitimate excuse.

So I went home and told my stepbrother, “Wenzhou, I’ve fallen for a guy with blond hair.”

Jiang Wenzhou smiled and poured me a cup of hot water. “Was it cold out today? Drink this and warm up.”

Disappointed by his lack of reaction, I took a sip and stubbornly continued with my lines.

“Don’t look down on him. He’s not like other blonds—”

The next second, I lost consciousness.

When I woke again, a gleaming silver chain had appeared around my ankle.

Still as gentle as ever, Jiang Wenzhou stroked the chain.

“Tong Jia, you have no idea how awful men out there can be. Until you forget him, I’m not letting you leave this room.”

I froze for a moment, then resolutely lay back down.

“I’ll never forget him, even if it kills me!”

Wan Youling is a washed-up celebrity mocked across the internet for having no class.

Pressed for money, she joins a livestreamed wilderness survival show in the Ailao Mountains.

When a boastful rival claims to know the range better than anyone, Youling calmly says she is a native—and no one believes her.

Twenty minutes into the mountains, the cameras capture impossible creatures bowing to her, and the cast realizes she may have been telling the truth.

Every night, Qin Shen comes home at seven and treats his wife, Jiang Li, as though she matters more than life itself.

When one tiny change in his flawless routine leads Jiang Li to a secret villa, a mistress, and a hidden child, the perfect marriage she trusted collapses in an instant.

Even divorce cannot free her from a husband whose devotion is as obsessive as his betrayal is cruel.

To reclaim her life, Jiang Li must survive confinement, treachery, and one final act of violence without becoming as ruthless as the people who destroyed her faith in love.

Only on my wedding night did I discover that I had not married the second son of the marquis’s residence—the man I had been introduced to before the match.

I had married the sickly eldest son, who had spent most of his life confined to bed.

The idea had come from Miss Liu, who entered the household on the same day as I did and was now the Second Young Madam.

Smiling sweetly, she asked, “I heard you and Eldest Brother fell in love at first sight, Sister-in-law. Are you happy now that you are married?”

Everyone expected me to cry, make a scene, and expose how the grooms had been switched.

Instead, I lowered my eyes and calmly served tea to my new parents-in-law before I spoke.

“A maiden treasures her reputation above all else. I did not dare look closely at my future husband that day. Only today have I learned what a true gentleman looks like.”

My parents-in-law’s worry turned to delight, and they praised me as virtuous and noble—the finest of wives.

What none of them knew was that I came from a merchant family.

I believed in fair trades, and I never forgot a debt.

For the little matter of deceiving me, I judged that a few lives would be payment enough.

When immortals fall in love, they threaten to destroy all living beings over the slightest matter of the heart.

When gods surrender to passion, none of the Three Realms knows peace.

The Celestial Realm is long overdue for a reckoning.

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.”

I have a temple in the human world.

Hardly anyone visits, but one girl came to pray three times.

The first time, she offered ten years of her life in exchange for her grandmother’s recovery.

The second time, she raised the offer to twenty.

The third time, she muttered, “Why won’t it work?”

“Because you’ve come to the wrong temple,” I said.

“I bury people.

I don’t save them.”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t hear me.

She still knelt and bowed, three times to her knees and nine times to the ground, then took five yuan from her pocket and put it in the offering box.

Who had lied to her?

I followed her out, back to a cramped, dilapidated alley.

A group of children crowded around her, laughing.

“The idiot’s here!

Come look at the idiot!”

She clutched her sleeves and said quietly, “I’m not an idiot.

“I’m just a little slow to react.”

I am the vicious supporting character in a novel.

Yet I have been forced to watch one transmigrator after another take over my body, throw away all dignity, and grovel before a little beast already rotten to the core, all because they dreamed of saving him.

They called it redeeming the villain—showing him the warmth and beauty of the world.

Without exception, every one of them was betrayed once the little beast rose to power, and every one died without an intact corpse.

Now the cycle has begun again.

I expected another laughable attempt at redemption, but this time, before the villain could grow into his power, the new transmigrator drove a blade straight through his heart.

Blood flecked her face, making her smile look dark and uncanny.

“I’d already made a mortal enemy of him, so why not kill him and end the threat for good?”

“This redemption game is painfully dull.”

My possessiveness has always been off the charts.

Luckily, my boyfriend is the obedient type—his phone open to me anytime, reporting in around the clock, and keeping two meters away from every passing dog.

But a voice calling itself “the System” appears in my head: the male lead doesn’t love me, and I’m just a control-freak extra who should leave.

I brush it off—until Xie Ji really starts acting strange, and I find a diary entry that chills my blood.

My possessiveness evaporates in an instant, and I run away that very night.

Three days later, the System comes online, sobbing: the female lead who tried to help me escape has been kidnapped by the man I once thought I knew.

Me: ?

After my husband leaves on a business trip, my best friend moves in so I won’t be lonely.

Then I hear the stray cat’s thoughts and realize it is my husband, plotting with my friend to kill me for my inheritance and insurance payout.

He thinks I will never discover the truth.

So I decide to take him to the vet and have him neutered first.