Short story

My mistress prides herself on being a virtuous wife, even as she forces her husband’s bedmaids to drink mercury-laced contraceptive draughts.

When one girl dies and another is sold, my mistress chooses me as the next woman for her husband’s bed.

She does not know that I was once a modern physician—or that I have stopped waiting for mercy.

If this household refuses to recognize its servants as people, I will teach its masters the price of treating women as things.

My mother taught me never to trust a man’s affection.

When a marquis’s family chose me to marry their reckless third son, I saw my chance to rise.

He already kept a pregnant mistress, but I had no intention of fighting her for his love.

I would save her, secure my place, and make myself indispensable.

In a house full of secrets, every crisis could become a rung on my ladder.

On the second day of the tenth lunar month, the great warlord Lu Zhi took a second concubine: Song Anran, the youngest daughter of the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce.

Lu Zhi had made a name for himself in recent years.

He had won battle after battle, commanded a formidable army, and wielded immense power—but surely not so much that the chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce would deliver his own daughter to him as a concubine.

Oh, but it was.

My father did exactly that.

On my first day as the City Goddess, a half-grown boy came to offer me incense.

“Make my father meddle in my life less!”

So I kept his father busy with business, leaving him no time to press the boy to study.

Then his grandfather arrived, wielding an enormous sandalwood ruler.

After the beating, the boy limped back into my City God Temple.

I quietly poked my head out and saw him baring his teeth as he complained, “What a lousy deity!”

I could not stop myself from muttering, “I am not lousy.”

When the hundredth prodigy of Sword One Sect abandons the Way of Heartlessness for love, its exasperated master orders the entire sect to embrace the Carefree Way instead.

Fourth disciple Ying Ruge expects a delightfully chaotic new life filled with matchmaking schemes, sect rivalries, and the silent devotion of her second senior brother, Meng Yu.

But when Demon-Suppressing Mountain breaks open, their carefree creed is tested by a battle that forces every disciple to decide what freedom, duty, and love are worth.

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.

Ten years after I became Xiaotian, the Celestial Hound, I finally took human form.

As a woman.

Yang Jian went silent.

All three of his eyes blinked for ages.

He still couldn’t work it out.

His best buddy was definitely male.

I am the only mortal in a xianxia drama—the lowly tool sacrificed to an immortal-demon romance.

I schemed, endured every humiliation, and fought only to survive, yet after my death, every immortal despised me.

“Dying was one thing. What a pity she sullied the snow.”

After being reborn, I watched the live comments reveal the plot, swallowed my blood and tears, and began playing the most fragile, kindhearted heroine imaginable.

Little by little, I tested the personas the audience loved most, until they adored me—until they went mad for me.

Then I would lay this world of immortals and demons beneath my feet.

Who could ever guess that Fairy Xueyi, the peerless prodigy unseen in ten thousand years, was only a mortal?

After a fight with my husband, I went to my boyfriend for comfort.

Then we got caught.

My boyfriend stepped in front of me and told my husband, “The one she doesn’t love is the other man!”

I said, “Keep your voice down!

Is this something to be proud of?”

I imprisoned the peerless genius I had secretly loved for years.

After an accident left her blind, I covered her eyes with a silk ribbon.

Now she glares in my direction and angrily condemns my despicable methods.

She asks what I want from her.

I tell her I want her to cooperate with her treatment and recover in peace.

I will heal her eyes.

And later, I really do.

I promise to return her to her old life, only for her to fly into a rage.

“What? You’ve only kept me prisoner for a few days! Are you stringing me along? How dare you leave me hanging like this!”

“You’d better pray I never find you. If I do, I’ll show you exactly what it feels like to be left hanging!”

Too guilty to acknowledge the threat, I send her away that very night.

I think everything will finally return to normal—until she actually finds me.

The silk ribbon that once covered her eyes is now cinched around my wrists, hoisting me high above the floor.

Forced onto the tips of my toes, I have nowhere to hide beneath her unwavering gaze…