Short story

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.

My sister took my jade hairpin, then used it to frame me for an illicit palace affair.

Our parents and my fiancé begged me to take the blame.

Three years of torment ended with my death.

When I opened my eyes again, I was kneeling before the emperor on the day it all began.

This time, I would spare none of them.

Qiu Ning had once thought Crown Prince Jin Ye was the man she was destined to marry, until Chu Mumu, a girl who had crossed over from elsewhere, forced him to kneel outside the Study Hall for a day and a night over her demand for a single, lifelong love.

When the imperial marriage finally soured, Qiu Ning still married into the Crown Prince’s residence. From that day on, every tear, every favor, and every tender glance became part of a game she meant to win.

The day I met my online boyfriend in person, I discovered he was mute.

The boy pressed his lips together, his face pale, nothing like the cheerful person he had been online.

[I’m sorry. I must have disappointed you…]

He handed me the note without daring to meet my eyes, while I stared blankly between his face and the floating comments in midair.

[I’m dying. The male lead set up his own brother and practically sold him out just to get revenge for the female lead.]

So the beautiful mute boy before me was the campus heartthrob’s younger twin brother. He had never been the one dating me online at all.

I curled my lips into a smile, utterly unconcerned that they had switched places.

A mute boyfriend was perfect.

He was adorable when I bullied him and he could not even get a sentence out.

[Were you satisfied with today?]

The message popped up on my phone just after I got home. After admiring the boy’s swollen lips and damp eyes one more time, I sent over our selfie.

[Very. But next time we kiss, baby, it would be even better if you didn’t tremble.]

It took a long while for the person on the other end to reply.

[I didn’t do well today. Let’s meet again tomorrow.]

When my brother was found in the fields, nothing remained of him but a sheet of human skin.

Grandpa Eighteen, the village geomancer, said my brother had crossed a weasel spirit and paid with his life for giving the wrong answer.

That night, as I lit incense beside my brother’s coffin, I saw a weasel in a bright floral jacket leap onto the lid.

Its mouth stretched into a hideous grin, and a strange cry rasped from its throat: “Young master, do you think this Immortal looks human?”

My mother was kicked to death by the horse of a nobleman from the capital. Everyone in the village warned me, “That nobleman only spared you because he thinks you’re a fool. Don’t even think about revenge.” After burying my mother, I went to the largest brothel in the capital to seek out my aunt. She wrapped an arm around me and said, “Good girl. We’ll kill him and make him pay for your mother’s life.” “The legitimate son of the Capital Magistrate, huh? Let me think about how he ought to die.”

After Jiang Can dies in a plane crash, her grandmother, He Xiuhua, refuses to let hope die with her. Unseen by the living, Jiang Can’s spirit watches as Grandma searches, grieves, and waits through years of scams, protests, and an ocean-spanning hunt—until enduring love finally brings a family home.

After dying to save her older sister, Shen Qian learns that she was only a supporting character in a book where her sister was the heroine. When a god offers to send her back for revenge, Shen Qian asks for just one thing instead: the chance to know what it feels like to be loved wholeheartedly.

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.

One year into her marriage, Xie Wu refuses when her husband asks to take Lin Manrou as his concubine. The feud that follows costs Xie Wu her unborn child, her reputation, and thirty years of freedom—only for her to learn that both women were pawns in her husband’s plan to marry the cousin he truly loved. Reborn on the day he makes the same request, Xie Wu says yes. This time, she will play the dutiful wife, give every rival exactly what she wants, and quietly turn the Marquis of Annan’s household into a board on which only she knows the next move.