Short story

In the fifth year since he took me for himself, the powerful young heir finally grew tired of me.

He handed me a bank card with a lazy smile. “Your childhood sweetheart isn’t actually dead.”

“Go find him.”

I stared at the address in my hand for a long time—so long that he lost patience, hauled me out of bed, and drawled, “I’ll give you a ride. Move your things out after today.”

He had just pulled on his coat and started looking for his car keys when his phone rang.

On the other end, his childhood friend was sobbing anxiously. “If you break up with her, what’s going to happen to Xu Xinghe and me?”

Gu Yuqing is the daughter of a fallen general and the most unlikely court historian in Great Chu: a woman who can fight an army but can barely read.

When a modern woman awakens in the body of Empress Pei Lingyi, the two of them turn Yuqing’s brutally honest records into a weapon against corrupt ministers, unfaithful men, and a kingdom built to erase women.

As reforms spread and the Chancellor moves to seize the throne, Yuqing must return to the battlefield while Lingyi risks being erased from history altogether.

Between broken brushes, unfinished chronicles, and birthday cakes from another world, two women fight to write their names—and their love—into the future.

After her parents die, Shen Heng survives only because her elder sister becomes a concubine in the Dingyuan Marquis Manor.

Drugged and framed on the day she comes of age, Shen Heng is forced into a brutal life with Chu Heng, while her sister pays an even deadlier price.

Reborn on the morning of the same banquet, Shen Heng refuses to repeat her fate and throws herself into a fight for freedom, dignity, and the sister who once sacrificed everything for her.

When her path crosses Prince Chen’s once more, an old act of kindness becomes the key to a future neither of them dared to imagine.

Nan Tao, an enslaved maid in a wealthy household, discovers that the baby-shaped ginseng fruit her mistress orders buried is alive.

As the fruit reveals the truth behind the household’s miracle heir, Nan Tao uncovers a cycle of trafficking, forced pregnancy, and women transformed into trees harvested for profit.

With a holy monk and his three disciples, she must uproot the dead tree that holds her soul—even though destroying it will erase her forever.

A dark feminist reimagining of a mythic delicacy, Ginseng Fruit turns supernatural horror into a haunting story of inherited violence, motherhood, and liberation.

In college, I once “bought” myself a girlfriend.

If she agreed to be with me, I would cover her family’s medical bills.

Humiliated, the brilliant scholarship student from a poor family stayed with me for four years.

Then my family went bankrupt.

When I broke up with her, she was as cold as ever. She did not ask me to stay—not even once.

Years later, I was serving fruit platters at a karaoke club to pay off my family’s debts. She had become a CEO and was dating the handsome star from our class.

She asked me, “Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“Well, I do.”

Mama had entered the household as the Princess’s dowry maid, only to be raped by the heir apparent.

When the Princess rushed back, she caught him in the act.

Yet the moment he had pulled up his trousers, he denied everything and insisted that Mama had deliberately seduced him.

The Princess slapped him across the face. “Too much of a coward to own what you did, and you still dare play games with this princess?”

That very night, the heir was secretly castrated.

The Princess decided he still had a passable face and sent him into the palace.

Mama, meanwhile, became the second lady of the residence.

After my divorce, I married the woman I had cheated with.

She was gentle and considerate, the kind of woman who always knew how to make me feel valued.

Her only drawback was that she came with a son.

But that was all right.

I had promised to love her, and I would love her child too.

As for my ex-wife, apart from the three thousand yuan I sent in child support every month, we had nothing more to do with each other.

Until the day I saw a hanging chair at a friend’s house—a chair that had once belonged to me.

My father wanted me to enter the palace in my elder sister’s place, so I packed my valuables that very night and ran away.

I left the capital and traveled south toward Jiangnan through the turn of winter and spring.

Thin snow and frost-laced woods followed me most of the way, but by the time I reached Jiangnan, the grass was lush and orioles filled the air.

Drunk on the spring scenery, I spent my days roaming mountains and rivers to my heart’s content.

One day, I was crouched beside a food stall with shining eyes, waiting for a braised pork knuckle to come out of the pot, when hurried footsteps erupted behind me.

A hand seized my ear and hauled upward until I had no choice but to rise with my face twisted in pain.

My father strode out from among the servants with a mocking smile. “Yin Chuchu, agree to enter the palace for your sister, and I can overlook your running away this time.”

The emperor had ordered the Yin family to send a maiden to the imperial selection, and by custom, my eldest sister should have gone.

But she had been sickly since childhood, and Father and his concubine could not bear to send her into that man-eating palace, so they set their sights on me instead.

My own mother had died giving birth to me, and as the unsupported second daughter of the Yin household, I was someone they could squeeze however they pleased.

Was my sister made of flesh and blood while I was not?

I lowered my head, gripping the silver hairpin I had bought at the night market the evening before. “And if I refuse?”

His wrinkles bunched into a hideous mask as he laughed. “Where could you possibly hide? Unless you die, I will turn over every inch of earth to find you.”

Understanding dawned across my face, and I dipped into a graceful bow. “Thank you for granting my wish, Father.”

Then, before his stunned eyes, I drove the silver hairpin into myself.

The early-spring wind slipped cold fingers beneath my clothes as I lay on the ground, regretting only that fragrant bowl of pork knuckle.

If it had finished cooking a little sooner, perhaps I could have eaten myself to death instead.

This was the seventh time I had died, and frankly, I was tired of it.

The day I decided to divorce Pei Qingshu was an ordinary one.

Only the night before, he had promised that he would send Miss Liu away the next day, then celebrate my birthday properly with me.

It finally seemed as though our life was about to get better.

Delighted, I rose early, opened my dressing case, and carefully drew my brows while looking into a copper basin.

Then I dug an old pomegranate-red skirt out from the bottom of the camphorwood chest.

After seven years of marriage, I did not own a single decent piece of jewelry.

Seeing my bare ears, I pinched off a balsam blossom and tucked it behind my bun.

On my way out to buy vegetables, I ran into Chunxiang’s mother, who caught my arm with a teasing smile.

“I saw Master Pei buy two hairpins the other day—one gold, one jade. Let me see which one you’re wearing.”

Then she noticed the balsam flower in my hair and froze.

Meng Fanyu carried himself with effortless distinction.

I thought that even if we eventually broke up, having him as my first love would leave me with no regrets.

So I pursued him with everything I had.

Eventually, I won him over, and he laid down three rules: we would date, never marry, and break up when we graduated.

For three years, we loved each other with abandon.

On graduation day, I was the one who ended it, but he went back on our agreement.

Our conversation fell apart, and Meng Fanyu lowered his proud head with a bitter laugh.

He told me I had better pray we never met again.

From then on, I did everything I could to avoid him.

But with the slightest turn of fate, the world can become very small, and two people who once belonged to each other are bound to meet again.