Short story

At the Immortal Trials, Zhao Fuqu glimpses a future in which Shen Du, the master she once trusted, accuses her of colluding with demons and executes her.

Determined to escape that fate, she kneels before the sect’s most useless elder instead—only to awaken a sharp-tongued divine sword and a path to power, revenge, and a destiny of her own.

While carving the demon king’s core from his body, Zhao Fuqu is dragged into a chain of illusions built from the past of her supposedly useless master.

She witnesses Fu Ning—the first child of destiny—sacrifice himself for the Changheng Sect, then endure three brutal reincarnations for defying the Heavenly Dao.

Shen Du insists that fate cannot be changed, but Zhao Fuqu refuses to stand by while the people she cares about are sacrificed for the sect’s glory.

I am a woman of boundless kindness.

So when Song Lin’an told me that the only woman he had ever loved was my elder half sister, I sent him straight to the grave without hesitation.

“My sister is dead, and since your devotion runs so deep, you should join her. No need to thank me. Nothing delights me more than helping true lovers fulfill their wishes.”

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of our betrothal.

Song Lin’an glared at me and humiliated me before everyone. “The Song family will only welcome a truly virtuous woman. We will never let a vicious shrew through our doors!”

He broke off the match and made me the laughingstock of the capital.

He also branded me a vicious woman.

Song Lin’an schemed his way into marrying my elder half sister instead.

No one wanted me after that.

On the day they returned to visit her family, Song Lin’an sneered at me. “Everyone knows what you really are now. Let us see who else you can ruin!”

I only smiled.

The fool had no idea that in our previous life, I had lived to eighty while he had dropped dead at twenty.

I knew far too many things he did not.

Xu Feiyun has spent her life as the obedient maid of the privileged half-sister who taught her to call suffering a blessing.

When that sister stages her death to test her husband’s devotion, Feiyun enters the Shen household as a temporary second wife and quietly turns every piece of the reckless scheme to her own purpose.

Between a frightened child, a husband awakening to the truth, and a family built on buried crimes, Feiyun must decide how much tenderness is real and how much is another weapon.

Her revenge will bring the Xu family to judgment—but true freedom lies beyond vengeance, in the ordinary world someone once taught her she deserved to see.

When I married into the Shen family, I already knew my husband had one great love.

She was the fisherman’s daughter who had saved him after he was gravely wounded while suppressing bandits.

They had sworn themselves to each other through life and death and privately pledged to marry.

But his mother threatened to take her own life and would only permit the woman to become his concubine.

On the eve of my wedding, Mother wept with worry and asked, “How will our Zhen’er ever live like this?”

How else?

He could play the devoted lover.

I would be the lady of the household.

Shen Yunfeng and I were merely two people traveling the same road toward entirely different ends.

Everyone in my family had sickly bones.

My eldest sister coughed three times for every three steps, spat blood every third day, and fainted every fifth.

My brother’s bones broke at a touch—one a month, seven or eight times a year.

I alone had a head of iron and a body of bronze.

I could ram a peach tree with my forehead to bring down the fruit.

The tree shook, the peaches fell, and I was perfectly fine.

When I was seven, an eminent monk passed by.

One look at me, and he blurted out: “Bronze skin over bone.

A demon born.”

I couldn’t be bothered to listen.

I charged him headfirst and knocked him flat on his back.

It took him ages to wake up.

When he did, he laughed instead of getting angry and asked my parents: “Would you have your children live long lives, sound in body and bone?”

“Take one bone each from your eldest daughter and your son.

Nurture them beside your youngest daughter’s heart, then cut them out when she turns eighteen.”

“Your eldest daughter will then rise like the sovereign moon, and your son will be the richest man in the realm.”

My parents trembled.

“And this girl?”

The monk held my wrist, half closed his eyes, and chuckled out a little song: “No future as a human.

As a beast, she’ll have plenty of room to roam.”

During the autumn hunt, my fiancé’s precious first love deliberately shot an arrow through my hair.

The ladies around us went white with shock.

But her eyes reddened, and she shrank behind my fiancé.

“My arrow went astray.

I didn’t mean to hurt her.

But she stood in front of my quarry and wouldn’t move.

Surely she bears some of the blame?”

My fiancé shielded her and shouted at me: “Weapons don’t have eyes.

If you can’t dodge them on a hunting ground, that’s your own incompetence.”

I merely murmured assent.

Then I raised my bow.

Three arrows whistled from it at once.

They pierced the left sides of the pair’s chests and the venomous snake behind them.

The two collapsed into pools of blood, their faces paper-white.

I picked up the snake and gave them a cold smile.

“Why didn’t you dodge?

Didn’t feel like it?”

I married Prince Shu in my elder sister’s place, figuring that if he discovered the truth, the worst that could happen was a fight between us.

Little did I know that Prince Shu was not only blind, but also determined to pamper the “wife” he had brought home.

Now he is knocking outside my door. “Little Qiao, we have been married for half a month. May I sleep in the bed tonight?”

Er… How am I supposed to tell him that his bride is actually his male, cross-dressed nemesis?

In the unluckiest year of my life, I—a male fox—became bound to a Fertility System.

I ended up carrying the children of a Sword Venerable who cultivated the Path of Detachment.

Then I lost my nerve and ran away pregnant.

Shen Yuze and her nemesis Jiang Xing have spent nine years fighting, dating, breaking up, and reconciling at the command of a ruthless Couples System.

On the eve of their wedding, they discover that Zhao Fei’er—the supposed villainess wrecking their relationship—is trapped by a system of her own.

With three fortunes and their freedom on the line, the unwilling actors join forces to stage one last spectacular melodrama and finally beat the systems at their own game.