Tragic Past

I was in the middle of feeding the pigs in my village when I suddenly saw a Danmaku.

[Is this bystander the villain’s younger sister?]

[She still thinks she’s an orphan. She has no idea that the villainous Chancellor is actually the brother she got separated from back then.]

[It’s a pity the villain lost to the male lead. He’s about to hang himself.]

[The villain only became an official to find his sister in the first place. If they could just meet once, maybe he wouldn’t have to die.]

What?!

I immediately sold my pigs to scrape together some travel money and rushed to the Capital overnight.

I knocked on the gates of the Prime Minister’s Mansion.

A pale man draped in a heavy cloak stood at the entrance, his gaze deep and haunting.

I lunged forward and threw my arms around his legs, wailing, “Brother! Wang Ergou from the village is trying to force me to marry him!”

When I first started dating Xie Mingchen, he had absolutely nothing to his name.

My friends all told me not to be a fool. They said that with my looks and background, I could find any wealthy man I wanted; there was no need to suffer alongside him.

Now that he’s become the high-flying President Xie, a darling of the venture capital world, those same people say I only won out because I made my move early.

They claim that with his current status, surrounded by women of every shape and beauty, I wouldn’t even stand a chance otherwise.

Even my mother has switched sides. She keeps telling me to lower my guard and learn how to act vulnerable. She warns me not to spend all these years with him only to end up with nothing.

I couldn’t help but snap back, “If he doesn’t bring up marriage, am I supposed to beg him for it?”

“That stubborn streak of yours is going to be your downfall!” My mother sighed, frustrated by my lack of initiative. “What else are you going to do if you don’t play along? Are you really going to let someone else enjoy the shade of the tree you planted yourself?”

I didn’t want to argue; I just felt wronged.

Why was it that in this long-drawn-out relationship, I was the one who did the hoping and the one who felt the disappointment? And now, I was still the one expected to drop hints and nudge him into finally taking action.

Pei Qi traded cities for a beauty, a grand gesture that became a legendary romance. Unfortunately, I was not that beauty, nor was I Pei Qi; I didn’t even know him.

My husband was merely a soldier defending the city. Because he refused to surrender, he died in that war, though the city was ultimately held.

The following year, when Pei Qi traded cities for his beauty, I became that beauty’s Foot-washing Maid.

It was the fourth year of my relationship with Tong Yuen.

The harshest words I had ever heard came from his mother.

“Two men together-how are you supposed to get married and have children?”

“Don’t ruin him.”

“He was perfectly normal before he met you.”

“Mr. Fu, you’re not a child anymore. Have some sense.”

Finally, enduring the pain, I broke up with him.

But Tong Yuen spent the entire night huddled outside my door.

He tried to force the Little White Dog he had sewn together, stitch by stitch, into my hands.

When I rejected him again, he finally broke down in tears.

“Gege, you don’t want the Little White Dog… and you don’t want me anymore either?”

When I was a child, my father once gave me a ten-yuan bill as pocket money.

He said he had picked it up on the road.

I remember very clearly that on the back of that bill, written in black ink, was a line:

“There is a pyramid scheme on the fifth floor. Help.”

I took the money to show my father, and he smiled and told me,

“Who knows how many people have used this bill? Who knows when those words were written? Maybe the person who wrote them has already been rescued.”

I was in a hurry to buy chocolate, so I didn’t think much about it.

Because chocolate is sweet, after all.

Not long after, there was a piece of news on TV.

“A man mistakenly entered a pyramid scheme den, was beaten to death, and then dismembered.”

As a child, I stared blankly at the television.

My father also stared blankly at the television.

I asked him what was wrong.

He shouted at me angrily, telling me not to meddle in his business, and then left the house.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on; I just felt confused.

It wasn’t until the New Year, at the family dinner, that my father got drunk and cried uncontrollably. In front of all the relatives, he confessed to picking up that bill.

The place where he found the money was directly below the den mentioned in the news.

In other words, the words on that ten-yuan bill were very likely written by someone who had fallen into that pyramid scheme, possibly even the person who was dismembered.

He sobbed, clutching a bottle of liquor, saying that it was his fault that the man died. The whole family comforted him, but I just stood aside, dumbfounded and at a loss.

So… I used that money to buy chocolate…

Something indescribable seemed to awaken within me.

Throughout my later life, I would often think of that ten-yuan bill.

I wondered, was the original owner of that money alright? Was he really rescued? Or… did that money really come from the man who was dismembered?

If it really came from him, he must have endured painful beatings and inhuman torture before finally seizing a chance one day to write those words for help on the bill and toss it out the window.

He must have clung to hope for rescue until the very moment he died.

Yet my father ignored that hope.

I always ask myself, if I had been the first to find that bill, could I have saved him? Or would I have overlooked the writing, just like my father?

This thought haunts me like a ghost, tormenting my mind more and more as I grow older.

Until that day.

A new “bill” appeared before me.

…

I accompanied His Highness through three thousand miles of exile, yet after he reclaimed his throne, he found me lowly and loathsome.

Later, when the time came to reward merit in the Golden Luan Hall, I asked only one thing of him.

His Highness assumed I would ask for a title or a place by his side.

Instead, I prostrated myself deeply and spoke softly yet firmly: “I ask that Your Highness grant your subject’s daughter a marriage to General Shen.”

His Highness’s eyes nearly split with rage as he finally understood-

Throughout those three thousand miles of exile, from beginning to end, it was never him that I loved.

I had been with my boyfriend for three years.

During that time, I discovered that his handle on every social media platform was July.

I assumed he simply had a deep-seated love for the romantic month of July, so I never pried into it.

It wasn’t until our wedding day, when his ex-girlfriend sent a gift, that I saw the name signed on the box-

Qi Yue.

In that moment, I finally understood. It wasn’t the month of July he cherished; it was Qi Yue.

My heart sank into an abyss…

At our wedding, I whispered something in my husband’s ear.

Upon hearing it, he suffered a total breakdown and leaped to his death right then and there.

After he died, countless people-including the police-asked me what I had said.

I remained silent.

Five years later, while I was living in poverty, someone tracked me down. They offered a massive reward, wanting to buy those words from me.

He wanted to know exactly what kind of sentence could kill a man.

In that moment, I was overcome with excitement.

The person I had been waiting for had finally arrived.

Rumor had it that a woman bearing a Lotus Birthmark would become a femme fatale, a harbinger of war and destruction.

Upon hearing this, the Imperial Consort immediately dispatched her people to scour the countryside, intent on strangling this threat in its cradle.

When the news reached Jiangling City, Miss Song was consumed by terror.

She bore a Lotus Birthmark on her own body. If the Imperial Consort’s men found her, she knew she wouldn’t survive.

To save her, her lover decided to find another woman and brand a Lotus Birthmark onto her back, sending her into the palace to take Miss Song’s place.

It was a perilous mission. Even with the promise of a massive reward, there were few takers.

That was until I accepted the post in the Ghost Market.

“I’ll go.”

I was abducted and sold.

But I didn’t cry, and I didn’t cause a scene.

I even married a handsome man.

He asked me, “Do you want to escape?”

I replied with a beaming smile, “How could I, Brother?

“In life, I am yours; in death, I am your ghost.

“I will be with you for all eternity.”

He finally smiled and leaned down to kiss me.

I closed my eyes.

That’s right, of course I’m going to be with you for all eternity.

My life was destroyed by you.

Naturally, I’m going to drag you down to hell with me.