Tragic Past

Do you know what it feels like to be diagnosed with a terminal illness at such a young age?

The rich playboy offered to treat me to dinner.

Under his guidance, I ordered a lavish feast for ten: king crab, lobster, precious French caviar, the works.

Then he gave me a malicious smile.

“Baby, if you can’t finish all this, you’ll have to pay for it yourself, you know.”

He thought I didn’t know about the livestream camera on his chest, where the chat was flooding with mockery aimed at me.

“Shocked now, aren’t ya? This meal costs 680,000 yuan total. Where’s a broke girl like you gonna find that kind of money?”

“Did you see how greedy she looked when she ordered? I’m dying laughing.”

“Did she really think it’d be that easy to take advantage of a rich guy?”

“Gold Digger Hunting Squad scores again! Bros, share the stream so we can enjoy the show!”

In the spotlight of the livestream, I didn’t panic like they imagined. I simply picked up my knife and fork, flashed a pair of playful little fangs, and smiled.

Hunting?

As an ancient beast famed for its appetite, I’ve always been fond of a certain human saying.

The most skilled hunters often appear as prey.

He Qiong was hailed as the strongest Demon King the demon realm had seen in a thousand years, and every demon expected him to lead them in an assault on the Nine Heavens.

Unfortunately, before that grand ambition could be realized, a beautiful young phoenix lured him into the Celestial Emperor’s ambush and his soul was destroyed.

I fought desperately to seize one fragment of his soul, then hid across the mortal realm like a hunted dog and nourished him with my heart’s blood for five hundred years until I finally brought him back.

Surely hardship revealed true devotion, and after everything I had sacrificed to save him, He Qiong would finally understand who truly loved him and who deserved to stand at his side.

I thought his return would begin a tale of the Demon King bathing the Nine Heavens in blood, but instead it became a tortured romance between him and the Goddess of the Nine Heavens-the little phoenix who had stabbed him in the back a thousand years ago killed herself for love afterward, and the moment he learned the truth, he forgave every betrayal.

Fine, they could keep their tragic, undying love; I knew when I had lost, and I wanted no part of it.

But the love belonged to them while the suffering belonged to me, because just before I left, He Qiong held the phoenix’s last soul fragment and said, “Du Nan, your heart’s blood brought me back after five hundred years, so you can bring her back too, can’t you?”

In the year of severe famine, Mother took me to Prince Zhong’s Mansion, a place so distantly related it could hardly be called kin, to seek charity.

We came back with eighty taels of silver and a cart of grain, which we shared with the villagers.

In exchange, the whole village was abuzz with rumors.

The villagers gossiped that she had traded her chastity for grain. After my father divorced her, she hanged herself with a hemp rope, swaying there with her eyes open.

Later, after Prince Zhong’s Mansion fell, the Little Commandery Princess from the mansion, who had once given me a Golden Phoenix, was kidnapped and sold into the brothels.

I pretended to redeem her, then robbed her of her last few pieces of silver.

People-aren’t they all like that?

By the tenth year of failing to find a human skin, I was ready to flay even the old yellow dog at the temple.

Then I met a beautiful concubine who had been thrown out of the marquis’s estate.

She knelt beside my white bones and burned paper money at the altar.

“The Immortal Lady likes the skin of beauties, and I hate this pretty face of mine. Let’s trade.”

Four years ago, Gu Jinzhi, the Crown Prince of the Beijing Circle, fell in love with me at first sight.

After three years of relentless pursuit, I finally gave in.

In the first year of our relationship, he started pestering me to get married.

I was hesitant, but I couldn’t withstand his endless coaxing.

In the end, I brought him home to meet my parents.

But that day, outside the private room, I heard one of his buddies ask him, “You’ve met her parents now. When’s the wedding?”

Gu Jinzhi clicked his tongue and said unhurriedly, “All of a sudden, I don’t want to get married that much anymore.”

Someone beside him jeered, “Oh, stop pretending. You spent three years chasing that untouchable ice queen. You’d really give her up?”

“Ice queen?”

I heard him let out a scoff.

“If you saw how her parents treat her, you’d feel the same way I do.”

“The same how?”

“That she’s nothing special after all.”

I was born only five minutes before my little sister.

Yet she was prettier than me, fairer than me, smarter than me.

The only thing I had ever beaten her at was being healthy.

I could roll around in the mud throwing a tantrum and still not get sick.

My sister, though, was allergic to pollen in spring, mosquito bites in summer, and cold air in autumn and winter.

When I was nine, all I did was pet a stray cat.

My sister said she felt so awful she could not breathe.

That day, Mom beat me half to death.

With red-rimmed eyes, she asked me, “Were you trying to kill your sister?”

“If she dies, you’ll be the only child in this family!”

So later, Mom sent me to live in a nursing home.

She said it very seriously: “This way, your sister will be the only child in the family.”

I served at the Empress Dowager’s side for twenty years as her chief palace maid.

Steady, dignified, respected by all.

No one knew.

I had borne two children for the Son of Heaven.

Only on her deathbed did the Empress Dowager discover our secret affair.

She held my hand, seeming to sigh.

“Silly child. You kept this from me for so many years.”

“I will issue an imperial decree at once and have you enter the palace as a consort, so mother and children may be reunited.”

In my previous life, I truly did enter the palace.

But by then, Zhao Xun already had a Noble Consort he cherished above all else.

He favored me for a time, then cast me aside without a second thought.

Even my own children acknowledged another woman as their mother.

Now, reborn into this life,

I no longer wanted to be his consort.

Beside the Empress Dowager’s sickbed,

I kowtowed heavily. “This servant would never dare presume upon imperial favor.”

“I beg the Empress Dowager for mercy. Please allow this servant to leave the palace.”

In my last life, Xie Wujiu stormed the capital, and blood ran like rivers before the palace gates. In this life, before he could fall into darkness, I forced him into a private school and made him recite The Analects every day.

Only later did I understand: asking a starving person to speak of benevolence and righteousness can itself be cruel.

While packing my mom’s things, a receipt suddenly slipped out of an old cardboard box.

It read: April 8, 2006. Aigo MP3 player returned and refunded. Goods and payment settled in full. Total: 498 yuan.

I felt as if I’d been plunged into an ice cellar.

The MP3 player I had thought had been lost for twenty years, the MP3 player that became the trigger every time my mom and I fought, had appeared out of nowhere, just like that.

Clutching the receipt, I asked her numbly, “Back then… did you return that MP3 player?”