All Novel

The mistress of our household was choosing husbands for the daughters born to concubines.

We could marry a scholar from a modest family as his lawful wife, or enter a household of equal standing as a concubine.

By the time my turn came, the only choice left was to become an old man’s concubine.

Everyone expected tears, tantrums, perhaps even threats to hang myself.

Instead, I held my dowry list with delight.

On the day I climbed into the bridal sedan, Mother asked, “Ah Tao, didn’t you always want a husband who would love only you, for your whole lives?”

I smiled serenely.

“When I was little, I wanted to rule the whole world, too.”

Childhood wishes didn’t count.

Father hauled a strange fish out of the sea, with a woman’s body and a fish’s tail.

Thinking he had caught a mermaid, he brought her home in wild delight.

He wanted her to weep pearls—and bear an heir for our family.

But Father had made a mistake.

What he had brought home was no mermaid.

It was a man-eating fish.

I transmigrated into an erotic novel as a supporting character—a female general built like a double-door refrigerator.

For now, though, I was merely the heroine’s maid of all work, ordered about and worked like a beast of burden.

But I knew a prince would soon buy her freedom, then hand her over to the brutal emperor.

Even a heroine as experienced as she was might not survive him.

I had lived through countless loops in this world because its main characters kept dying halfway through the story.

I assumed this time would be no different.

Then, right in front of the male lead, the woman who had always looked down on me suddenly caught my arm.

“Your Highness, please buy Hua Nu’s freedom too!”

To raise the bride price for my brother, my parents sold me to a system.

I would be sent into a historical romance novel.

Complete its mission, and I would receive 300,000 yuan.

The good news was that the system offered me a special ability.

The bad news was that it was called “Guaranteed to Bear Sons.”

When I frowned, the system spoke.

[Host, the ability I’ve given you is exceptionally useful in ancient times.]

Only after I arrived did I learn that the novel was called The Leased Wife.

Its heroine was hired out to wealthy households to bear them sons, one after another.

The silver she earned paid for her husband’s examinations and official career.

In the end, he rose to prominence, and she emerged triumphant, an officially titled lady.

The system told me: [There are only two mandatory conditions for completing the mission—] [First: retain your status as a leased wife and give birth to three sons.]

[Second: help your husband become an official of the first rank.]

[Fail either condition, and you will be erased.]

[You have no more than ten years in this world, Host.

Good luck.]

I listened, my eyes darkening.

“Nothing else matters?”

The system was in a hurry to collect its next host.

[Correct.

Nothing else matters.]

I gave a cold laugh.

An idea was taking root.

If I wanted to return to the modern world, I had no choice but to complete the mission.

But if I had to swallow my disgust and do these things, I would not suffer the humiliation for nothing.

I would use it to climb into power and destroy this vile practice of wife leasing.

Even if it was only a fictional institution in a novel.

It was feudal, twisted, and brutal, built on women’s blood and tears.

It should never have existed.

In my third year trapped inside a novel, the emperor learned to watch livestreams—and struck up an online flirtation with a thirst-trap streamer.

He even promised her: “Come over to this world, and you can be my empress!”

“Remember, bring your body.

No possessing someone else’s.”

I took one look at her username, “Will Fly Anywhere in the Country,” and spent the night packing my escape bag.

People from the modern world were crawling with viruses.

One sneeze could wipe out the whole palace.

And this woman was a prostitute!

I was the tyrant’s favorite consort, and I had officially stopped trying.

When he ate chicken, I stole the drumstick.

When he slept, I stole the covers.

When he presented me with a priceless piece of jade, I hung it around my dog’s neck the very next day.

Furious, he threatened to have me beaten to death.

I carried on being a disaster, dropped my trousers, and flopped onto the couch.

“Go on, then.

Beat me to death.”

Well.

He suddenly changed his mind.

The day Ying Que descended to the mortal world, he accidentally crashed through my roof.

He also knocked out the simple-minded bridegroom I had taken in.

I came home from walking my dog, found my world had fallen apart, and burst into tears.

Ying Que promised to repair my house and heal my bridegroom.

But it would take at least seven days for him to wake.

The village was offering girls to a river demon.

If I failed to marry within three days, I would be sent as its sacrifice.

When Ying Que heard, he took up his sword and slew the demon, unexpectedly completing his trial under Heaven’s Way.

Before returning to the Celestial Court, he gave me two gifts in apology.

A grand house, and a clever husband.

Three years later, he returned to the mortal world to undergo a tribulation.

Passing through Yanhe Town, he found me begging beside the road.

I held out a chipped wooden bowl and “looked” at him with empty eyes.

“Sir, could you spare something to eat?

My dog is starving.”

I was born in Qingshi Town, the daughter of a respectable family who ran a rice shop.

Later, I ended up living under someone else’s roof at the Censor’s Mansion, serving as a maid.

The Second Young Master wanted to take me as his concubine, but I said that Colonel Chao from Kaizhou was my Brother-in-law. They did not believe me.

It was not until the mansion hosted a banquet for guests that Lord Chao, the former bandit chief, accidentally crushed the wine cup in his hand and smiled at Zhang Censor, saying, “I hear your Second Young Master wishes to take my wife’s younger sister as a concubine?”

I am a Jiangshi.

My bones have hung on an ancient tree in the wilderness for over two hundred years, absorbing all the Moon Yin Energy.

The Night Patrolling Deity said that if I endured until the thirteenth day of the fifth month in the Ji-Mao year, my Cultivation would reach Indestructible Bone, and I could become a Spirit Monster, free from the Heavenly Dao Reincarnation.

I was quite pleased with myself, already pondering which spot in the mountains I should choose for a Cave Abode to become the Deer Cottage Immortal.

But then, a Flower Picking Scholar returning home for a funeral passed through the wilderness and ordered my bones to be taken down from the tree and buried in a pit.

He buried me…

Buried me…

Damn him, he’s dead for sure!

At the Dong Manor’s night banquet, the beautiful Singing Girl transformed into a Pink Skeleton.

The next day, I entered the manor to interrogate, but everyone gave the same answer: they saw nothing.

What was even more outrageous-

The coroner’s examination revealed that the skeleton was a man!