All Novel

By the year 3026, society’s race to the bottom had accelerated beyond control.

Pregnancy ruined a woman’s career prospects, so I had my uterus removed to improve my chances of finding work.

HR rejected me anyway.

The reason was simple.

“I’m sorry, but you have a twelve-hour gap in your employment history. That’s far too long.”

Madam Lin is choosing a bedchamber maid for her son.

All the pretty maids are eager to be picked.

Holding my fire poker, I ask Granny Shi, “Can I roast a potato?”

Granny Shi says, “Can you please show a little sense?”

Bad news: I was sold into the Wu household, worked myself to the bone for three or four years, and just when life finally started looking up, the whole family had its property confiscated.

Good news: the Wus were pardoned, the family was released, and even the master escaped execution.

Bad news: they were exiled to Ningguta.

Good news: Ningguta was where I came from.

On Qixi Festival, the Chinese Valentine’s Day, my husband turned out to have another woman.

He not only paid me two hundred thousand yuan a month, but also asked me to look after her during her pregnancy.

What could I possibly say?

Tears of joy streamed helplessly down my face.

I packed overnight and moved straight into their little love nest.

Before stepping through the door, I raised my price at the last minute. “Three hundred thousand.”

Xu Chen gritted his teeth. “Deal.”

My best friend stumbled into a suicide game, and it shattered her worldview.

Talk one person into killing themselves, and you were guaranteed at least ten thousand yuan.

Sell “suicide merchandise,” and you earned a twenty-percent cut.

The merchandise included death-scene photos, bloodstained clothes, ongoing reports on the victim’s family, and more.

My righteous best friend worked tirelessly for a month…

and managed to talk eight of the game’s chat groups into disbanding.

The people behind it lost their minds. “Wasn’t she diagnosed as an extremely rare antisocial personality during testing? How did she turn into a saint?”

Had it ever occurred to them that she wasn’t the one who took the test?

I was.

And as someone with that exceedingly rare antisocial personality, I preferred making my own rules.

I was Sword Venerable Jiang Tingxue’s most devoted anti-fan.

I spent nearly a century slandering him from the shadows, yet he never once noticed me.

Then his cultivation was destroyed overnight, and his enemies threw him into a brothel to be humiliated.

I went there especially to laugh at him.

But when I saw the sickly beauty in a blood-soaked robe, blind eyes veiled in white, the words that came out of my mouth were not the ones I had planned.

“Hey, Jiang Tingxue, want to come with me?”

“…I suppose I could treat you a little better.”

And so, in the hundredth year of my futile obsession with Jiang Tingxue, he became the beautiful prize I kept all to myself.

I had profaned the divine after all.

The aloof, ascetic monk from the altar now stood inside my red-draped bedchamber, tearing off his prayer beads as he clasped my ankle, his Adam’s apple shifting.

“Little Highness, this humble monk has broken his vows.”

I stayed beside Xie Chen from the days when he had nothing until he became a wealthy man, only to discover his affair seven days before our wedding.

He expected me to forgive him, protect his company, and leave our marriage with nothing, but I had built his success with my own hands and knew exactly how to take my life back.

While his first love fought to become Mrs. Xie, I divorced him, sold my shares at a premium, and founded a company of my own.

By the time their so-called true love collapsed under greed, debt, and betrayal, I had already learned that the best time to call off a bad marriage is the moment you see it clearly.

After wandering the mortal world for more than six hundred years, I hear that a once-in-a-century sword prodigy has appeared.

The young man has also found a dragon that sounds remarkably like the one I lost long ago.

Cultivators from across the realm flock to the mountain, some to seek the dragon and the Dao, others to kill and seize treasure.

I am different.

After a long, dusty journey to the Sword Sect, all I want is to set up a little stall at the foot of the mountain and sell wontons.

Mother always said that if a woman wanted to stay radiant, she had to know how to nourish herself.

Ginseng and deer antler were useless.

What truly nourished a woman was a young, vigorous man.

Following that regimen, she still looked sixteen well into her forties.

Having grown up under her influence, I understood the secret by the time I turned eighteen.

Scholars were lean, generals solid, actors charming.

I had sampled them all.

The one I found most intoxicating was Shen Zhaoye.

I lavished mountains of gold and silver on him, yet never so much as put an arm around his waist.

Then he came to take his leave, claiming he had found a more powerful patron.

Furious, I followed him by lantern light into Springwater Lane.

When I kicked open the door, he was kneeling beside a couch, offering tea to someone.

The beauty reclining there lifted her eyes lazily.

My lantern went out, and my soul nearly fled with the flame.

“Mother?! You’re sleeping with my man?”