All Novel

On a night of torrential rain, I ordered my girlfriend’s favorite milk tea and river snail rice noodles while she pulled an all-nighter.

However, even though the app showed the delivery had arrived at her location, my girlfriend still hadn’t marked it as received.

Just as I was about to call and check on her, the delivery rider sent me a photo through the app.

“Hey man, this is the right place, isn’t it?”

“That guy trying to pry the door open… that isn’t you, is it?”

The first time I met Li Shuyu…

He had black hair, black clothes, and black-rimmed glasses.

He looked ascetic and buttoned-up.

Only after spending some time with him did I realize just how wrong I had been.

This seemingly aloof man would take off his glasses at night,

put in his lip stud and tongue stud, and say thickly,

“Don’t tremble, jiejie.”

I was born with a rebellious streak. The more someone tells me not to do something, the more I insist on doing it.

When my older sister demanded I give up my spot in the dance competition and shoved me down the stairs, I carved up her face.

When my younger brother framed me for stealing money, and my parents slapped me across the face in the middle of the street without even asking what happened, I burned both their wallets.

When my parents refused to let me study out of province, I moved thousands of miles away just to spite them.

Later, my sister brought home a handsome, wealthy brother-in-law.

She warned me not to act like a slut in front of him.

That very night, I put on a pair of black Balenciaga stockings and red-bottom heels, then rubbed my leg against my brother-in-law’s under the table.

My sister was beautiful and brilliant, always effortlessly winning people over.

Compared to her, my plain self was like a timid little mouse.

My parents used to say, “How can you even compare yourself to your sister?”

My childhood friend said, “Jiajia and you don’t look like sisters.”

I asked him, “Then what do we look like instead?”

Sniffling, he replied:

“Like a princess and her maid.”

That was until I met Cen Yi.

My parents were clinging to my sister, introducing her to his family and boasting about how exceptional their daughter was.

I stood off to the side, stealing glances at the cookies on the table.

But he bypassed everyone else and pulled me into a tight embrace.

“Mine,”

he said.

Before we married, my husband had a girl who had spent five years chasing him with everything she had, but he fell for me at first sight.

Three years later, that girl returned to the country, successful and famous. She was now an internationally renowned photographer, dazzling and breathtakingly beautiful.

As for me, I was a stay-at-home mom, weighing over 130 pounds, with nothing to show for myself.

At a gathering, someone teased Lu Huaixu.

“Qin Shuang is still a virgin for your sake…”

He snapped at the person immediately, “Don’t talk nonsense!”

But that night.

He stayed out on the balcony, smoking for the entire night.

I transmigrated into the villainess’s… apple.

That’s right, the Poison Apple from Snow White’s stepmother.

On the very first day after transmigrating, I cried because I was so ugly.

Damn it, half red and half green.

Maybe because I was crying too loudly, the Magic Mirror next door cautiously poked me.

“Um… actually, I think you’re the most… special… apple in this world.”

I paused, then glanced at his slightly reddened mirror surface.

“…Thanks, Comfort Hero.”

On the first day after I died, my boyfriend brought his first love back home.

They kissed passionately on the sofa I bought, acting as if no one else were there. They ate the celery dumplings I had made by hand and played with the gaming console I had given him.

One day, his first love asked curiously, “Where’s An’an?”

My boyfriend’s voice was calm. “We had a fight a few days ago. She applied for a business trip with her company.”

Oh, he still doesn’t know that I’m dead.

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?”

The day I died of illness, the entire palace was shrouded in grief.

Only Emperor Yan Lang was not sad; he was merely a bit annoyed.

He was annoyed that half a month ago, because he wanted to invest my sister, Cui Mingshu, as Noble Consort, I had a massive argument with him and had yet to bow my head and admit my fault.

He was annoyed that the tactless officials from the Ministry of Rites were kneeling outside the hall, claiming they did not know how to determine the Empress’s posthumous title, write her biography, or arrange her burial in the imperial mausoleum.

Memorials piled up on his desk like snow on the eaves, as the hundred officials exhausted every flowery word to speculate on the Son of Heaven’s whims.

They suggested posthumous titles like ‘Virtuous,’ ‘Moral,’ ‘Gentle,’ and ‘Respectful,’ yet I was once the woman who, because someone had skimped on Yan Lang’s rations, chased that eunuch through three streets with a knife like a common shrew, cursing him the whole way.

They described my life as ‘noble and carefree,’ yet after his enthronement, he and I did nothing but argue or give each other the cold shoulder.

It seemed I was always crying-always weeping.

When it came to the matter of the imperial mausoleum, Yan Lang finally recalled a sliver of my merit.

Having been husband and wife, he was not stingy in granting me glory after death, graciously permitting me to sleep in the same tomb as him.

Before the vermilion ink of his approval for our joint burial could dry, Aunt Sun, the head maid of Jianjia Palace, was already kneeling respectfully outside the hall. She said the Empress had a final request she wished to be granted.

Yan Lang likely guessed what it was.

In all probability, she wanted to bow her head and admit her mistake, then ask for a grander posthumous title, an honorary rank, and for him to forbid Cui Mingshu from entering the palace.

“The Empress does not wish to be buried with you. “She said this life was too wretched; she never wants to see you again, neither in the blue vault of heaven nor the yellow springs of the underworld.”

When I was five years old, my mother and I died in a car accident.

The people who orchestrated the accident were my father and my mother’s best friend.

After receiving two insurance payouts, they got married and lived happily together as a family.

Occasionally, That Woman would get scared: “The mother and daughter who died-won’t they turn into Vengeful Ghosts and come back to take revenge on me?”

My father would laugh at her for being superstitious.

But they didn’t know-I wasn’t dead.

And the me who returned alive for revenge would be far more terrifying than any Vengeful Ghost.