All Novel

On the day Ran Ling returned to the capital in triumph, his long-lost first love was brought back to him.

She had once cast aside reputation and status to elope with him, and he had once taken a sword for her.

Everyone said the star-crossed lovers of their youth would finally get the happy ending they had been denied.

But I wasn’t worried, because my mother had transmigrated into this novel—and I was a devoted mama’s girl.

It didn’t matter what anyone schemed against me; I was the hollow rose my mother had raised.

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.

While I waited at the hospital for my follow-up appointment, a live broadcast of a celebrated director accepting an award overseas played on the giant screen.

During his acknowledgments, he said nothing and placed a call in front of the entire world.

Then my phone rang…

At a family gathering, my younger sister, holding my boyfriend’s arm, beamed as she announced they were getting married.

With a room full of guests, I, dressed in monastic robes, faced their gazes with a calm expression.

Amitabha, I am a monastic.

The story of Lin Wei, the eldest daughter of the Lin Family, being forced into monastic life by her family, had long been known to all.

To please his mistress, my father secretly switched Mother’s newborn daughter with hers.

He meant for his mistress’s daughter to take my place as the legitimate young lady of the family and grow up surrounded by wealth and privilege.

Behind Mother’s back, the mistress mocked her.

“A country woman like her will spend her whole life laboring only to hand the fruits to someone else.”

Even Father thought Mother ignorant and easy to deceive.

But Mother was merely uneducated, not witless.

Neither of them knew that a fire broke out in the rear courtyard on the day Mother gave birth—and that she switched me straight back.

Even as he faced death, Father could not understand how a country woman like Mother had brought about his ruin.

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.

I transmigrated into the daughter of a mistress.

When I arrived, my mistress mother was sobbing her heart out.

“What happened?” I asked.

She said, “The Qi family sent word: either they cancel Bai You’s engagement, or they replace her with Bai Zhuo.”

I rubbed my forehead. “And that’s worth crying over?”

My mother stared at me. “How is it not? Haven’t you studied this hard so you can enter a good university and become a better match for the Qi family’s young master? I lost to that woman my whole life. Must my daughter lose to hers too?”

As the oldest unmarried young adult in my family, I had been suffering under the pressure to get married for years.

Eventually, I simply gave up fighting it.

My mom said she was so worried she could not sleep.

So I drove two hundred kilometers overnight, got home at three in the morning, stood by her bed, and pried her eyelids open.

My mom said everyone in the family was laughing at her because I refused to get married.

The next second, I tagged everyone in the family group chat:

[My mom says everyone is laughing at her because I won’t get married. I came to ask, who exactly is laughing at her? @everyone]

My cousin was the first to start a message chain:

[Your little cousin is not laughing at her.]

Then came an orderly line of replies:

[Auntie is not laughing at her.]

[Uncle is not laughing at her.]

[Second Cousin is not laughing at her.]

[Dad is not laughing at her.]

[…]

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?”

My mother waited for my father her entire life.

Even when illness confined her to her deathbed, she never got the snowy stroll among plum blossoms he had promised her.

So when Second Young Master Cui and I took a liking to each other, I told him I would wait for him only three times.

The first would honor the joy of our meeting.

The second would honor the bond of truly knowing one another.

The third would honor the love we had shared.

After the third, our ties would be severed, and we would have nothing more to do with each other for the rest of our lives.

Second Young Master Cui agreed with a smile, saying that such a fine match was a blessing from Heaven and that he would never dare cast good fortune away.

Later, he rescued a young woman.

For her sake, he made me wait again and again.

The final time, he sent word that our wedding would be postponed and that we could discuss it again after he had safely brought the young woman back.

I gave a cold laugh and asked, “Whether I marry, and whom I marry, is no concern of yours, Young Master Cui.”

The wedding went ahead as planned after that.

Only the groom had changed.

Anyone who tried to steal my betrothed was certainly detestable.

But anyone who tried to steal Cui Zhaoyu’s bride was, in my eyes, utterly adorable.