All Novel

The day I found out I had cancer.

He Wei frowned and said coldly to me, “Do you think anyone would be sad if you died? No one would feel bad about it.”

I said, “Whatever.”

Then I sincerely wished him, “I hope you’ll do as you say.”

After all, the year my brother died saving me, everyone looked at me and said:

“Why wasn’t it you who died?”

Later, I stood on the rooftop of the abandoned building where my brother passed away and jumped off.

But He Wei, why were you crying?

Three months after he dumped me without warning, I found my boyfriend again—with no memory of ever leaving me.

His eyes were clear, his mind stranded in the days when he had loved me most.

So I took him home.

I trapped him with the cheapest sweet nothings.

Then, just as he had once done to me, I turned his own tricks against him.

And drove him mad, one careful inch at a time.

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.”

My imperial sister’s tomcat set his sights on my female cat and was rejected.

My mother consort ordered me to apologize, so I did.

The tom still refused to give up, and my cat’s other suitors beat him up.

Then Mother Consort told me to kill my “femme-fatale cat” to appease my sister…

This time, I refused.

“Think about who she is and where you stand,” Mother Consort advised.

Understanding dawned on me. “Oh. It’s because my mother is a coward.”

My mother might be a coward, but I was not.

Neither was my cat—she was, in fact, the greatest feline beauty in the entire imperial harem.

I am an old palace maid.

I have spent thirty-five full years in this deep palace.

The Chinese parasol tree before Qingliang Hall flourishes year after year, while I grow older with each passing year.

In this lifetime, I have seen the young and inexperienced Consort Zhen pass away, the Consort Yu in the prime of her beauty pass away, and even the white-haired Empress pass away.

They all died in the bloom of youth, crushed beneath the weight of imperial power.

Within these deep palace walls, how many beautiful women’s skeletons lie buried?

Five years ago, I left Qi Tan in a fit of pique.

Later, after he won the Best Actor award, he stood at the Hundred Stars Awards Ceremony holding my photograph, pleading for help to find me. “My lover has been missing for a month,” he said. “Please, help me find her.”

But the news of my gruesome death had already broken countless times back in 2018. Qi Tan, however, had suffered a trauma-induced bout of amnesia, forgetting everything that happened after I died.

On the day his manager announced that Qi Tan was retiring from the industry indefinitely, the news of his suicide exploded across the headlines.

I am the future Crown Princess.

One day, a woman who has traveled a thousand miles in search of her husband stops my carriage in the middle of the street.

She produces the Crown Prince’s personal jade pendant and declares that he married her while living among the common folk.

Unfortunately for her, she does not understand that making me Crown Princess is the Emperor’s way of proclaiming his favor before the realm.

This is not a position she can take.

In the third year after I married Zhao Yan, he made me Empress.

On one condition: I was not to lay a finger on the Imperial Noble Consort he held so dearly in his heart.

He seemed to have forgotten that I was his lawful wife first.

I worked as a maid at Marquis Manor for ten years. Then, simply because the young lady lost a Peach Blossom Hairpin, I was driven out of the household.

In the blink of an eye, many years passed. I had nearly let go of all the grudges and grievances between me and Marquis Manor.

But to my surprise, one night, the young lady of Marquis Manor knelt before me in utter disarray, begging me to take her in.

Her husband’s family had cast her out. In all the vast world, she had nowhere left to go.

And now, I was the only person she could turn to.

The year I turned eight, I was trampled to death beneath the Crown Prince’s horse.

His guards paid my parents one tael of silver to make the matter go away.

My parents did not even retrieve my body; they took the money with ingratiating smiles and said, “For our daughter to die beneath His Highness’s horse is a blessing she could never have hoped for.”

Before my first seven days of mourning were over, Father divorced Mother and took another wife.

Mother remarried with every appearance of joy.

It seemed they had forgotten me.

Later, just as I was about to be reincarnated, Father and Mother dragged the Crown Prince to my grave and made him pay for my death with his own.