All Novel

My mother had come from another world, and she believed firmly in monogamy.

When she discovered that my husband was keeping a mistress, she stormed into his princely residence, demanding that I divorce him and come home with her.

I stared at her.

“Mother, your daughter already has power and wealth.

Why should I care if he keeps another woman?”

By the time Xie Ruo’an realized he had mistaken me for someone else, I was already his wife, three months with child.

That night, the eldest young master, always so dignified and composed, got drunk.

He looked at me for a long time, then sighed.

“Very well.

Let things stay as they are.”

And so I spent my whole life as the Marchioness of Xie.

I alone shared his bed, adorned in pearls and jade.

Everything seemed perfect.

Yet whenever I woke from dreams in the middle of the night, I remembered the stillness in Xie Ruo’an’s eyes that evening.

There had been no joy in them.

No dislike, either.

A twist of fate had kept him from marrying the girl he loved.

So he accepted it, and spent the better part of his life quietly by my side.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day he came to ask for my hand.

Lavish gifts filled the hall with gold and jade.

I refused the marriage and told him calmly, “My lord, you have the wrong woman.”

On a family reality show, superstar Lu Ling was the pampered heiress from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, and award-winning actress Shen Fan was the Northeast’s eldest daughter.

Unremarkable me?

I was there to make them look good.

My family wasn’t helping.

In the trailer, their elders showered them with money or love.

My grandma kept telling me to quit showbiz.

“Girls should stay home.

They shouldn’t work.”

The internet tore into her.

[Another old relic.]

Then the full episode aired.

What Grandma had actually said was: “Why not just spend my pension?”

“By the time I’m gone, your dad should be retired.

You can spend his next.”

“I’ve been paying your social insurance at the highest contribution level.”

“By the time your parents are both gone, you’ll be collecting your own pension.”

The internet changed its tune instantly.

[People like this terrify me.]

[Don’t they say whatever you fear comes your way?]

After the college entrance exams, my brother and I got thrown out by our parents.

“I’ve put up with you two long enough.

Go stay with your uncle!”

Uncle was lovely.

He let us run wild in his mansion, though he did seem a little dead inside.

We thought we’d driven him to it.

Then we discovered he was heartbroken: the woman he’d adored for years had chosen someone else.

Looking at our mature, wealthy uncle, with his impossibly perfect looks and that vulnerable older-man appeal, my brother and I couldn’t understand what the other guy had on him.

“Uncle, want to take his place?”

When Nan Mu was very young, he met someone who told him: never, under any circumstances, become friends with Wen Miao.

As the years passed and he was on the verge of forgetting that warning, he met a girl. Her name was Wen Miao.

Even more shocking than the genius girl Wen Miao winning the nation’s highest award in physics was the fact that she was murdered in the Biology Research Lab like a common lab rat-with her very skull sliced open.

My first love, a man who had clawed his way out of poverty, murdered me.

Then I was reborn inside his beautiful, wealthy wife’s womb.

If nothing went wrong, once I survived the pregnancy, that bastard would lift me tenderly into his arms and say, “Look at this little darling.

Daddy’s sweetheart from a past life.”

That’s right.

I was your sweetheart.

And I’ve come to collect.

My father was an imperial censor, and nothing mattered to him more than his reputation.

He had fathered me on a prostitute.

Mother and I were the greatest stains on his life, and he would have liked nothing better than to be rid of us.

When the zombie outbreak hit, my two-faced best friend locked me out.

Before I could find somewhere to hide, the ten-year-old next door bit me on the butt.

He was little, and his teeth weren’t much good.

Becoming a zombie hadn’t made him much tougher, either.

Once he’d bitten me, he stiffly shuffled away.

Watching him go, I suddenly felt a little embarrassed.

Suppose zombies ruled the world years from now, and someone asked how we’d all turned.

Everyone else would have fought off a whole pack of vicious zombies before finally going down.

Or sacrificed themselves heroically to save humanity.

Was I supposed to say I’d been lousy at hiding and some brat shorter than me had bitten my butt?

I felt pretty miserable.

But not for long.

Then I decided to stop trying.

After my childhood friend and I registered our marriage, his kept woman sneered at me.

“He doesn’t love you.

This is just an arranged marriage!”

I was speechless.

“It’s a business alliance.

Could you sound any more provincial?”

In this day and age, who worried about love in a marriage like ours?

The only use I had for her sugar daddy was to give me an heir carrying both families’ blood as soon as possible.

As for the man himself, I doubted even our housekeeper, Mrs.

Wu, wanted him home.

I run a jewelry shop in the capital, and I have always been generous with my customers.

Whenever someone buys a piece at full price, I often throw in a cheaper little ornament as a gift.

The heir to Duke Zhenguo was a regular.

Once, while we were chatting, he told me with a smile, “Shopping here makes everything so easy.

One for my cousin, and one for my fiancée.”

Naturally, I assumed his fiancée received the expensive purchase, and his cousin the little extra.

Until the day he brought a young lady into my shop.

There, in her hair, was the plain jade pin I had given him for free.

I approached with a smile.

“You must be his lordship’s cousin?”

The young lady’s face fell.

She gave a slight shake of her head.

“You are mistaken.

I am his future wife.”

I was stunned, but in an instant I made up my mind.

I had to find a way to tell her.

I couldn’t let her remain in the dark.