All Novel

When my elder sister tossed her embroidered ball to choose a husband, it split in two.

The heir to the Marquis of Yongning and young General Xie each caught half.

Neither would give way.

They even came to blows, setting the whole city talking.

In the end, my sister had no choice but to push me forward.

“My little sister is beautiful and gentle, and bears a strong resemblance to me.”

“General Xie, marry her and think of me when you look at her.

Please, don’t make this harder for me.”

In my last life, Xie Chenzhou had married me unwillingly.

He despised me and never so much as touched me.

I gave as good as I got, with cold, mocking words.

“My sister simply didn’t want you.

Stop flattering yourself.”

“She’s already showing, and you still haven’t let her go.”

And so we spent our whole lives bickering, loathing the sight of each other.

Now I had another life.

And I was back on the day my sister tossed her ball to choose a husband.

Before ascending to immortality, my cultivation partner worried I would never let him go.

So he put a spell on me to erase my memories.

What he hadn’t expected was that I would fall for every man I met.

He hadn’t even ascended yet, and I’d already fallen madly in love three times.

At last, he couldn’t stand it anymore and appeared before me.

He thought I would fall in love with him at first sight, abandon everyone else, and lose myself hopelessly in him.

But I only looked at this vaguely familiar man.

Then, torn, I asked, “If you really like me that much, would you mind being my second husband?”

My ex completely lost his mind.

My betrothed had become entangled in a love affair in Yangzhou.

The woman was a courtesan named Li Pengpeng, the most celebrated beauty in the city’s pleasure quarters.

She bought her freedom and stood alone outside the Xie family’s ancestral residence, waiting in silence for an entire month before she was finally granted an audience with Old Madam Xie.

In the end, a sedan chair carried her into a house on Four Wells Lane.

When I reached the capital, I happened to hear that she and Xie Shijing had held a proper wedding feast.

They went everywhere together, basking in their newfound glory.

Though only his mistress, she enjoyed all the privileges of a lawful wife.

Everyone in Shangjing was watching for my humiliation.

Occasionally someone voiced indignation on my behalf, but other voices soon drowned them out.

Some busybodies even opened a betting pool, wagering that I would swallow the insult.

After all, the Song family of Luochuan had long since fallen from its former standing, while the Xies were a pillar of the imperial court.

On the day the betting began, I went alone to the Xie family’s principal residence, just as Li Pengpeng had done.

I had not come to demand justice.

I had come to end the engagement.

Xie Shijing was unworthy of being my husband.

My family has one enormous, very public secret.

Ever since she was born, my mother has been bound to a system: the Beauty System.

Apparently, if she ever drops out of the top three on the Beauty Ranking of the Four Seas and Eight Realms, she will die.

At first, neither of my parents was remotely worried.

With Mother’s looks, holding her place for another few hundred thousand years would be no trouble at all.

But sometimes the unexpected arrives without the slightest warning.

When my parents joyfully welcomed their first child, a floating Beauty Ranking of the Four Seas and Eight Realms appeared out of thin air beside the bed.

And there, in first place, was my eldest brother, whose name had only just been decided: Zhou Yi.

My parents were a little bewildered, but didn’t think much of it.

Until they had their second child.

My parents and big brother once again greeted the new baby with delight.

Once again, the ranking appeared in midair.

First place changed hands again.

It now belonged to my elder sister, Zhou Er.

That was when Father panicked.

He moved out of their bedroom that very night.

For several years afterward, he didn’t dare set so much as one foot inside after sunset.

Every evening, they would hold hands in the corridor, gazing at each other as they lingered over their farewell.

Then my brother and sister would each take one of them by the hand and escort them to their separate rooms, with my parents looking back every few steps.

They pined so badly their eyes practically glowed green, but at least Mother’s life was safe.

Seven years after he forced me into marriage, my domineering CEO husband fell in love with someone else.

I wasn’t worried.

His sister, on the other hand, was so anxious she burst into tears.

“If you get divorced, what are Song Yu and I supposed to do?”

Song Yu.

The name sounded so familiar.

He was, if I remembered correctly, the childhood sweetheart I’d been dating before I married Gu Zeyan.

I was a coward by nature, timid as a quail.

Mother taught me the secret to making a living when you were poor— Do whatever people ask.

I never forgot.

At fourteen, my sister-in-law sold me to a brothel.

As she was leaving, she wiped away her tears.

“Xiaoqiao, I truly can’t bear to part with you.”

So I begged the madam to take her in too.

At seventeen, one of the girls stole my money to run away with a man.

When I caught her, she sobbed, “Xiaoqiao, cut off my hand!”

That night, blood covered the floor.

At twenty, I had saved enough to buy my freedom.

I gave every last coin to Lü Buyu.

We had been lovers for six months, and he had promised to take me away.

Instead, he used the money to redeem Qingyue, who had only just arrived.

He knelt before me.

“Xiaoqiao, she’s so pitiful.

I can’t watch her sink into this mire.”

“Or you could just kill me.”

When my mother married Wang the Mute, she was already carrying me.

Everyone in the neighborhood had advice for him.

Some told him to get rid of the bastard with a strong dose of medicine.

Others told him to write a divorce letter and throw my mother out.

Wang only smiled, turned around, and sent for the best midwife for miles.

Then I was born.

My mistress kept a Kunlun slave.

Even after she married, she found ways to keep him at her side.

Later, she conceived what was to be her husband’s legitimate son, and spent her pregnancy pampered like a princess.

But when her ten months were up, the baby she bore was black.

Every maid and midwife who attended the birth vanished that night.

My elder sister was among them.

That night, the birthing room floor was slick and scarlet, as though it had been washed in blood.

By dawn, the black infant carried out of that room had become a white one.

Having borne the first legitimate son, my mistress was given control of the household.

I was quick-witted enough to offer her schemes, to have servants beaten and old women punished.

I helped secure her position as mistress of the house, and rose to become a first-rank maid.

Behind my back, the servants called me her dog.

When I heard, I merely curved my lips in a smile.

I meant to be a dog, all right.

A mad dog that killed its master.

For twenty years, I hated Shen Rou for stealing my husband.

I outlived her, rich and honored, yet on my deathbed I remembered that she had been only fifteen.

Given another life, I returned determined to expose her scheme and send her far away to a better fate.

But when I reached the pavilion, the hand sprinkling powder into the incense burner belonged to my husband.

My husband found my long-lost cousin in a brothel, dying of a venereal disease.

She took one look at my happy life and decided I had stolen it from her.

I was never an impostor: my mother had given me to my grieving aunt in adoption when I was five.

For nine years, I had been made to soothe a woman who resented my happiness.

Now my husband expected me to sacrifice myself for my cousin too.

I was done paying for everyone else’s guilt.

This time, I would take what they owed me—and leave with my daughter.