All Novel

I am the only member of the Ice Clan born without a Snow Soul. To survive, I had to undergo Bonding with a man.

The partner chosen for me was the cold, ascetic High Priest. Eventually, I gave up on trying to win his heart. I abandoned the pendant he gave me and fled in secret.

When we met again, I was slumped weakly in a bath barrel, wearing nothing but that very same pendant. The High Priest’s deep voice drifted from behind me: “Princess, how is the water temperature?”

At three in the morning, the funeral home’s Morgue was only supposed to have five registered bodies, yet I found a sixth, unregistered, nameless female corpse in locker number six.

A slip of paper was pressed against her chest with nothing but my name written on it.

Even more terrifying was the moment my hand brushed her wrist; I saw the last seven seconds of her life and heard her raspy, blood-choked voice whisper: “Shen Nian, don’t trust your father.”

That was the night I realized that sometimes, the dead don’t come to say goodbye-they come to reopen a case.

At one o’clock in the morning, I counted the Eleventh Step on the western staircase of my office building.

Resting on that single step was a white sneaker, its laces tied into the same blue dead knot my missing best friend always used.

Five years ago, a woman had died in this building.

Now, the security guard who holds the elevator for me every day looked up and flashed a smile.

“Miss Tang, you shouldn’t go around counting stairs.”

When my Adoptive Father first saw me, I was eating a bowl of spoiled rice.

Hungry flies were fighting me for the food, and I couldn’t even spare a hand to shoo them away.

Later, he took me home. He threw me a party for my seventh birthday.

He said, “Xiao Jue, today is your new beginning. From now on, this day will be your birthday every year.”

Everyone smiled at me. Only my Adoptive Mother roared after the banquet had ended, “She’s your illegitimate daughter, isn’t she?”

Three months after I moved into Old River Bend, the old lady next door died. While I was helping clear out her belongings, I found a diary.

The first page read: “My daughter died three years ago. The person living next door to me is a ghost.”

But I knew there was something wrong with her daughter from the very first day, because I’m a ghost, too.

The day she died, a heavy snowfall blanketed the capital, sealing the city gates.

When the eunuch came to report the news, I was drinking in Noble Consort Liu’s palace.

I simply said, “Understood.”

It wasn’t until that cup of plum blossom wine-the one meant for our reconciliation-seared through my chest that I finally understood.

She had waited ten years, but she was never waiting for me to have a change of heart. She was waiting for me to die with her.

I stayed by his side from his impoverished youth until he held the world in his palm.

Yet, I was forced to watch as he elevated my half-sister to the status of equal wife and executed my entire family.

I met a miserable end. Given a second chance at life, I watch as his back bows in defeat, his body trembling with regret.

I burn our marriage contract. I wish him a meteoric rise and a boundless future.

A boundless future, without me.

It had been three months since I completed my mission and logged off.

The System tracked me down, looking frantic and disheveled. “You have to go back! Your husband has lost his mind!”

I calmly continued washing my cat. “Oh, please. He was never normal to begin with.”

“He’s in the black market right now, trying to sell your son!”

I cursed under my breath and slammed the teleport button.

A moment later, I found two White Tigers-one large, one small-huddled in a corner of the black market.

The large one was covered in blood. Next to his paw sat a small sign. It read in bold letters: SELLING SON EARLY TO FUND FATHER’S FUNERAL.

The parents of a missing boy came to me for help. They wanted me to find their son.

But every sign pointed to the boy already being dead-while his heart was still beating.

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.