Chapter 1

All I could say was that the emperor’s little pig brain was working overtime.

If I couldn’t tell an alien from a pig, I might as well donate my eyes to someone who needed them.

So His Porky Majesty liked a bit of role-play?

I gave a cold laugh. “How dare you! You’re no Third Prince. Impersonating a prince? How many heads do you have to lose?”

We stood by the lotus pond, neither too close nor too far apart. He’d deliberately kept the servants from approaching.

“Oh?” Sure enough, His Porky Majesty smiled. Not a trace of anger at the insult, only a sneaky delight at having pulled off his disguise. “What do you think I look like, then?”

…Seriously? Was he some creature in human skin seeking a human’s blessing?

I stared straight at him. With utter gravity, sincerity, and no regard for my own life, I spoke a truth I’d kept to myself for two years. “You look remarkably like a pig demon.”

I’d wanted to say that for a very, very long time.

Some things were worth dying to say aloud.

He froze. He looked stunned. Even his smile froze.

Poor thing.

All those years as emperor, and nobody had told him the truth.

Kindly, I gestured for him to look at his reflection in the water. “The most important thing in life is to see yourself clearly. Have you?”

He didn’t understand. He just kept staring blankly.

While he was still too dazed to order someone to mince me, I turned and left.

“Wait! I still don’t know your name!”

He’d come back to his senses.

He called after me from some distance away.

There went that pig brain again. As if I’d tell him.

Actually, I was rather looking forward to the emperor finding me and ordering my entire extended family executed.

From the moment I was born, I discovered nobody liked me.

My father resented having a daughter. My mother resented having a daughter. My grandmother resented my being a girl. Even our servants resented it.

I genuinely couldn’t understand.

My mother and grandmother were women themselves. What gave them the right to despise me?

And the servants? They were practically slaves, and they still had the nerve to look down on me for being female?

Every last one of them clung to the grand patriarchs, protecting their standing and their bloodlines. You’d think they’d all grown imaginary giant dicks, just like my father.

Of my sixteen years at home, I spent twelve swearing at them.

Other children recited the Book of Songs at four. At four, I was cursing everyone from my father down to the servants. People called me the Poison-Tongued Girl.

Eventually, my parents couldn’t stand it anymore. They said they had failed me and would send me somewhere nice.

I honestly thought they meant the underworld.

What I hadn’t expected was that they’d do something even crueler.

They sent me into the palace to become the pig demon’s consort.

Seriously, the underworld would have been better.

If only I hadn’t called my father a bald, bucktoothed dung beetle of a minister.

I waited in the palace for a whole day. No word of an emperor raging as he hunted for someone. No word of him ordering anyone’s entire clan exterminated.

The Pig Demon Emperor was surprisingly even-tempered.

That night, just as I was about to sleep, a eunuch’s voice rang out. “His Majesty approaches!”

I slowly sat up.

I sensed a demon.