Ranking
Beauty’s Plight
The Crown Prince’s White Moonlight, the woman he’d pined after for ten years, had finally returned.
She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “You. Go back to where you came from.”
I lifted my skirts and stepped into the carriage, then turned back to smile at her. “Sorry,” I said lightly, “but this seat? You’re never getting it back.”
Sorry, Sis is the NPC You Can’t Catch Up With
(A completely brainless, silly story)
Yun Youyou opened her eyes and found that she had inexplicably become an NPC in a Horror Game.
The stingy Game: No salary, no benefits-as long as it doesn’t kill you, work until you drop.
Yun Youyou: “Then I’ll just have to pretend I’m a pile of crap.”
As long as I don’t create any value, it’s the same as not working.
Relying on nothing but her silver tongue, Yun Youyou forcibly turned the Horror Game into a comedy game.
The Horror Hotel Dungeon?
Change it! Change it into a Pool Cyber Chanting Party!
The Horror Doctor loves performing sterilization surgeries?
Change it! Change it into a Gentle Nurse who cures all ailments!
In the beginning.
Facing the most terrifying and brutal Player in the Game.
Yun Youyou clung to Ji Lin’s leg, weeping bitterly as she cried, “Please let me go! I’m not like the other ghosts!”
Ji Lin sneered, “How are you different?”
Yun Youyou sniffled, “I have no dignity.”
Ji Lin: “…”
Later on.
“Yun Youyou, come here and tell me-why does this Male Ghost have your contact information?”
Ji Lin’s eyes were cold and sharp, his voice carrying a hint of danger.
Yun Youyou, whose wings had grown strong: “I’m the queen; if you don’t like it, deal with it.”
Cracks of Light
Before we married, my husband had a girl who had spent five years chasing him with everything she had, but he fell for me at first sight.
Three years later, that girl returned to the country, successful and famous. She was now an internationally renowned photographer, dazzling and breathtakingly beautiful.
As for me, I was a stay-at-home mom, weighing over 130 pounds, with nothing to show for myself.
At a gathering, someone teased Lu Huaixu.
“Qin Shuang is still a virgin for your sake…”
He snapped at the person immediately, “Don’t talk nonsense!”
But that night.
He stayed out on the balcony, smoking for the entire night.
The Earth Master Girl Makes Her Debut
Luxury cars picking me up at the school gate was a common sight. My roommate started a rumor that I had a sugar daddy, and even secretly took tons of pictures of me with middle-aged men. But not long after, her father was on his knees in front of me:
“Master Qiao, I beg you-please save my whole family.”
What she didn’t know was that I am currently the only Earth Master successor.
99.9% Perfect Marriage, Then I Quit
I have died seven times.
Every single time, I died on the day my husband asked for a divorce.
He doesn’t love me. Seven years of marriage proved to be fragile and worthless the moment his White Moonlight returned to the country.
The System told me that if I wanted to live, I had to defeat the White Moonlight.
Miscarriages, acting as a body double, framing her… my methods became increasingly ruthless.
However, just as I finally approached the finish line-when my Marriage Reconciliation Success Rate reached 99.99%-
I was the one who handed over the Divorce Agreement.
Joyful Reunion
I am the unlucky princess who got thrown into the Cold Palace.
The people above gave me two choices: either become a eunuch’s palace wife, or marry a fool.
Without the slightest hesitation, I chose to marry the fool.
After all, he comes with an extra part. I’d be getting the better deal~
Don’t Mess with the Action Faction
My brother went on a trip with a few friends.
Mom told me to video-call him and check in.
The call connected, and the screen filled with a man’s bare upper body, his pecs on full display.
He rubbed his hair with a towel and said casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
“Your brother’s taking a shower in the room next door. His charging cable broke, so his phone’s charging over here with me.”
I stared at the image on the screen, unable to snap out of it for a long moment.
Then that fair, handsome face suddenly leaned closer to the camera, a wicked smile curving his lips.
“Am I that good-looking? Want to see for yourself in person sometime?”
Everyone in the Family Is a Top Star, But I’m a Nobody
The world is one giant slapdash production, and I somehow drift through it anyway.
My father is a financial tycoon, but I can barely handle addition and subtraction under ten. My mother is a gorgeous award-winning actress, while I look perfectly ordinary. My brother held his first solo art exhibition at four, while at five I was still toddling after him babbling nonsense.
Even our maid, Wang Ma, and our butler, Uncle Chen, turned out to be retired legends hiding in plain sight.
Thankfully, all of them adored me. I slowly made peace with being ordinary.
Then one day, a genius girl who had gone viral online showed up at our door and demanded that I give her back her place as the real daughter of the Su family.
Wonderful. The worry that had been hanging over me for years finally dropped dead.
Shao Wei
On April 27th, Shen Yichuan wished me a happy birthday.
I was silent for two seconds and nodded.
“I agree to the divorce.”
An awkward look crossed Shen Yichuan’s face.
“That’s not what I meant…”
He paused. “At least not today.”
I just said, “Mm.”
“Then take it as my return gift for your birthday.”
The Pride of Heaven
After disguising myself as a man and joining the army in my husband’s place, I failed to endure the loneliness and kept a lover on the side.
When the war ended and I returned home, I discovered that my husband had taken a concubine too.
Well, now I didn’t feel guilty anymore. We were even!
But then I saw that beautiful concubine.
I was utterly stunned.
Can someone please tell me why my lover had become my husband’s concubine?
Noble Consort Chen Has Fallen Out of Favor Again
When the palace announced that I was being elevated to Noble Consort, everyone in my family looked grim.
Everyone understood the principle that great merit can threaten the throne.
My father’s achievements were already so great that there was nothing left to reward him with.
This rank of Noble Consort was a naked warning.
If I wanted to keep my whole family safe, I had to hand the emperor a weakness of mine-something he could hold over me and use to put his mind at ease.
Father, Mother, your daughter is off to be arrogant by imperial command!
Starting today, I’m going to be the most outrageously overbearing little menace in the harem!
Unwilling to Meet Again
I knew nothing of the zither, chess, calligraphy, or painting.
Before I married Yu Huaiqian, the matchmaker asked me what I was good at.
I thought for a long while, then said,
“Picking rice.”
The whole room burst into laughter.
Yu Huaiqian laughed too, but there was no mockery in it.
He said, “Being able to pick rice is quite good. A household still has to eat.”
He was a famously refined young gentleman of the capital.
Everyone thought he should have married that childhood sweetheart of his, the one who could compose lyrics.
But he married me.
After the wedding, we each did our part and supported each other.
I asked him if he ever found me dull.
He placed a chopstickful of greens into my bowl. “Dull is good. I’ve heard enough of all that outside.”
I remembered those words for a very long time.
Until his childhood sweetheart broke off her engagement and returned to the capital.
At the Qushui Banquet, she casually recited a single line from a new lyric.
The wine cup in Yu Huaiqian’s hand froze in midair.
After the banquet ended, he sat in the study and filled an entire page with that one line.
I picked up the paper and looked at him. He immediately reached out to snatch it away.
“Don’t look.”
I asked, “Is it so good that I can’t see it?”
He was silent for a moment, then his voice lowered.
“You wouldn’t understand anyway. Why insist on asking?”
Arrogance
My husband brought home a young woman.
I waited for her to bow and pay her respects, but she started shouting that “all people are born equal.”
I suggested she become his concubine, and she clung to my husband, demanding “one man, one woman, for one lifetime.”
My husband told me to be more accommodating toward her.
I was silent for a long while.
Then I kicked him straight into the sewage ditch.
“You’re the one who’s born equal to dogs. The two of you can go be a pair of dogs for life!”
How Satisfying It Is to Talk Nonsense with Relatives
Twenty years ago, my dad got drunk and let it slip to someone that he had made two hundred thousand yuan in a year raising chickens. Before long, every chicken on his farm had been poisoned to death.
Later, my dad bought an eighty-million-yuan apartment in Beijing outright, and he didn’t tell a single person back home. Even my grandparents had no idea.
Now my dad has long since become the CEO of a corporation worth several hundred million. Every time we go home for New Year’s or the holidays, he makes my mom and me help him pretend we’re poor.
At the New Year’s Eve dinner, I sat there bundled in a thick cotton coat and cotton slippers, both hands shoved into my pockets.
And so began my proud inheritance of my father’s fine tradition: talking absolute nonsense.
Who would’ve thought I’d overdo the act and run into someone I knew?
Me: “President Gu?”
Him: “President Shen?”
Then we both clapped a hand over each other’s mouths.
Deadly First Love
The boy I’d secretly loved was expelled from school for protecting his childhood sweetheart.
Years later, I became the most famous talent manager in the industry and ran into him waiting tables at a restaurant.
He had long since forgotten me, but I still wanted to give him a chance. I asked him, “Xie Xingyun, do you want to be an actor?”
He came with me.
It took me three years to transform him from a waiter carrying plates into the entertainment industry’s hottest new star.
Then the childhood sweetheart he’d protected all those years ago came looking for him.
The Femme Fatale
I was abducted as a child, but because I had fair skin and a pretty face,
I was carefully trained into a temptress made to ensnare wealthy young masters.
That night, in the most extravagant luxury suite in Macau,
Zhao Rongzheng lay there, languid and sated, his gaze falling on me as I wept like a flower in the rain.
“Stop crying. I’ll pay off your brother’s debt for him. From now on, you stay with me.”
I took the money, coaxed him with sweet words, and then vanished without a trace.
Five years later, news that the Seventh Young Master of the Zhao Family was divorcing his wife to marry a widow shook all of Hong Kong.
Zhao Rongzheng, now the man in power over the Zhao Family, personally stepped forward to handle this sordid scandal.
Seated high above me, he looked down at my meek, submissive, pitifully vulnerable appearance.
“What is it? Does every man in the Zhao Family have to fall into your hands at least once?”
Moonlight in the Forest Stream
For five years, I brought meals to the scholar next door.
When he passed the imperial examinations as Tanhua, he did not come back to marry me.
Others laughed at me for being foolish. Though it hurt, I still waved it off and pretended to be carefree.
Then, one year, Mother was beaten half to death by the principal wife. Clinging to what little old affection remained, I cast aside my dignity and went to beg him.
I begged him to find a way to invite Doctor Dong, the most renowned physician in Shangjing City, to come take a look at her, and to help me obtain some good medicine for my mother.
The scholar advised me with a troubled expression, “It isn’t that I won’t help you. It’s just… how could I possibly interfere in your father’s inner household? I know Mother has been wronged, but as a concubine, how could she never suffer a beating?”
Years later, the scholar was implicated by others and demoted, and came to beg at my door.
By then, I was already Lady Jun, a First-rank Imperial Mandate Lady, not someone ordinary people could meet at will.
People of the time had a saying: Better to offend Lord Zichen than to offend Lady Jun.
I idly picked at the gold foil on my nail guard and said slowly,
“It isn’t that I won’t help you. It’s just… I am only a woman of the inner quarters. How could I possibly have any say in affairs of court? Besides, as an official and a subject, how could one never suffer a grievance?”
The Mighty Toddler Transmigrates, Running Wild on the Road to Exile
In her previous life, Jin Bao was a little zombie king. After transmigrating, she became weak and helpless, beaten by an aunt and uncle who weren’t even related to her by blood.
By a twist of fate, she was bought by the Marchioness of Loyalty and Bravery. One moment, she had just become the legitimate daughter of the Marquis’s Mansion; the next, the entire household was destroyed, its property confiscated and the whole family sentenced to exile.
Jin Bao awakened a random Heavenly Eye, granting her glimpses of the past and future.
On the road to exile, while others gnawed on tree bark and dug up grass roots to survive, the people of the Marquis’s Mansion picked up gold, unearthed ginseng, and ate fluffy white steamed buns with roasted meat.
The path of exile was fraught with danger: assassinations, ambushes, plagues, swamps…
Guided by Jin Bao’s Heavenly Eye, they quietly defused every crisis, then turned around and sent their enemies a delightful surprise package.
Everyone believed the bitterly cold Northern Frontier was nothing but barren wasteland.
But Jin Bao led her family to build a city there, reclaim the land, open trade routes, and train soldiers.
When chaos engulfed the realm and the people were plunged into misery, the world finally realized that the great city of the Northern Frontier, once dismissed as a savage, desolate land, had become the only sanctuary under heaven.
Found Fox Tail on Husband After Marriage
Qiao Ying had transmigrated into a book. Unfortunately, kidnappers had injured her head, leaving her with amnesia.
In a dark, damp dungeon, she met a young man.
He wore robes of blue-green, his white hair as pure as snow. His face was exquisitely beautiful, but a white silk blindfold covered his eyes. Though he was disabled, he was the most optimistic person she had ever met, always smiling.
That day, the amnesiac Qiao Ying escaped the dungeon with the harmless-looking young man in tow.
The young man was a good person.
Because he was afraid of blood, even amid mountains of corpses and seas of gore, not a speck of dust stained his robes.
Because he was timid, whenever others fought, he only dared to hide far away, only for everyone to die in a poisonous mist the next moment.
Because he was kind, he offered medicine to enemies suffering in agony. Sadly, they failed to endure it and died with blood pouring from all seven orifices.
And so, she decided to marry such a good person.
Later, righteous cultivators came charging in with swords drawn, shouting that he was a monster.
That night, corpses littered the ground.
At last, she remembered the plot.
This was a bizarre, fantastical world crawling with eerie horrors.
There was a great villain who lacked the emotions of an ordinary person. He brought calamity to the world and stirred up countless conflicts, until in the end, the male and female leads sacrificed their lives to seal him away.
Amid the storm of blood and violence, the young man looked back at her.
His blue eyes were deep and uncanny. Blood spattered his face, making him look like an Asura descended upon the mortal realm. Behind him, nine fox tails unfurled with wanton grace, bewitching and breathtakingly vivid.
Qiao Ying went deathly pale with fright.
But he only smiled softly. “If you’re scared and want to run, it’s too late-”
Before he could finish, Qiao Ying ran, but straight into his arms. She wiped the blood from his face and said, “You scared me! I thought you were hurt!”
The young man blinked, patted her head, then poked her cheek. “Are you stupid?”
Online Dating a Male College Student
To surprise my online boyfriend, I secretly traveled thousands of miles to his university.
When I arrived, I happened to see him coming back to campus from outside.
I was just about to go up and say hi when he walked right past me without so much as a glance.
?
A moment later, my phone buzzed.
“Holy crap, babe. I just saw someone who looked exactly like you.”
“But you’re the only one in my heart, so I didn’t even spare another woman a second look.”
I was so mad I laughed. Right then and there, I snapped a selfie in front of the school gate and sent it to him.
“Maybe try taking another look?”
The Years I Hated the Most
Because of her physical development, Li Zhuguang was maliciously humiliated and secretly photographed by her classmate Zhang Kang.
Luo Xing, once her only friend, also turned her back on her amid the rumors.
To strike back, Li Zhuguang deliberately got close to Song Wangshu, the top student Luo Xing had a crush on, using Zhang Kang’s jealousy to force him to expose himself.
She then returned the evidence of the secret recordings to each of the victims.
After Zhang Kang was expelled, the off-campus landlord retaliated by planting a pinhole camera in her room.
With help from Luo Xing, Song Wangshu, her teachers, and her classmates, Li Zhuguang finally dragged the malice lurking in the shadows out into the sunlight-and learned to trust the people around her again.
Ruyi’s Demon-Subduing Chronicles: The Rat Ghost
I was trafficked to a mountain village for a ghost marriage.
But they don’t know I’ve lived for three hundred years and am the Dragon King’s Wife.
In the dead of night, I soothe the Black Dragon coiled around my waist.
“Alright, alright. They’re just little kids of sixty or seventy. What are you getting mad at them for?”
The Burden
Chapter 0
Liang Ling shot to unexpected fame thanks to a fleeting “white moonlight” scene in a xianxia drama, and through it, she met Tang Chen, the calm and self-restrained heir to a wealthy family. During their five-year relationship, she thought she had finally found the stable love and family she had always wanted. Instead, time and again, Tang Chen’s practical calculations, family obligations, and views on marriage pushed her into second place.
Career scandals, breakups and reconciliations, and his belated attempts to make her stay finally made Liang Ling see the truth: this relationship had long since become a burden neither of them could afford to carry. In the end, she dragged her luggage away from Tang Chen and gave her five years of youth a proper goodbye as well.
My Childhood Friend Was Captured by Someone Else
As Yan Zhengyang’s ultimate simp,
I had done square dancing with his grandma.
Played Go with his grandpa.
Played mahjong with his mom.
And with his dad…
Oh. Not his dad, actually.
I had mastered every trick in the book and was convinced Yan Zhengyang would never escape my clutches.
But a thousand pounds of devotion couldn’t compete with a few ounces of cleavage.
Ever since a curvy beauty moved in next door to him, everything changed.
A Few Matters at the Princess Fengguo’s Mansion
My father rebelled, and I became the most honored legitimate princess.
No, wait-the Grand Tutor said it’s not rebellion.
How can it be rebellion when it’s the act of a founding emperor?
It was the descent of the Imperial Star, the gods and buddhas blessing the people, rescuing the masses from misery!
As the Grand Tutor taught, one should say:
The previous dynasty was tyrannical and unjust, the common people were in a living hell, suffering unbearably. My father the Emperor led a group of righteous men in uprising, successfully ended the chaotic times, and established the Great An Dynasty.
So I, an ordinary farmer’s wife in the previous dynasty, inexplicably became the one and only legitimate princess of the An Dynasty.
That’s right, I’m married, my husband is alive and well, I have both a son and a daughter, my life is happy and fulfilling, and for years I’ve topped the list of happiest young wives in the village.
Before becoming a princess, my biggest worry was that my son didn’t like meat and only ate vegetables, while my daughter didn’t like vegetables and only ate meat.
Now my biggest worry has become: being a legitimate princess and all that-I have no experience with it…
Poison Apple
I transmigrated into the villainess’s… apple.
That’s right, the Poison Apple from Snow White’s stepmother.
On the very first day after transmigrating, I cried because I was so ugly.
Damn it, half red and half green.
Maybe because I was crying too loudly, the Magic Mirror next door cautiously poked me.
“Um… actually, I think you’re the most… special… apple in this world.”
I paused, then glanced at his slightly reddened mirror surface.
“…Thanks, Comfort Hero.”
Snow Rose
I stole my sister’s man.
During the year she was abroad, the man she’d been longing for all these years came to me with her photo in hand.
“Do you know the girl in this photo?”
I took off my mask, revealing a face identical to my sister’s, and smiled sweetly.
“Are you looking for me?”
The Bet Between Me and God
After I died, my boyfriend’s grief moved God.
God gave me a chance to be reborn, sending me back to my boyfriend in a stranger’s face.
If he fell in love with me again, I could come back to life.
But when I returned to him, he already had a new girlfriend.
After the School Heartthrob and My Cat’s Tail Were Synesthetically Linked
While I was playing with my cat’s tail, the B-king school heartthrob suddenly video-called me.
“Stop touching him.”
“That part of me… I think it has an Empathy Link with your cat’s tail.”
I didn’t understand, so I asked him, “What part?”
His face flushed scarlet. Abandoning all dignity, he simply tilted the camera downward.
Holy crap. Was I even allowed to see this for free?
Was he hiding a bottle of mineral water in his pants?
I Saw Qingwu
When my elder sister was preparing to marry Marquis Ding’an,
she caught the eye of the Crown Prince.
Our entire family was overjoyed.
To give the marquis’s household an explanation, they pushed me out in her place on the day of the wedding.
After we were married, Marquis Ding’an despised me.
Again and again, he mocked me to my face:
“Crude and vulgar. You don’t compare to your sister in the slightest.”
“You can’t even read an account book. Astonishingly stupid.”
I felt wronged too. I smashed my rouge and powder at him and cursed,
“My sister is the Crown Princess now. If you’re so capable, go steal her back, you coward!”
And so we spent our entire lives at each other’s throats.
When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to when I was sixteen and not yet married.
My elder sister looked at me with smiling eyes and coaxed,
“Little sister, would you like to marry into the marquis’s household and become the Marchioness?”
The Palace Walls
“I’m going to be the Empress someday!”
Ten-year-old Song Weiwei stood on a dirt slope facing the imperial city in the distance, shouting those words with all the swagger she could muster.
As for me, I sat on a dirt mound with my chin propped in my hand, speechless.
“Song Weiwei, you still haven’t paid back the two copper coins you owe me.”
Song Weiwei turned around and rapped me on the forehead.
“What’s the rush? Have you ever seen an Empress who welshes on her debts?”
She hopped down from the slope and turned to coax me.
“Just think about it, Du Zeyi. If I become the Empress, you’d be my sister. You can have anything you want. Why worry about those two copper coins?”
As if becoming the Empress of a nation could be that easy.
I muttered under my breath, rubbed my forehead, and raised my voice. “My mother’s calling me home for dinner!”
Then I slipped away as fast as I could.
Leaving only Song Weiwei behind, stamping her feet in exasperation.
The Ox-Horse Survival Guide of a Transmigrated Concubine
I transmigrated and became an ancient beast of burden, with signs that I might be headed toward the life of a chicken or duck next.
My major didn’t teach me how to make soap or explosives, and the market’s invisible hand wasn’t about to scoop me up either.
Maybe if I’d transmigrated into the ruling class, I might have wanted to stay in this dynasty.
But I know one thing very clearly: I just want to go home.
Ah Ying
After my fiancé, Xie Zhao, left on a long journey, I wrote him two letters asking him to make a decision.
The first was about my stepsister, who wanted my betrothal goose and had been crying and throwing tantrums over it.
The second was about his younger brother, who had taken a fancy to me and was being far too attentive and far too hard to shake off.
Xie Zhao had never liked my meek, timid nature to begin with. He had always wanted to call off this engagement.
So on the very day I sent the second letter, he had an old man bring me a message:
“Since she wants it, just indulge her.
“She’s young and doesn’t know any better. Surely you do?”
W-who was he talking about?
Seeing that I suspected him of delivering the wrong message, the old man lost his temper too.
“From ancient times to now, I’ve heard of giving away a wife, but never of giving away a betrothal goose!
“Besides, Second Young Master Xie is half a month younger than your sister.
“He obviously means for you to marry someone else!”
A Decade of Secret Crush
At my ten-year high school reunion, I showed up bare-faced, wearing an outfit that cost less than three hundred yuan from head to toe, with a child in my arms.
And the poor boy I had once dumped, my ex-boyfriend, was now the CEO of XX Group, dressed in a sharp suit and sitting right across from me.
Pretending to Be a Love Brain
In the dead of night, only after I let out a satisfied sigh did Wei Che gently roll off me.
He had been putting in so much effort lately that I figured he was probably about to leave me.
With a faint sigh, I turned over and went to sleep.
After all, everyone knew it.
I was the most useless kind of lovesick fool.
When the sky wanted to rain and a man wanted to leave, what could I possibly do about it?
Beg him bitterly? Threaten suicide and make a scene?
That was what a real lovesick fool would do.
But I was a fake.
A long time ago, I had already understood one simple truth-
Everyone despised a lovesick fool.
Pretending to be one, however, was the advanced strategy.
Married a Profligate
I grew up in the countryside until I was seventeen. Then people from the capital came and told me I was the young lady of a marquis’s household.
But the moment I arrived in the capital, they hurriedly married me off to a spoiled wastrel.
Later, that wastrel caused a disaster and had his family estate confiscated. I was the only one who tossed him a sickle and said,
“Husband, come home with me and farm the fields.”
An Open Secret
When we were kids, I told my childhood friend, “I like your best friend, but don’t tell him.”
Then came his best friend’s wedding.
I grabbed my childhood friend by the throat. “Wow, you really can keep a secret.”
He let out a cold scoff. “Say you like him one more time, and I’ll beat your ass.”
Livestream Fortune-Telling! I Connected to Qin Shi Huang
I was doing fortune-telling on livestream when I connected to Qin Shi Huang.
“I wish to know what became of my Great Qin in the end,” he asked.
I opened a history book.
“After your death, Zhao Gao and Li Si joined forces to put Hu Hai on the throne, then forced Prince Fu Su to take his own life.
“One year after your death, chaos swept the realm, and Liu Bang and Xiang Yu rose in rebellion against Qin.
“Three years after your death, the Qin dynasty fell.”
The more Qin Shi Huang listened, the angrier he became. He raised his hand and smacked Hu Hai, who was playing with mud off to the side, twice upside the head.
“Look at the mess you made!”
High Immortal Yunyao
The Emperor demoted me from consort to maidservant and ordered me to serve the woman he had always held in his heart.
I nodded and agreed. Then, in the mirror, a line of text suddenly appeared.
“Seeing High Immortal Yunyao in such a wretched state is so satisfying.”
“She probably has no idea we’re all using the Heaven and Earth Mirror to spy on her while she undergoes her love tribulation, right?”
Soothing the Emperor’s Heart
After Pei Xingzhi had Li Pin beaten to death with rods for the sake of the Noble Consort,
I was ill for three months.
When I recovered, it was as if I had become a different person.
I no longer racked my brains to win his favor, no longer grew jealous over which concubine’s palace he would dine in that day. I became cautious, careful, and obedient to the rules.
When Pei Xingzhi summoned me again to attend his bed,
word came from Changchun Palace that the Noble Consort was having a nightmare and wanted him to keep her company.
In the moment of hesitation before he could decide, I had already fetched his cloak for him and fastened it in place, speaking softly:
“The roads are slippery in the snow, Your Majesty. Please watch your step.”
Pei Xingzhi suddenly seized my hand, his voice slightly hoarse. “You’re not going to ask me to stay?”
I smiled gently. “I would not dare sway Your Majesty’s will.”
After all, every time I tried to keep him before,
he had never stayed.