Ranking

I spent eighteen years in a Buddhist temple.

Eighteen years later, I returned as Princess Chang’an. To compensate me for those lost years, the Empress Mother made a public promise: she would grant me any one thing I desired.

I looked around the room, my gaze landing on Wei Zhao, who shone brilliantly amidst the unremarkable crowd. Pointing at him, I declared, “I want him to be my Imperial Son-in-Law.”

Only later did I discover that Wei Zhao and my younger sister, Princess Kangle, were childhood sweethearts. They were a mere imperial decree away from being wed.

But what of it?

Even if I had known from the start, I still would have claimed Wei Zhao as mine!

On the day His Majesty traveled south to Jiangnan, the Empress Dowager took a liking to Miss Xu of the Xu Family in Yangcheng.

“Such a lovely, fresh-faced child ought to become a daughter-in-law of our imperial family.”

As she said this, the Empress Dowager’s gaze seemed to drift, intentionally or not, toward Fu Yanli at my side.

Fu Yanli was the current Fifth Prince, and also my husband.

Later, on the day Miss Xu was to be invested as consort, I stood at the palace gates, clinging to a sliver of hope. “Not even I may enter?”

The guards at the gate all knew me. One by one, they lowered their heads, not daring to meet my eyes. “The Empress Dowager said it wouldn’t matter if anyone else came, but Your Highness, as Crown Princess… you absolutely cannot enter the palace today.”

I nodded, returned to the manor, and picked up the bundle I had packed long ago.

The capital blazed with lights. All at once, I remembered Fu Yanli from that year, when everyone had turned their backs on him.

He had held me tightly, refusing to let go no matter what. “Jianxi, even if I die, I will never betray you.”

On the day of the grand wedding, every guest in the hall witnessed Ah Ying take a sword strike intended for Gu Yanzhi.

No one knew that the blades, arrows, and poisons she had endured for him throughout her life were already enough to have killed her many times over.

All she had ever waited for was to die in his arms and hear him call her name just once.

I fell in love with a poor boy, but later broke up with him because he was poor.

Years later, he became successful and famous, while I, serving food, accidentally stained his girlfriend’s bag.

The young girlfriend sneered, “Do you recognize this bag? Can you afford to compensate for it?”

I smiled and handed her my own bag:

“A limited edition Birkin, three times the price of yours. Is it alright if I compensate you with this?”

During the year our love was at its peak, the young general whose name shook the borderlands used all his military merit to petition my Imperial Father for my hand in marriage.

But three years later, a woman arrived at our door clutching a child, weeping and begging me to take them in.

My husband claimed he had simply had too much to drink and made a terrible mistake.

My mother-in-law said that since I had already ruined my husband’s career prospects, I could not go so far as to sever his bloodline as well.

My closest kin advised me to be magnanimous, telling me that this was simply how every mistress of a household in the capital lived.

Only my sister, with whom I had never seen eye to eye, patted my back and told me: “In the past, you let your Imperial Brother make your decisions for you.” “Later, you let your husband make your decisions for you.” “Now, it is time you learned to grow up on your own.” “After all, you have a little girl of your own now.”

I looked down at the tiny daughter in my arms, who was still sucking on her fingers.

I understood that if I were weak, my daughter would never know how to be strong.

If I were easily bullied, my daughter would never know how to be independent. This time, it was my turn to act.

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

The insanely hot guy upstairs is six-two, with cool-toned fair skin and gold-rimmed glasses. He looks aloof and abstinent, but apparently, he’s actually a beast.

The very night I moved in, the upstairs unit went at it all night.

So passionate. So impressive.

It would have been even better if I hadn’t been the one suffering through it.

When they were about to start up again, I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

I opened the property management WeChat group and added the hot guy from Unit 802, Building E.

“Hi, you’re the resident of Unit 802 in Building E, right?”

“Could you two keep it down?”

“It’s so loud I can’t sleep…”

He replied, “I’m working overtime at the office.”

I shot up from my deathbed of exhaustion, suddenly smelling the scent of piping-hot gossip.

The next second, he transferred me eight hundred yuan.

Him: “Bro, help me block the door. I’ll be there right away.”

When I was young, I found the Crown Prince and took him with me as we spent three years begging for a living.

After the Crown Prince was restored to his position, the Emperor took me in as his adopted daughter.

Everyone assumed that I would be betrothed to the Crown Prince. Instead, the Crown Prince became engaged to the legitimate daughter of the Duke’s Mansion.

On my birthday, he remarked with a casual smile in front of the crowd, “How can one of noble blood be matched with a beggar?”

I raised my glass and sincerely wished him a life free of worries, year after year.

He did not yet know that I had accepted the decree for a marriage alliance.

In the years to come, there would be no more Ah Yu by his side.

My boyfriend asked me to help him shut down his computer.

That was when I saw his chat logs.

A girl named Qingqing had messaged him: “So, when are you coming to marry me?”

It was the fourth year of my relationship with Tong Yuen.

The harshest words I had ever heard came from his mother.

“Two men together-how are you supposed to get married and have children?”

“Don’t ruin him.”

“He was perfectly normal before he met you.”

“Mr. Fu, you’re not a child anymore. Have some sense.”

Finally, enduring the pain, I broke up with him.

But Tong Yuen spent the entire night huddled outside my door.

He tried to force the Little White Dog he had sewn together, stitch by stitch, into my hands.

When I rejected him again, he finally broke down in tears.

“Gege, you don’t want the Little White Dog… and you don’t want me anymore either?”

My cousin’s parents passed away, so my Imperial Mother brought her into the palace to live with us.

From then on, she enjoyed the favor of my parents, the protection of my elder brother, and the devotion of my younger brother.

Even my fiancé praised her for being exceptionally gifted and refined.

There was only one exception. His heart and eyes were filled only with me, never swayed by any outsider.

I married beneath my station to become his wife, and for a time, we lived a life of joy and freedom.

But later, he died-stabbed countless times before being hurled off a cliff.

On the day I was deposed and consigned to the Cold Palace, Yan Yuheng came personally to see me off.

Before the palace gates were locked, he asked whether I hated him.

I touched the old gold hairpin hidden in my sleeve and smiled. For three years as Empress, I learned to speak like her, to carry myself like her, and to love him the way she once had.

But even as I was dying, he never understood: I was never like Shen Zhaotang. I had only acted too well.

I am the most indolent concubine in the Imperial Harem.

The Emperor is currently reading my Annual Slacker Report.

“This year, your name tag was flipped nineteen times. Of those, you were intercepted thirteen times. You actually served in the bedchamber six times, during three of which the Emperor couldn’t perform.”

“This year, you knelt over a thousand times. You called the Noble Consort a ‘bitch’ over ten thousand times, but the number of times you actually said it to her face was zero.”

“Do you remember the Mid-Autumn Banquet?”

“The talent you performed was balancing a pot of wine on your upturned backside, which resulted in half a month’s stipend being docked.”

“This year, your rank and salary have seen no change from last year. In fact, this situation has persisted for three years now.”

“Your keyword for this year is ‘Trash.’ Please keep it up next year.”

Oh no. Am I about to be slacked all the way into the Cold Palace?

I found a chat log on Sheng Jing’s phone.

He had sent his female assistant a video of me helping Jiu Jiu with her homework and losing my temper.

“This is why I’d rather work overtime at the office than come home.”

The young assistant replied with a “poor you, sending hugs” sticker. “Manager Sheng, you have it so hard.

Work is exhausting enough, and then you have to deal with all that when you get home.”

Because of a bet, Jing Shaochuan lost me to his twin brother.

I acted as if I knew nothing and spent a night of reckless entanglement with his brother.

The next day, I blushed and asked Jing Shaochuan to buy some ointment for me.

“Where are you feeling unwell?” He frowned slightly, his voice deep and cold.

I murmured softly, “You were too rough last night. You hurt me.”

Jing Shaochuan froze visibly.

I took a step forward, hugging him gently and intentionally acting sweet and spoiled.

“But, you were so different last night compared to how you usually are… I really liked it, though.”

After my elder sister passed away, I entered the palace and became the new empress.

The emperor asked me to choose one of the princes to raise as my own.

The moment my fingers brushed against the two princes, I saw two chaotic glimpses of the future.

If I chose the Third Prince, he would one day ascend the throne, slaughter my entire family, and stab me to death.

If I chose the Ninth Prince, then after he became emperor, he would have me fake my death and confine me within the palace, turning me into a reviled temptress spat on by all.

I fell silent for a moment, then raised my hand and pointed at the little princess peeking in from behind the doorframe.

“Your Majesty, I believe I share a greater affinity with the Thirteenth Princess.”

I never expected that I would accidentally end up becoming colleagues with my ex-husband. After all, it had only been three months since we finally ended our miserable three-year marriage-a marriage that was nothing but mutual torture.

A year ago, on a whim, I told my wife a story.

Because the content was bizarre and the details were too realistic, she was scared out of her wits.

Afterwards, I deeply regretted it and emphasized countless times that the story was made up. But her trust in me had already collapsed, and the look in her eyes was filled with fear.

That night, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and called the police.

As a result, I ended up in jail.

Now, I am sorting out the whole incident as follows.

I was about to hide my boyfriend’s body in the refrigerator.

Then Siri on his phone suddenly spoke.

“The refrigerator is not the optimal location for concealing a corpse.”

I stared at the phone on the floor in terror, a chill running through my entire body.

“A better location for corpse concealment has been detected. Would you like to proceed?”

Siri continued. As if possessed, I asked, “Where?” “The basement. The entrance is inside the wardrobe in the master bedroom.”

Half-doubting it, I followed Siri’s instructions and actually found the basement.

It really was the perfect place to hide a body. Because inside, I found several more corpses…

Third Miss Liu did not have a very good reputation.

When she was fourteen, she threw a length of white silk over a roof beam and hanged herself, an act that stripped the primary wife of her power to manage the household.

The entire capital whispered that she was far too calculating for such a young age.

When she was seventeen, she sat atop a wall and tossed her silk pouch into the arms of a complete stranger.

Once again, the capital buzzed with rumors, claiming she was conducting a private affair and lacked any sense of shame.

Her father was so livid he was practically hopping mad, threatening to have her drowned in a pond. As soon as this news broke, General He grew anxious.

He was the capital’s most notorious man fated to kill his wife. And he had just accepted Third Miss Liu’s pouch.

I have slaughtered pigs in the palace for four years; wherever my axe struck, none survived.

With every pig I killed, I recited “Amitabha.”

My skilled butchering caught the attention of the Prince, who took me as his trusted aide.

I became the deadly butcher’s knife; he became the executioner who wielded it.

Killing and beheading – “Amitabha”; burying them on the spot – “well done, well done.”

Every night, I travel ten years into the future along with my classmate, the school’s most popular guy.

I never would have imagined that ten years from now, we’d be married with a baby of our own!

So, the moment I saw him lying there on my pillow, I didn’t hesitate for a second-I pounced right on him.

I transmigrated into a tragic romance novel as the female lead’s sister.

In the original plot, I spent my time abusing her daughter while simultaneously trying to seduce her husband.

Ultimately, I groomed her daughter to become the next generation’s tragic heroine, while I met a miserable end myself-tossed into the ocean to feed the fish.

Now, looking at the innocent Little Bean Bun standing before me, I said: “If you love suffering, you’ll have a never-ending supply of it. So, do you want to swallow that bitter pill, or are you going to speak up for yourself?”

“Go up there and give him a piece of your mind. If you win the argument, I’ll buy you a burger; if you lose, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“What? You’re afraid to win? Do you really love being a perpetual runner-up that much? You don’t have to be number one, but you can’t settle for second best, and you certainly can’t be a pushover.”

“Your mother brought you into this world to enjoy life, not to suffer. Go compete, go grab what’s yours, and be brave! Go get ’em, baby!”

As the School Belle, I swapped souls with the fattest and poorest girl in the whole school.

We exchanged secrets, shared our lives, and tried hard to return to our original selves.

Until one day, she disappeared.

The teacher said her whole family had moved abroad.

I saw her again ten years later.

She was standing beside my Childhood Sweetheart, having become the CEO’s Wife.

My sister has hated me for twenty years. She once told me to my face that it would be better if I just died.

So, just as she wished, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

After we broke up, I ran into my ex at the mall.

My hair was a mess, and I was in the middle of a frantic struggle to change a diaper.

He, on the other hand, was impeccably dressed, surrounded by a fawning entourage as he inspected the premises.

Our eyes met. When he saw the fussy child in my arms, his expression shifted instantly. “Is he mine?”

I gave a cold laugh and turned the baby’s face toward him. “Do you think he looks like you?”

He studied the child for a long moment before nodding with certainty. “He does.”

“Xue Chang, we broke up over three years ago.” I gave him a mirthless smile and bounced the little one in my arms to remind him. “My baby is only six months old.”

[Does Chinese Taoist magic work on foreign ghosts?]

[I have no idea. I’m on my way to a cemetery castle right now. I’ll let you all know when I get back.]

My reply to the post was voted to the top of the comments.

Everyone said I was bragging, but what they didn’t know was that I am the sole Earth Master successor.

And the thing inside that British Castle is far more terrifying than any ghost.

Zhou Ci and I were also a pair of resentful lovers, exchanging harsh words and blows, finally threatening, “Whoever doesn’t get divorced is a dog.”

On the way to the divorce, we cursed each other with the most venomous words we could muster.

But when the oil tanker crashed towards us, he jerked the steering wheel, using his side to take the impact.

He let me live 0.01 seconds longer.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the summer at the end of my second year of high school.

Zhou Ciye was holding a bouquet of flowers, asking if I would accept it.

The next second, his listless face lifted, full of gloom.

The moment our eyes met, I knew he had come back too.

The Han army captured Luoyang. My husband, His Majesty himself, knelt at the rebels’ feet, trembling like a lamb waiting for slaughter.

“The Empress is in Jiaofang Hall. Please, don’t kill me…”

I had been married to him for five years and had given birth to our daughter, Princess Heqing.

Yet at the moment of crisis, he offered me up without the slightest hesitation.

On the day I died, Xiao Xu was about to make another woman his empress.

He came to the Cold Palace, hoping I would swallow my pride and yield to him. What greeted him was only my ice-cold corpse.

For reasons no one could explain, Xiao Xu broke down. He did one deranged thing after another, and every day he wept blood before my grave.

In the end, he got his wish and was reborn a thousand years later.

In the twenty-first century, Xiao Xu and I were classmates.

He was still dazzling. Still exceptional.

He was looking for me.

But he didn’t know that I had been reborn too, with all my memories intact.

Le Yao wakes inside an ancient romance as the personal maid of Prince Li, a brilliant war hero whose violent obsession with Wei Qingzhi turns every workday into a fight for survival.

As she becomes the unwilling go-between in their toxic courtship, Le Yao schemes to buy freedom with fellow maid Qingping-until the story’s ordained romance demands a price she refuses to accept.

I met someone named Chen Ye.

Everyone says he is loyal, kind, and a rare good person in this world.

But I think he is vulgar, hypocritical, and the most despicable and shameless scoundrel in the world.

Yet I kind of like him.

I am the female lead of a PO novel, thrown into a clean romance novel by the system to be reformed.

Hilarious. I walked straight up to the male lead and said, “Hey, wanna kiss?” The male lead threw me in jail, claiming I had sexually harassed him.

Later on, he became even more unhinged than the male lead of a PO novel.

I paint faces for the dead and open The Door for the living.

After the Prime Minister’s Daughter met a sudden, violent end, I painted the last thing she ever saw.

Three months later, that very face smiled at me from a crowded street.

Later, when the Grand Princess lay within her coffin, she reached out and gripped my brush. “Don’t paint me,” she whispered. “Paint yourself.”

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.

After I went blind, lines of broken, disjointed text began to appear before my eyes.

[The princess is so pitiful. She injured her eyes saving her cousin, but right now, that very cousin is next door, rolling around in bed with the princess’s brother.]

[Too bad the princess can’t see. If she could, she should immediately bring people over and catch them in the act.]

My cousin had lost her mother when she was young.

The Empress Mother pitied her and had her enter the palace to serve as my study companion.

But several of my imperial brothers were always bullying her.

They liked seeing her teary-eyed, timid, and pitiful. I stood up for her, only to have my eyes injured by one of my imperial brothers.

I became blind. So it turned out that, behind my back, they had already become so intimate.

I did not go and catch them in the act as those lines wanted.

Instead, I had someone inform my other two imperial brothers.

My cousin was so pitiful. Surely she deserved a few more people to love her.

Later, I ascended the throne as Empress Regnant.

My cousin received the love of three of my imperial brothers.

All of us had bright futures ahead.

When a wealthy family came to the orphanage to choose a child, they wavered between me and Cheng Yun.

A barrage of comments scrolled before my eyes:

[The female supporting character is about to start acting pitiful again so she can get adopted.]

[Even if she does get adopted, she’ll just be abandoned later anyway.]

[She’ll spend her whole life hated by everyone, chasing what she can never have. Just another girl obsessed with competing against other girls.]

I silently lowered my head.

Because the “female supporting character” they were talking about was me.

Suddenly, two figures loomed over me.

A Northeastern couple who had never been mentioned in the plot looked down at me, their faces lighting up with surprise.

“Oh my goodness, look at this pretty little thing!”

“Sweetheart, your uncle and auntie are having pork and glass noodle stew at home today. Smells amazing. Wanna come back with us and have some?”

At Yuchi Wei’s wedding, I once fired an arrow that pierced through the bride’s red veil, killing her on the spot.

I did it because that woman was a spy.

In the aftermath, Yuchi Wei was moved to tears of gratitude. He promoted me to be his personal lieutenant.

Because of that proximity, he eventually discovered my secret-that I was a woman disguised as a man.

Five years later, on our wedding night, he walked into the room carrying a funerary urn he had cherished for years.

“I want you to experience the same thing I did back then,” he said. “To taste the bitterest pain at the moment of your greatest joy.”

Only then did I realize he had deeply loved that spy all along, and his heart had never changed.

He gouged out my eyes and crippled my hands so that I could never fire an arrow again.

Amidst a world of bloody light, I set the house ablaze, dragging him down to death with me.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day of Yuchi Wei’s wedding.

“General, do you think the woman who just stepped out of the bridal sedan could be that spy?” my subordinate whispered.

I stopped him, my expression indifferent.

“We are only here today to offer our congratulations. We will not discuss official business.”

After five years of marrying into my family, my penniless scholar husband passed the imperial exam-and suddenly decided I, his butcher wife, reeked of grease and blood.

For half a month, he hemmed and hawed and refused to do his husbandly duties.

So I used the silver I’d earned selling pork to buy him two ink sticks and a ream of fine paper, then scraped together the last of my coins for a tiny bar of scented soap.

When I made it home through the rain, the big yellow dog under the eaves had one of the meat dumplings I’d wrapped dangling from its mouth.

From inside the house came a coy, wheedling voice.

“Father, the magistrate’s daughter smells so nice. Not like Mother.”

“And these pastries taste better than meat dumplings too.”

I took all the bits and pieces I’d hidden against my chest and threw them out-along with the father and son.

When Zheng Huaishu signed the divorce papers, he held our son in his arms and glared at me with resentment.

All the neighbors in the village laughed at me for letting a future official go.

The very next day, the matchmaker introduced me to a fair, slender stutterer.

A little girl trailed behind him.

Father and daughter gave me timid looks.

I asked irritably, “How often can you do your husbandly duties?”

“And how much meat will you eat in a day?”

The stutterer’s face turned bright red. The matchmaker yanked his clothes down over half his shoulder, and he said in a slow, gentle voice, “As long as my child gets a mouthful of rice… as her father, I’ll do anything…”

I am the most ferocious, terrifying entity in the horror movie world.

I had finally saved up enough points to visit the daughter I once had.

But when I found her, she had already been adopted into a wealthy family.

Bullet comments drifted across the air:

“Just a few of them, and the female lead takes them all with a smile.”

“What have they turned her into? She went from fighting for her life to crying and begging for it.”

“To be fair, she’s pretty unlucky. She ended up crossing these rich brats who aren’t afraid of anything.”

I looked at my daughter, clutching her backpack and trembling slightly, and the group of boys surrounding her.

They aren’t afraid of anything? I wonder if that includes ghosts.