Ranking

A group of tourists travels to an island for a vacation, only to be forced into a deadly game with enormous rewards and their lives at stake. Over the days that follow, one special contest will be held each day, and the event will be chosen by a randomly selected Featured Player. At least one person will be eliminated in every contest. There is only one way to end this brutal game early: identify the Mastermind hiding among them.

Chen Nuo is terminally ill and had planned to end his life during the trip. But once he is drawn into the game, desperation rekindles his will to survive, and he joins the other contestants in one unexpected, heart-stopping contest after another. As the number of survivors plummets, the game’s rules grow increasingly cruel, laying bare the best and worst of human nature in a struggle between life and death. They have three Mastermind votes. Can they unmask the Mastermind? And what astonishing secret lies behind The Missing Game?

Lately, it has become a popular trend in the Cultivation World for female disciples to seduce their male Masters.

My Master has repeatedly demanded that I swear an oath never to cross the Thunder Pool with him.

I looked at him, my face a giant question mark. “Master, we’re in the Hehuan Sect, aren’t we?”

The day my fiancé came to break off our engagement, my mother was so excited that tears streamed down her face.

As it turned out, I was not her biological daughter.

She had adopted me only so I could take the calamity meant for her real daughter.

She said, “Now that the ordeal has been fulfilled, you ought to return to your own family.”

I packed my bundle. There was little I could take with me, which made for easy travel.

My birth mother was waiting by the back gate.

She had a booming voice and had come driving an ox cart-every inch an uncouth peasant woman who knew nothing of proper manners.

Because of her, everyone in the Marquis Manor looked down on me even more.

And yet, the one who would bring me back to the capital in splendor was precisely her.

My name is Zhou Jiu, and I’m a professional haunted-house test sleeper.

Tonight, the company assigned me a new job: the old house where my entire family burned to death fifteen years ago.

But that house had long since been reduced to a barren wasteland.

I returned with a black-and-white photograph of the fire scene.

In the shadows of that photo, a person who looked exactly like me was already waiting at the door.

My Mother was a courtesan, earning money with her own flesh and blood to support my father’s studies and imperial examinations.

Five years later, my father succeeded and was granted marriage to a princess by the Emperor.

Yet, in the Golden Throne Hall, he refused the marriage at the risk of his own life, and with great fanfare, married my Mother with ten miles of red bridal procession.

The princess was displeased.

Three days later, Mother was found abused and disheveled, dying at the entrance of an alley.

Half a year later, the princess finally married my father as she wished.

She did not know that this was the beginning of her misfortune.

The tattoo on the back of Wei Yan’s neck was the initials of his ex-girlfriend’s name.

The only reason he had spared me a second glance in that vast sea of people was because my eyes and brows bore a striking resemblance to hers.

While exploring Devil City with the Decoding Science Program Team, I was looking straight into the camera, talking absolute nonsense with a straight face.

“The recent buzz surrounding the Man-eating Snake incidents is all fake. These are just ordinary Sand Snakes.”

The next second, the ground beneath us gave way, and the entire Program Team plummeted into a pit of snakes.

On the day of my hairpin ceremony, my brother-in-law, tipsy from wine, barged into my room.

That same night, my mouth was gagged and I was taken to the Marquis’s Mansion.

My legitimate elder sister told me she could not bear children and needed to borrow my womb.

A year later, I gave birth to a son.

My legitimate elder sister brought me to the Bamboo Garden, where four old maids covered my mouth and buried me in a pit they had dug long before.

Before I died, I kept wondering what the point had been of someone like me coming into this world.

But I never imagined that I would be dug up again.

The person who found me was small and thin, yet he staggered along with me on his back for ten miles.

He covered me with the only clothing he had and gave me a chance to live.

An old man took me in. From that day on, I changed my name and became someone else.

Five years later, my wonton shop opened in Capital City, and I happened to run into my legitimate elder sister and her family being sold off.

She begged me to save her son.

But I pointed to the young man kneeling off to the side and said, “I’ll only save him.”

After my husband’s favored concubine shoved me into a deep well, I miscarried. As crimson blood spread through the water, I heard a strange melody rise from the depths.

“Third Set of National Middle School Students’ Radio Gymnastics, Dancing Youth, begins now.”

Elder Sister was a physician.

After she treated the Noble Consort, the Emperor praised her for having a “miraculous touch.”

Consumed by jealousy, the Noble Consort had Elder Sister’s hands severed.

She smiled and said, “I hear Doctor Song’s medical skills are peerless. In that case, heal your own stumps.”

She denied Elder Sister water and medicine, watching as she slowly succumbed to the agonizing pain.

Six years later, the Noble Consort contracted a strange illness that left her wishing for death.

I stepped forward and reported, “There is one person in this world who can cure this ailment.”

Hope flared in the Noble Consort’s eyes. “Bring this divine physician here at once! I will pay any price!”

I shook my head with regret. “Six years ago, Your Ladyship killed her with your own hands.”

In my third year of disguising myself as a man and sneaking into the Prince’s Mansion to work as a guard, I got involved with the prince’s male favorite.

I had meant to cut things off with him and sever all ties for good.

But whenever he took my hand during our secret meetings, my resolve would crumble.

And just like that, spineless and useless as I was, I committed a capital offense.

My Imperial Elder Brother is into men, and my Imperial Elder Sister is into women.

Imperial Father has pinned all his hopes for the empire on me.

I’m trembling-should I tell him that the one I love is a eunuch?

Imperial Father: “Impressive.”

For ten years, I was a corporate Head of Administration.

Then I woke up as the legitimate daughter of a marquis.

Only then did I discover that I had landed in a female-led power fantasy about a maid’s rise to glory.

Blessed with the heroine halo, the maid could do everything: manage a household, run shops, organize disaster relief.

Everyone adored her.

Even my own younger brother and fiance became devoted second male leads who protected her at every turn.

In the end, the senior maid became a legendary merchant queen known throughout the realm.

I, meanwhile, grew jealous of the heroine.

Spoiled and willful, I courted disaster at every step until everyone abandoned me and I died alone in a secluded estate.

After a long silence, my professional instincts kicked in.

Household management was simply a logistics support system.

Running shops was supply-chain management.

Disaster relief was an emergency response plan.

Well, wasn’t that convenient?

She was the all-conquering maid with fate on her side.

I was an administrator trying to stay alive.

And survival began with rules.

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?”

Chapter 0

After my Taoist temple went bankrupt, I opened a Haunted House.

Every ghost inside was personally captured by me.

Until today.

A tourist grabbed one of my ghost NPCs and wailed:

“Mom! I missed you so much, Mom!”

Oh no!!!

The first time I stayed over at my boyfriend’s place, his ex-girlfriend suddenly burst into the bedroom in the middle of the night.

I could clearly feel his body stiffen. The room fell into a dead silence.

“Song Yuan,” she choked out, her voice so hoarse it was barely recognizable.

But he acted as if nothing was happening, pinning my wrist down and nonchalantly continuing to kiss me.

There is no spring in the Sea of No Return.

On the eve of our wedding, Shang Wujiu personally gouged out my Heart Lamp and sealed me within the Sea of No Return.

Three hundred years later, he knelt by the shore, begging me to return.

But he didn’t know that the lamp-the very thing that had extended his life-had long since burned into ash at the bottom of the sea.

She Has Been in the Wind for Two Years

Synopsis: Two years after my wife passed away, I still received messages from her every day and ate the dinners she had “arranged” for me.

I thought she had never truly left-until one late night, when I followed a text begging for help back home and realized I had been living all along inside the Fengli she left behind for me.

On the day I came of age, the snow fell heavily, and he said he wanted to break off our engagement.

Later, he knelt before me and begged me to spare him.

They drove me out of the family.

Later, with my own hands, I sent them into military exile.

I was Princess Jiuhua’s study companion, destined to one day enter the palace as a female official.

But at the welcome banquet, the General of Agile Cavalry asked His Majesty to bestow me upon him.

His mistress left a letter behind and ran away with the child.

After he sobered up, he traveled a thousand li to make amends and only then brought that woman back.

On our wedding night, he said coldly, “That day was merely drunken nonsense; I only blame you for blocking my sister’s path. But an imperial decree is hard to defy. Once this act is over, we each return to our own places.”

I asked him, “General, you see me as a mere object, and with a few words you cut off my path to becoming a female official. How can you speak of returning to our places?”

He replied indifferently, “That is your fate, not something you can blame on me.”

But I refuse to accept my fate.

I am a newly appointed NPC in a horror instance.

On the third night after successfully starting work as a Maid in the Ancient Castle,

I sneaked into the room of the instance Boss with a little tail trailing behind me.

The Vampire Boss, who had been waiting for a long time, had his shirt collar wide open, faintly revealing the metallic sheen of a chain underneath.

I raised my hand to cup his handsome face as he tried to lean in and kiss me, but I only rubbed noses with him affectionately:

“Darling, our secret has been discovered.”

“If you want a reward, you’ll have to deal with those rats first.”

The world says I have been blessed with a charmed life.

My father is a first-rank official, and my mother hails from a prestigious, noble clan.

Both of my elder brothers serve in the imperial court, and all three of my elder sisters have married into high-ranking families.

Since childhood, I have been draped in the finest silks and fed the rarest delicacies from jade platters.

Even the trifles I play with on a whim are worth enough to sustain an ordinary family for half a lifetime.

Yet, outsiders see only the surface of my tapestry-like life.

They do not understand that greatness brings its own burdens. Within these embroidered curtains and silken screens, schemes lie hidden at every turn.

Between the golden chalices and jade chopsticks, murderous intent flashes when least expected.

A single misstep is all it takes to fall into the bottomless abyss.

After I was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I bought three necklaces and hid them in three different places.

“Honey, this is my favorite necklace. Make sure you burn one for me every year on the anniversary of my death, okay?”

With that one sentence, I put a leash on that mad dog Shen Ci.

It made him give up on jumping off a building and throw away the sleeping pills.

Clinging to that promise, he endured year after year.

Until a young girl appeared by Shen Ci’s side. She was innocent and kind, like a warm little sun.

Shen Ci moved out of our marital home and sent away the puppy I had raised.

By the third anniversary of my death, Shen Ci didn’t come.

I slipped into his dream and put on my cutest act.

“Honey, you’re such a dummy. You still haven’t found this year’s necklace.”

Shen Ci, who had always chattered endlessly at me, was strangely silent now.

After a long time, he finally said, “Qingqing, it’s been three years. I need to start a new life too.”

Just now, I found the note my fiancé had saved me under in his phone.

“Top-tier A-grade knockoff.”

Those four words were enough to make my blood run cold.

No wonder he always said I looked so much like my older sister.

Turns out he’d been harboring those kinds of thoughts all along.

I couldn’t accept it. I immediately packed up my things and was about to leave, only to run straight into his gorgeous twenty-year-old younger brother-and in that instant, I changed my mind.

“At least I’m an A-grade knockoff. Look at you-you’re at most your brother’s 9.9-yuan free-shipping bargain-bin version.”

My father was a treacherous official.

The man who raided my home was my fiancé.

When he slipped the iron chain around my neck, his touch was even more tender than the year he placed a flower wreath upon my head.

On the day my father was beheaded in public, I was calmly picking lice off my mother. I remarked, “If I had a fire, I could stir-fry these lice and pair them with a pot of wine.”

Unexpectedly, my words drew a laugh from the young general in the neighboring cell, despite the hooks driven through his collarbones. Was it that funny?

The day Fu Chengbi broke up with me, I got into a car accident.

I didn’t die.

The one who died was the personality inside me that loved him.

I am the sole Earth Master successor. While leading a group of elderly wealthy businessmen to Xiangxi to treat their corpse poison, we were kidnapped and dragged deep into the mountains.

The villagers forced us to work the fields, but they had no idea that after the sun went down, the things that came for us weren’t human at all.

Chen Mu hated me.

Because I bullied and framed his precious childhood sweetheart.

Again and again, he saw through my schemes with cold eyes and watched me reap what I had sown.

“Bad seed,” he called me.

But when I kissed him in the dark, he panicked.

“Brother Chen Mu, shouldn’t a bad girl deserve a little punishment?”

After my ex-boyfriend, Gu Yanzhou, died, his will specifically named me as the one who had to read it aloud. He left me one billion in equity, three video recordings, and a final message: “Don’t be so quick to hate me. Among the people sitting across from you tonight, there is one who killed me-and your brother.”

The year my parents died in an accident, I was a sophomore in high school.

My relatives had their eyes on the inheritance and compensation money they left behind, and they kept coming by to harass me.

Finally, I knocked on the door of my Tattooed Neighbor.

“Hey, are you in the underworld?”

My brother once forced me to swear that I would never harbor any immoral thoughts about him in this life.

I did as he asked.

But he didn’t know that we were living inside a PO novel.

If I failed to win him over, I would be replaced by a new little sister.

I was airing out my belongings at home when a messenger suddenly arrived from the Capital, bearing news that the General’s Wife was gravely ill.

On her deathbed, she wished to see her best friend one last time.

By the time I rushed there, I found my dear friend lying on her sickbed, her life hanging by a thread.

Her husband hadn’t visited her even once.

Instead, only his favored concubine came every day to gloat:

“Sister is truly pitiable. You’ve feigned illness so many times that now retribution has finally caught up with you.”

My friend gripped my hand, her voice dry and raspy.

“Ah Fu, I’m dying.”

“I’ve left some things for you. You must…”

“I don’t want them.”

I interrupted her, casually picking up a gold hairpin and plunging it into the concubine’s throat.

“I’m here to settle your scores.”

I married a man three years my senior, and everyone said he was head over heels for me.

But not long after our wedding, he cheated.

He smoked, he drank, he got into fights, and he even kissed other women right in front of my face.

He did everything I hated most.

Duan Yi took a drag from his cigarette, looking down at me through hooded eyes. “What? Regretting it now?” Clutching the divorce papers in my hand, I took the glowing, red-hot cherry of his cigarette and ground it hard into his palm.

“Duan Yi, you ruined me. You should have died back when you loved me most.”

Duan Yi acted as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “That actually hurts.”

Both my younger half-sister and I were bound to a Palace Struggle Points Shop.

She used hers to exchange for peerless beauty, a captivating singing voice, and extraordinary dancing skills.

I, on the other hand, exchanged mine for the loyalty of generals, the allegiance of virtuous scholars, and the submission of merchant guilds.

Later, my sister became the Noble Consort, enjoying unrivaled favor. She came to my palace to flaunt her power, saying, “Sister, your palace is truly desolate. I’m afraid His Majesty the Emperor has already forgotten you ever existed.”

I offered a faint smile. “The less His Majesty the Emperor remembers me, the better.”

That way, my intention to replace him would not be exposed too soon.

My father was the most formidable businessman in the Republic of China. On my seventh birthday, the gift he gave me was a handgun.

I blinked at him. “But Papa, I’m a girl.”

Father pondered for a moment, realizing that it was indeed inappropriate. He then turned to the butler and ordered, “Go have a custom gun made for the Young Miss. Make it pink.”

At my boyfriend’s house, I finally found my aunt, who had been missing for over a decade after being abducted.

She was no longer the gentle, soft-spoken goddess from the dance department I remembered.

As for the family that had tormented her: the father, dressed in a sharp suit, expected me to call him ‘Uncle’; my boyfriend was in the middle of a soulful marriage proposal; and the youngest sister, wearing a bright, radiant smile, referred to her as ‘the family-less madwoman.’

–

I swear, I didn’t mean to break into that room.

It was just that the sound of something slamming against the door was so violent, it made me feel as if a wild beast were trapped inside.

The Prince was searching the entire city for the girl who had lost a Crystal Slipper.

My Stepsister stole my shoe, falsely claiming that she was the one who had danced with the Prince the night before.

Little did she know, the Prince had committed a murder that night.

And I was the only eyewitness.

The villain was rich, but depressed.

I was poor, and worse, I was the heroine of an angst novel.

My parents were destined to die, leaving me and my grandmother to depend on each other.

Then, when Grandma fell seriously ill, I would have no choice but to grovel at the male lead’s feet.

He would torment me physically and emotionally, lock me up, make me miscarry, and in the end, I would die in despair.

Only then would he be filled with regret.

I figured all of it came down to being broke, so I decided to throw my lot in with the villain.

I found the villain quietly slitting his wrists and, fighting off the dizziness from low blood sugar, tried to talk him down.

“I’m not here to stop you. I just wanted to discuss whether you could maybe die a little later.”

“You don’t want your assets to go to your dad’s illegitimate son, do you? Are you really okay with them inheriting your money, buying yachts and private jets, and traveling the world?”

“All you have to do is hold on for a few more years. Then you’ll found your own company, become the new darling of the tech industry, and multiply your wealth more than tenfold.”

“I’ll help you take a shortcut. When the time comes, give me a cut, and I’ll help you get rid of Xie Xun.”

The villain’s eyes lit up, but he still looked disdainful.

“You?”

“Be grateful. Besides me, who else is on your side? Your dad? Your mom?”

That stabbed the villain right where it hurt.

Because he was an orphan with both parents still alive.

I was a palace maid serving at the emperor’s side when I accidentally started seeing floating comments.

The comments said the emperor was hopelessly love-brained.

By day, when Consort Gui treated him coldly, he acted as if he couldn’t care less.

By night, he would sob under the covers, terrified his eyes would turn red from crying, then sneak out of bed in the middle of the night to press ice against them.

I didn’t believe it. Was this really my cold-blooded, ruthless, domineering emperor?

Later, I discovered the comments were right.

He really was love-brained.

Only, the target of his obsession had become me.

But I… didn’t love him.