Ranking

I won my husband, Yang Dongye, with thirty wontons.

His family had fallen on hard times, and I was a notorious old maid: plain, fiery-tempered, and perfectly capable of keeping a household standing.

He wanted someone capable; I wanted someone young and handsome.

After several happy years, his family was exonerated—and his former fiancée came running from the capital.

I came second in the imperial examinations.

The first-place winner was the sort of swaggering hero who conquered everything in his path.

He spent his days drinking, writing poetry, and visiting brothels.

The third-place winner was the hero of an erotic novel.

He spent his days sleeping with princes and generals.

Once I became a censor, I worked overtime every day impeaching the two of them, until my face turned sallow and my eyes were ringed with blue.

Then I checked my pay at the end of the month: ten taels of silver.

Furious, I threw down my memorials, picked up my brush, and started a side business: Episode One: “The Third-Place Scholar Charms in Women’s Clothes; the First-Place Scholar Spends a Fortune for His Smile.”

I was the capital’s famous sickly beauty.

When I married into the marquis’s household, everyone was betting on how long I would live.

Everyone knew the young lord had a beloved concubine.

He married me because I would die soon and stay out of her way.

In the bridal chamber, he watched without a flicker of concern as his concubine kicked over my medicine bowl.

“She won’t live long anyway.

Don’t waste good things on her.”

What he didn’t know was this: that bowl had never held medicine to keep me alive.

It held the muscle-weakening powder my father had been dosing me with.

Without the medicine, I was perfectly well.

On the day I ascended the throne, I discovered that I could hear objects speak.

The Dragon Throne was a chatterbox, and a scalding bowl from the imperial kitchens screamed in my hands.

When I dropped it, only I could hear the shattered pieces lamenting their fate.

I took a concubine for my husband.

The concubine was tall and long-legged, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and extraordinary beauty.

My husband nearly lost his mind.

Because when the concubine pulled it out, it was bigger than his.

Prince Xiang’s heir was every noble young lady’s dream—and the emperor’s favorite candidate for the throne.

I slipped a little something into his soup to secure my future.

Unfortunately, my sister and three other ladies had the same idea.

One bowl later, he dropped dead at the imperial banquet, and all five of us became suspects.

I swore on my father’s life that I hadn’t killed him.

The trouble was, every suspect had a secret—and I wanted far more than a handsome husband.

My childhood friend was the most popular boy in school.

He had dated nineteen girls, and every one of them was still in love with him.

Then Chen Qingsong transferred to our school.

The school beauty my childhood friend was pursuing abandoned her usual cold reserve and began showering Chen Qingsong with attention.

On our way home, he said lightly, “Xu Dusui, why don’t we give it a try?”

Almost at once, he dismissed his own suggestion.

“Then again, a clingy pest like you would be a better match for Chen Qingsong.”

I didn’t answer.

I was too busy texting: “Chen Qingsong, are we kissing again today?”

A ridiculously handsome rich boy transferred to the university.

Not only could he drive a Rolls-Royce one-handed, he was funny, charming, romantic, and a shameless flirt.

There was just one problem: every girl who dated him got sick.

They couldn’t stand sunlight, craved blood, and even grew fangs.

“You smell wonderful.

You’re the sweetest-smelling girl I’ve ever met!”

The rich boy tied me to a pillar, looking utterly intoxicated.

“My little darling, is there anything you’d like to say to me?”

I tilted my face up and gave him a brilliant smile.

“Let evil and corruption scatter; let the Dao’s vital energy endure.

Obey this command with all haste!”

I entered a horror game, and the final boss asked how I wanted to die.

“Thanks.

I’ll take old age, after a long life.”

The boss: “…”

There was a fool in my village who was always muttering: “Rock, scissors, cloth…”

The order had to be right.

If anyone got it wrong, he flew into a rage.

One day, a body turned up in the abandoned mud-brick house beside mine.

Even I became a suspect.

When the police carried the body out, it was still wrapped tightly in coarse cloth.

But when the fool saw it, his muttering changed to: “Cloth!

Cloth!

Cloth…”

I thought I understood why his rock, scissors, cloth had to come in that order.

I was a spy.

While posing as a courtesan to deceive a man, I ran into my polished, scholarly foster brother.

His eyes held a dangerous gleam.

“Short of money?”

“What business is it of yours?”

He gave a cold laugh.

“I’ll make it my business for the rest of your life.”

After marrying the notoriously tyrannical emperor, I accidentally swapped bodies with him.

But the exchange wasn’t quite permanent.

By day, he dismissed officials.

By night, I rescued them.

He punished the consorts.

I soothed the beauties.

And he still had the nerve to snap at me.

“Which hand did you touch her with?”

Honestly.

Without me, this country would fall apart sooner or later.

I was drunk.

Out of habit, I sent my ex-husband my location.

“Come get me.”

He replied at once.

“Remember?

We’re divorced.”

“You were the one who asked for it.”

“What, you still want to order me around like a dog?”

I was about to reply when comments started scrolling past: “Is the supporting girl nuts?

Why interrupt the male lead’s date now?”

“If it weren’t for her, he would’ve kissed the female lead already!”

“AAAAAAH, I HATE HER!”

I hurriedly texted him, “Wrong person.”

Ten minutes later, he arrived.

With a woman I’d never seen before.

Before I even married my husband, I already owed his family a life.

His elder brother had died in an accident while working away from home to save up for my husband’s wedding.

On our wedding night, my husband dragged me to his brother’s grave and forced me to kowtow.

“If it weren’t for you, my brother wouldn’t be dead.”

“You’ll spend the rest of your life paying for it.”

After that, I worked in the fields all day and waited on his entire family at night.

Whenever he drank, he beat me.

I fled to my mother’s house.

She held me and cried all night.

The next morning, she pushed me toward the door.

“Go back.”

“Your sister-in-law doesn’t want you staying here.

There’s nothing I can do.”

“Just bear it.

Once he’s old and too weak to hit you, your life will be over anyway.”

But I didn’t want to bear it anymore.

I was born without knowing how to cry, and I did not learn to walk until I was two.

My cousin, who was my age, could already recite poems while I was still stumbling over my first words.

Before the college entrance examination, everyone in the village called me the half-wit.

Afterward, the village received its first university acceptance letter.

My aunt was beside herself with joy.

She held a three-day feast, and everyone for miles around knew my cousin had got into university.

Then the villagers clamored to see the letter.

Only then did they discover that the name on the gold-stamped page was mine.

On the night of the empress’s funeral, His Majesty and I spent the entire night together in a side hall.

Everyone in the capital called me shameless.

After all, the empress was my own aunt, and His Majesty was her husband—my uncle by marriage.

Before that, I had been meant to marry the crown prince.

But Yuan Xiujin did not like me.

He despised my coarse origins, sneered at the Meng family’s rustic ways, and thought us unworthy of the Eastern Palace.

As if I thought any better of him.

Father and son, yet so different.

Yuan Xiujin let a woman lead him by the nose.

Yuan Zhaoyu already held the empire in his hand.

Since he would not let me become his crown princess, I would simply have to become his father’s consort instead.

I was the legitimate daughter of an old noble house, carefully raised to become the crown prince’s wife.

Then a woman arrived on a mission to win his love, and he demanded that our betrothal be broken.

Everyone expected me to fight for him.

Instead, I removed my hairpins, left my face bare, and calmly asked His Majesty to grant the couple their wish.

That night, I left the capital.

Three years later, their passionate devotion had turned to resentment.

When the weary crown prince met me on my return and called me Zhang’er, I knew my opportunity had come.

On my last night in the palace, Xiao Zhao got drunk and took me to bed.

The next morning, I slipped a palace maid into his bed to take my place.

Four years later, a little girl held my husband’s hand and called him Uncle in her sweet little voice.

His eyes reddened.

“Ah Jie, how can she call me Uncle?”

he asked, aggrieved.

I smiled.

“But she really is my husband’s daughter.

What else should she call you?”

When my father died, he left me a pawnshop called Pawnshop Number Whatever.

By day, it had no customers.

By night, it was packed with souls, trading kindness, malice, and years of life for what they desired.

Tonight, my last customer was my husband, away on campaign.

He looked at the masked shopkeeper without recognizing me.

“I’d like to pawn my wife outright.”

Father said I had an affinity with the immortals and sent me up the mountain to become a nun when I was little.

Only as I grew older did I learn that the place where I lived was Mount Tai.

And the nuns of Mount Tai were no proper nuns.

Just as the “slender horses” of Yangzhou were not horses, and the boatwomen of West Lake did more than row boats.

Men came for the thrill of doing the most profane things in a sacred place.

Then the emperor himself climbed the mountain to pray for an heir.

And I became pregnant with his only child.

The prince’s heir acquired a famous sword.

A fine sword deserved a beautiful woman.

My looks earned me the position of his sword-bearing maid.

Later, he took me to Taicang for the Sword Trials.

Someone saw me and remarked, “Baseborn to the bone.”

Everyone roared with laughter.

Only years later did they understand.

What the man had actually said was, “Blade-born to the bone.”

“I want a world where bride price is a crime.

Let’s see how those precious little princesses get something for nothing then!

Hahaha!”

The first lucky winner thrust his arms into the air to a round of applause.

But when the preview of his new world ended, he cried and screamed that he didn’t want to go.

I sat in the audience, cracking sunflower seeds as I watched the show.

“Serves him right.”

I didn’t notice the frown on my husband’s face beside me.

And I could never have imagined that, an hour later, he would stand on that stage and calmly announce: “I want a world where a man can have more than one wife.”

My eldest sect brother, who was to become my cultivation partner, brought home a woman.

For her, he succumbed to worldly desire.

Once he had tasted it, he could not stop.

But I could see that she was a demon cultivator wearing human skin.

When I exposed her before everyone, she stripped off her skin and destroyed herself.

My sect brother hated me for it.

He said I had ruined her chance to become human.

Later, after he attained immortality, he destroyed our sect, tore out my immortal bones, crippled my cultivation, and shut me in a dark dungeon to torment me day after day.

When I woke again, I was back on the day before I exposed them.

This time, I would not stand in the way of his love.

As he wished, my sect brother abandoned cultivation and went into the mortal world to live as a man.

I was an emperor.

Now I have become another emperor.

But this one has made a miserable job of it.

The crown princess is sleeping with the imperial tutor in the Eastern Palace.

My daughter is imprisoned and humiliated in her own residence by her husband.

Even my favorite niece has been judged by the country-bred heir to the Marquis of Xuanyang: “Fit only for a concubine, never a wife.”

Well.

You are all remarkably brave.

How about we find out how sharp my executioner’s blade is?

I am a princess.

I think everyone around me has something wrong with them.

My half sister entrusted her daughter to me after her husband’s family was convicted.

The day Cui Yuying arrived, scarlet characters appeared above her head: Female Lead.

Above my own daughter, I saw Villainous Supporting Character.

I had rescued this girl, but I would never let her turn my children into stepping stones.

If the plot insisted on calling us villains, it would have to contend with their mother first.

I am the Dark Lord, and I accidentally ended up in a Chinese cultivation novel.

A demonic cultivator asked, “What evil deeds have you committed?”

I replied, “Made Horcruxes.

Pursued immortality.”

The demonic cultivator said, “I asked what evil deeds you’ve committed, not how you cultivate.”

The Noble Consort wants the emperor’s heart.

Qingtang, her maid, thinks authority over the harem matters far more.

When her mistress’s reckless devotion threatens her own future, Qingtang decides that if a fool can become Noble Consort, there is no reason she should spend her life as a servant.

On my first day in the palace, I told my own fortune.

A west wind slipped along the foot of the wall, lifting three dead leaves.

Two fell into the gutter; one landed on my shoe.

I studied that leaf for a long while and reached a conclusion: Don’t compete.

Stay alive.

Excellent.

I decided on the spot that, from that day forward, I would be a layabout with principles.

The first wife said that a concubine’s daughter ought to become a concubine herself.

She used my mother’s life to force my obedience.

A little sedan carried me into the prince’s household, where I was to help my elder sister secure his favor.

I schemed and plotted, watching every step, until my hands were steeped in blood.

My sister, meanwhile, remained pure and unsullied, radiant as the moon.

In that life, I harmed far too many people.

And others harmed me in return.

On the day I died, Mother told me she was not my birth mother.

The first wife had poisoned my real mother the very day she gave birth to me.

The woman who raised me was merely a pawn the first wife used to keep me in her power.

Given a second life, I turned my schemes upon my sister instead.

Have you ever seen the moon fall into the mud?

It must be a lovely sight.

I was born with a honeyed tongue.

I knew how to win people over.

As a child, I coaxed my father’s wife from despising me into loving me as her own.

After I married, I charmed my icy mother-in-law into treating me like her own daughter.

But it didn’t work on my husband.

He had a woman he loved and could not have.

In two years of marriage, he had never so much as touched a finger of mine.

Once again, at my mother-in-law’s bidding, I took a nourishing soup to his study and tried to coax him into sharing my bed.

He shoved me away in disgust and flung the soup aside.

“Wen Xiaoxiao, spare me your honeyed words and hidden knives.”

“I’d sooner die than touch you.”

Oh, well.

There really was nothing I could do.

If he wouldn’t be charmed, I would simply have to charm someone else.

A man of insatiable desire loses his manhood, but never his craving for his wife.

Jiang Youze, the legitimate son of the Jiang household, was as graceful as an orchid, as splendid as a jade tree.

He placed first in the imperial examinations at sixteen. Accomplished in both letters and arms, he had outshone his peers since childhood.

Si Yan, the only daughter at the minister’s residence, was treasured beyond measure, the moon around which every star revolved.

She and Jiang Youze had grown up together, their affection mutual.

Cool and difficult to approach, he reserved all his closeness and tenderness for her.

Everyone called their betrothal a perfect match between families of equal standing, a marriage made in heaven.

Then, the year after Jiang Youze’s triumph in the examinations, everything changed.

The Jiang clan was condemned on a fabricated charge of treason. The entire household was executed, its blood staining the long street.

Jiang Youze alone was spared, sentenced to castration and service as a palace eunuch.

The once-celebrated son of the Jiang family became, in an instant, a ruined man whom everyone shunned.

On the day he was imprisoned, Jiang Youze paid some unknown price to have a letter written in blood delivered from his cell to Si Yan.

Every line was written with her future in mind. He plainly offered to release her from their betrothal, yet every word bled with anguish.

Si Yan, however, found only the repeated endearment “Qingqing” an intolerable eyesore.

After reading the bloodstained letter, she turned and tossed it into the brazier of fine charcoal.

She had intended to call off the engagement on the very day the Jiang household was executed.

But the night before, she had a dream.

She dreamed that Jiang Youze would one day wield power over court and country, and that he would imprison and humiliate her, shutting her behind the palace gates forever…

I was an abandoned child, and a blessed girl revered in every village for miles around.

Whenever a woman became pregnant, all I had to do was touch her belly, and she would have a son.

People were overjoyed.

But little by little, they stopped rejoicing…

I’ve loved money since I was little.

After I started dating a rich heir, I discovered that his best friend was even richer.

Lately, that friend has been pursuing me behind his back.

I know.

It’s a trap, designed to show my boyfriend what I really am.

But all I can think is: He actually hasn’t recognized me.

I’ve had plastic surgery.

Years ago, he pretended to be poor when he dated me.

The morning after I slept with him, I told him I was going downstairs to buy him soy milk.

Then I vanished.

I’m the first love he’s hated ever since.

Now, out of sight of the crowd, he asks me quietly: “Break up with your boyfriend.

I’ll do anything you say.”

“Do you know the most thorough way to destroy a good person?

Make her kill someone.”

“Why would a good person kill?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Put a knife in her hand, give her an enemy she hates to the marrow, and an identity that lets her walk away unscathed…” “Say someone murdered you, and you became a vengeful ghost.

Faced with your helpless killer, could you guarantee that you would never kill?”

“…”

When the rebels free a tongueless madman, he leaves three children three prophecies: a dragon destined for the throne, a phoenix praised by the people, and someone condemned to pass from camp to camp on the bedding of ten thousand.

Everyone knows which fate belongs to the general’s son, which to his noble adopted daughter, and which to Ah Man, a starving little maid picked up by the roadside.

But as war tears the realm apart, Ah Man learns to read maps, feed armies, and question who has the right to decide another person’s fate.

The whole capital knows Zhao Qingzhi as a jealous woman.

Only young General Pei dares to marry her, declaring that a man who can catch tigers and kill bandits has no reason to fear a fiery wife.

After the wedding, he proudly tells his friends he has tamed her.

But one friend knows the truth: the maid Zhao Qingzhi had beaten was her father’s illegitimate daughter, and the story behind her jealousy is far more painful than the rumors suggest.

Humiliated by the correction, the young general decides to prove who rules his household.

The next day, he brings that very maid home.

I had been born with little feeling for others.

When Mother struck me with a ruler for my sister’s sake, I did not shed a tear.

When my brother threw out the cat I had raised, I did not plead with him.

When the childhood friend I had grown up with asked for my sister’s hand, I calmly wished them well.

Without attachment, there could be no hurt.

I was content that way.

But I married a man who clung to me and loved me alone.

Xie Fuyu liked making me laugh, watching ripples disturb my expressionless face.

He taught me to hold on to the things I cared about.

So I began to fight for his love.

I would not let him go to wine houses or spare another woman so much as a glance.

Until my sister fell into the water and miscarried, and I would not let him go to help.

With a trace of disappointment, he snapped, “Meng Shiying, you never used to be this petty.”

Before long, he tired of me and took several aloof, quiet women as concubines.

Every one of them looked so much like the girl I had been.

I fought for half my life, and none of it brought me a good ending.

Then I was reborn on the day Mother arranged my marriage.

I bowed my head.

“Mother… the third young master of the Xie family and I are not suited.”

While my husband was buying the freedom of a brothel’s star courtesan, I was at home feeding the pigs.

Floating comments warned me that my replacement was on her way.

I trusted my husband—and when he brought her home, he announced that her musical talents would make our pigs worth a fortune.

What followed was less a battle over a man than a very unexpected business venture.

Ever since my husband brought his mistress home as an honored concubine, I had been living like a goddess.

Getting up at the fourth watch every morning to prepare him for court?

The concubine’s job.

His clothes, his meals, his daily needs.

Taking care of him when he was drunk or ill.

The weighty business of attending to his parents—all hers.

So were the marital bed and bearing children.

When I asked her, yet again, to make shoes and socks and do the other needlework, I told her, “You’re an honored concubine, practically half a mistress of the house.

These are a mistress’s duties.

If you won’t do them, who will?”

She looked at me, dressed to the nines and ready to go out.

Seething with resentment.

Then her child was registered as mine.

And she became more respectful and obedient by the day.

I was perfectly happy with the arrangement.

My husband, however, began to grow restless.