Ranking

Father hauled a strange fish out of the sea, with a woman’s body and a fish’s tail.

Thinking he had caught a mermaid, he brought her home in wild delight.

He wanted her to weep pearls—and bear an heir for our family.

But Father had made a mistake.

What he had brought home was no mermaid.

It was a man-eating fish.

When the matchmaker came to propose the marriage, she said Cen Dalang (Eldest Master Cen) of the Cen family had talent, while Erlang (Second Master) had looks.

“A perfect match for your two young ladies.”

“The eldest son for the eldest daughter, the second son for the second daughter.”

“With their older brother and sister looking after them, how could the younger ones ever have a bad life?”

In my last life, things were indeed just as the matchmaker had said.

I married Dalang, and my younger sister married Erlang (Second Master).

Dalang and I spent years cleaning up mess after mess for our younger siblings.

Until Dalang died saving Erlang (Second Master).

I thought he would resent them.

But instead, he looked at my plain, unremarkable face, tears in his eyes, and sighed bitterly.

“This life was far too worthless.”

“Was I not even worthy of having a beautiful wife?”

He passed away with that regret.

It struck me like a bolt from the blue.

So all those messes he had cleaned up-he had done it willingly.

Not only for his younger brother, but for my younger sister as well.

Now, reborn into this life,

as I listened to the matchmaker say those same words,

I merely replied calmly,

“Let’s forget it. Dalang has no looks, and Erlang (Second Master) has no talent. Neither of them is a good match.”

At the funeral of my father’s lawful wife, he brought home an illegitimate daughter.

The hall was draped in mourning white.

She alone wore pink and red.

My eldest sister’s murderous glare sent her cowering behind Father, her eyes brimming with helpless tears.

He took her hand and said fondly, “Don’t be afraid.

This is your eldest sister.

This will be your home from now on.

In a little while, I’ll bring your mother here too.”

Watching from the side, I laughed to myself.

Where did those two get the nerve?

My eldest sister had already lived this life once!

I transmigrated into the mistress of the Marquis’s Mansion, and my stepson was the devoted second male lead.

When he grew up, he would try to take the female lead by force and spend fortunes on her without blinking.

As for the male lead, he would sow discord, frame him, and set him up at every turn.

In the end, the male and female leads would join forces to defeat him.

He would flee into monastic life and never marry.

And the Marquis’s Mansion, implicated because of him, would be raided, stripped of its title, and tragically exiled.

After transmigrating, I looked at the tiny little thing in front of me, pretending to be obedient.

He wanted to grow gloomy and brooding? Absolutely not.

He was going to become sunny if it killed me. He wanted to squander money?

Absolutely not. I had to raise him into a stingy, family-minded model of virtue.

I was definitely going to protect the vast fortune of the Marquis’s Mansion.

Later, everyone said I threw money around like dirt and lived in arrogant, extravagant luxury.

My stepson refuted them.

“Nonsense. My mother is the most frugal, capable, virtuous, and dignified woman there is. She sponsored so many scholars with money she saved up herself. Could you do that?”

Someone said my methods were ruthless and that I acted like a man.

My stepson’s face turned cold.

“My mother is gentle, virtuous, and the very soul of benevolence. She clearly could have just robbed you outright, yet she still gave you a chance to compete fairly. You’re the one who was useless. Utter trash.”

Even his father couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Son, open your eyes and take a good look. Your mother is not the kind of person who lets herself be wronged.”

My stepson flew into a rage.

“Father, don’t force me to turn against you. You can say whatever you want about me, but you absolutely cannot say that about my mother.”

My Eldest Senior Sister was a brilliant talent, yet she died young, a victim of schemes and conspiracies.

My Little Junior Sister was charming and lovely, yet she died after being possessed by a Demon Creature and suffering endless torment.

Then there was me-the plain, unremarkable Second Senior Sister of the Sect. I never drew any attention, but I lived long enough.

Eventually, I became the Sect Ancestor, taking on countless disciples. I finally passed away peacefully of old age, surrounded by the weeping of my many students and their successors.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to my youth.

At that time, Eldest Senior Sister was already the Prodigy everyone looked up to, and Little Junior Sister had just joined the Sect.

The two of them hadn’t yet become bitter rivals over a man; they were still sisters who loved and cared for one another.

Looking at the two of them in their prime, I made a firm resolution:

I still need to keep my head down. As long as I lay low and survive long enough, the Magical Artifacts and immortal elixirs will all be mine eventually.

However, this time around, both Eldest Senior Sister and Little Junior Sister took a liking to visiting my place.

Eldest Senior Sister once asked me with a heavy heart,

“Second Junior Sister, he always says that Little Junior Sister is better than me. I know it’s not her fault, but I still feel a spark of jealousy. Am I truly that terrible?”

I replied, “Eldest Senior Sister, one thought leads to divinity, another to the demonic. Has he caused a heart demon to take root in you?”

Eldest Senior Sister’s expression turned solemn, and she cupped her hands toward me in respect.

“Thank you, Junior Sister. I have learned much from your words.”

She turned around and immediately broke off her engagement with her Fiancé.

Little Junior Sister also came to me to complain, looking lost.

“The Senior Brothers have all given me so many things. Sometimes I really can’t use them all, but I’m afraid of offending people, so I rotate through them every day. It’s much better here with you, Senior Sister; it’s always so peaceful. But don’t you find it a bit lonely?”

I hummed in agreement and gave a gentle answer.

“I don’t like letting too many people into my life. I think things are perfect just as they are.”

Little Junior Sister dithered for a moment, her eyes shimmering with envy.

Later on, she started becoming someone not to be trifled with, systematically removing a great many people from her life.

Ironically, those people were the ones who refused to let go.

I was helping my mom sell grilled sausages by the roadside when a handsome guy in a cap scanned the QR code to pay. He gave his phone a little shake, signaling that the payment had gone through.

I smiled and nodded. Then my gaze suddenly sharpened, landing on the pale, prominent bone of his wrist.

There was a tiny black tattoo there.

I narrowed my eyes slightly and recognized it.

It was that bastard Chen Wen.

His friend came over, hooked an arm around his neck, and urged him on. “Come on, Chen Wen. Let’s go to the usual spot.”

But Chen Wen just had to do the opposite of what I wanted. He took two steps toward me, bent down, and met my eyes. A moment later, recognition dawned. He let out a laugh, his eyes curving like peach blossom petals.

“Is that… Boss Tang?”

“…”

My husband jumped from a building and died in a pool of blood.

The police quickly cordoned off the scene.

A few days later, the autopsy report came back: the cause of death was a massive intracranial hemorrhage, and his body bore numerous signs of a struggle.

The police told me he had committed suicide and that there was no killer. I didn’t believe them.

The Sect Cannot Disband Today I was toiling away in the Accounts Office until the hour of the rat when a crisp notification suddenly rang out overhead.

“Ding! Detecting the imminent and simultaneous start of ‘The Stand-in Junior Sister’s Bitter Love,’ ‘The Yandere Junior Sister’s Imprisonment,’ ‘The Amnesiac Junior Sister’s Wife-Chasing Anguish Arc,’ and ‘The Salted Fish Junior Sister’s Flat Life.’

If no intervention occurs, the Guiyuan Sect will suffer a total collapse of its reputation due to a series of Love-Struck Mind incidents in three hundred days.

Its assets will be liquidated, and it will officially go bankrupt.” I looked down at the bright red debt of 1.03 million High-grade Spirit Stones recorded in the ledger.

Closing the book, I seriously wondered for the first time if the Heavenly Dao was specifically out to get me.

To repay a bandit for saving his life, Father promised him one of his daughters in marriage.

When the family heard, my eldest sister accepted our cousin’s proposal that very night.

My second sister jumped into the river and fell gravely ill.

My third sister ran away with a scholar.

I alone knew nothing about it.

I was in my courtyard, kicking a shuttlecock.

The bandit passed my courtyard with Father, pointed at me, and said, “Her.”

On our seventh wedding anniversary, I found the plane tickets hidden in the drawer by Lin Yuezhou.

I thought he was planning a surprise for me, but when evening came, all I got was a sentence: he was going on a business trip.

Unable to sleep, I scrolled through social media and saw his first love’s post:

[Eighteen-year-old wish list-Go to Iceland with the one I love most to see the aurora. Today, it finally came true!]

The photo showed her kissing Lin Yuezhou under the northern lights.

I didn’t cry, nor did I message him to question anything.

After chasing after him for so many years, I’m truly exhausted.

Princess Ci’an has loved the frail Shen Yanbai for six years. The day he promises to seek an imperial marriage decree, floating comments reveal that he is destined to fall for another woman. So Ci’an drops his hairpin, changes her groom, and chooses Chi Song—the scandalously healthy, sharp-tongued heir she has secretly watched train. But when the comments’ heroine and male leads refuse to follow the script, Ci’an must decide whose story she intends to live.

When General Lin Zhao returns from the northern frontier with a beautiful, unconventional young woman, Cheng Qingqing fears she is about to lose the husband she has loved since childhood.

Then Xu Liuzhao tells her an impossible truth: their world is a book, and Qingqing is its doomed heroine—a treasured canary destined to be abused, blamed, and caged by three powerful men.

Xu Liuzhao came to save her.

To survive, Qingqing must unlearn everything she was taught about love, obedience, and a woman’s place—and discover how far she is willing to go to claim her freedom.

On the very first day I hung up my sign offering a “Protection Charm for a Happy Marriage,” the handsome guy from next door came to make a wish: he wanted to be a normal person.

That night, he collapsed beneath the Torii of my home, drenched in blood that shimmered like liquid gold.

My small shrine, which hadn’t seen a single offering in three months, had suddenly picked up a deity on the verge of being reclaimed by the heavens.

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 my stepsister was murdered.

I told my dad and the police that I had gone to school to do homework, that I hadn’t been home, and that I really didn’t know what had happened.

But the truth was, I lied.

I once saved a pregnant noblewoman. She smiled and told me that once the child was born, they would recognize me as their godmother.

But later, as I led my troops to station at the border, we gradually lost touch.

Until one day, eight years later, my subordinates reported that someone had come all the way from Jinling, specifically asking to see me by name.

“Who is it?” I asked as I walked toward the entrance.

There, I saw a young girl sitting atop a pony, threatening the group of soldiers surrounding her.

“Song Yunying is my mother! If you dare bully me, you’re all finished!”

I am Song Yunying.

Zhou Qiongyue once believed marrying General Xu Ziyi would bring her happiness.

Instead, she finds herself trapped in a household that treats her devotion as a weakness.

Then she wakes in her husband’s body—and he in hers.

Sent to the northern frontier in his place, she discovers a life beyond the walls of their marriage, and a young officer who sees her more clearly than her husband ever did.

But borrowed freedom cannot last forever.

When the time comes to reclaim her own body, Qiongyue must decide what she is willing to return to—and what she will finally leave behind.

On a night of torrential rain, I ordered my girlfriend’s favorite milk tea and river snail rice noodles while she pulled an all-nighter.

However, even though the app showed the delivery had arrived at her location, my girlfriend still hadn’t marked it as received.

Just as I was about to call and check on her, the delivery rider sent me a photo through the app.

“Hey man, this is the right place, isn’t it?”

“That guy trying to pry the door open… that isn’t you, is it?”

Just before the bridal sedan entered our gates, my elder sister suddenly changed her mind.

She ripped the hairpins and ornaments from her head and hurled them at me along with her round silk fan.

Before the assembled guests, she accused me in a shrill voice.

“Shen Zhi, stop putting on those seductive airs!”

“You needn’t waste any more effort trying to seduce His Highness the Crown Prince.

I’m giving this marriage to you!”

With those few sentences, I became a shameless woman who had tried to seduce her own brother-in-law.

The looks in the ladies’ and young misses’ eyes gradually turned knowing.

I staggered back in disbelief, tears spilling down my cheeks.

Choking on a sob, I asked, “Has your heart perhaps been captured by another man, Sister?”

“If so, our entire household ought to enter the palace and plead guilty, begging His Majesty’s forgiveness.”

“How could we play at swapping sisters for their marriages and commit the crime of deceiving the emperor?”

At three in the morning, the funeral home’s Morgue was only supposed to have five registered bodies, yet I found a sixth, unregistered, nameless female corpse in locker number six.

A slip of paper was pressed against her chest with nothing but my name written on it.

Even more terrifying was the moment my hand brushed her wrist; I saw the last seven seconds of her life and heard her raspy, blood-choked voice whisper: “Shen Nian, don’t trust your father.”

That was the night I realized that sometimes, the dead don’t come to say goodbye-they come to reopen a case.

In 2016, my younger sister fell into an abandoned mine shaft during a class outing.

It took three days to find her.

But there was something inexplicable about her death.

Her water bottle was still full, yet the autopsy concluded that she had died of thirst.

The sight of her body destroyed my parents. One died; the other lost his mind.

Our once-happy family was torn apart.

Ten years later, I earned a doctorate in criminal psychology.

I returned to that abandoned mine shaft and reconstructed the events of that day over and over again…

And uncovered a horrifying truth that overturned everything I thought I knew.

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.

The day I decided not to get married, Chen Shuo was at the market buying a bass.

He sent me a photo and asked, “This one’s nine hundred grams.

Too big?

Mum said you liked it steamed.”

I stared at the fish lying in its plastic basket for ten or fifteen seconds, then replied, “Chen Shuo, let’s not register our marriage next week.”

He probably thought I was stressed about the wedding again.

After a while, he replied, “Sure.

We can push it back.

You’ve been busy with your project lately anyway, haven’t you?”

I said, “I don’t mean push it back.”

There was nothing from him for two minutes.

“What do you mean?”

I put my phone facedown on my desk and didn’t answer.

At 4:27 that afternoon, I was sitting in a windowless meeting room with a final account for a construction project worth forty-seven million yuan spread out before me.

The printer kept spitting out paper next door.

The air vent hummed overhead.

My supervisor, Wei, was arguing with the contractor’s people over a hundred and seventy thousand yuan in additional works claims.

Everything was ordinary.

So ordinary it hardly seemed like the afternoon a woman had decided to cancel her wedding.

No one had been caught cheating.

There had been no slap, no other woman, no sudden revelation of anyone’s true colours.

Chen Shuo hadn’t betrayed me.

He was, by most standards, a decent man.

He didn’t smoke, didn’t throw money around, wasn’t violent, and had no interest in going out for what men called “a night with the boys.”

If you drew up a job specification for a suitable husband, he’d score eighty-five out of a hundred.

So everyone asked me, “Then why on earth won’t you marry him?”

That turned out to be the hardest question to answer.

Because when an adult truly wants to leave a relationship, there often isn’t one devastating piece of evidence against the other person.

Just one small bill after another.

And suddenly you realise that, for seven years, every one of those bills has had your name on it.

The West Coast-style video I filmed of my son has gone viral.

But I’m not the one who’s famous.

It’s my son.

Netizens recognized him at a glance as a mini version of Liang Jingnian.

That man is the head of Xiyue Group and the renowned Crown Prince of the Jing Circle.

The more the internet dug, the more they found.

They even unearthed a video of Liang Jingnian and me breaking up, leading everyone to conclude that I’m the ex-girlfriend who ran away with his child.

I sighed. They’ve got it all wrong.

Liang Jingnian and I weren’t just dating-we were actually married.

After getting married, I found out my husband had once loved an ex-girlfriend deeply.

On the eve of her wedding, that woman drove through the night and gave herself to him, just to say goodbye to her youth.

When I found out, my husband begged me not to expose it. “Otherwise, her whole life will be ruined.”

On the day the Su Clan was raided and seized, Father dressed me in a magnificent gown and threw me in front of the soldiers.

“She is Su Yueying, the Eldest Young Miss of the Su Clan.”

Everyone said Father was a loyal servant.

When I saw him again, Father had become the New Emperor’s most trusted Divine Martial Great General.

Su Yueying had become Empress, the New Emperor’s one and only for the rest of his life.

And I was a courtesan in a brothel, a woman anyone could have.

To buy back my freedom, Mother dragged her gravely ill body to beg Father for help.

The gatekeepers beat her to death with two strikes of their staves.

I begged Su Yueying to let Mother be buried.

But she said, “There are plenty of untouched entertainers in the pleasure houses. If you had held fast to your principles, I might still have helped you. But you chose to debase yourself. I will not help someone like that.”

That very night, someone hacked off my limbs and sank me into the river.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the Su Clan was raided.

This time, let Su Yueying go to the brothel herself and hold fast to her precious principles.

The general returned from war with a pregnant woman in tow.

I closed the memorial before me and asked Lin Jingfeng coldly, “Shall I grant you a marriage?”

“You are the only woman I wish to marry, Your Majesty,” he said calmly.

I hurled the imperial seal at his forehead.

“I am the emperor!

Have you no decency?”

Blood wound from his temple to his brow.

He wiped it away without a thought and smiled.

“I guarded your bitter, frozen border for three years.

At the catastrophe of Yanxu, I faced an army alone for you.

We had an agreement: the realm is yours, and you are mine.”

His words were quiet and measured, but a bloodthirsty light burned in his eyes.

This young general, this madman, was so beautiful he might have stepped out of a painting.

I stared at him, unable to speak.

[Experienced Heroine, Virgin Hero | Marriage Before Love]

A gentle noblewoman fallen on hard times vs. a cold, aloof, and powerful court official

Ji Hanyi’s family fell into ruin when she was fourteen. At sixteen, she arrived at the prestigious Xie Family with a marriage contract and married into their household.

Throughout their three years of marriage, she fulfilled every duty expected of a wife despite her husband’s cold indifference, determined to be a good and virtuous spouse.

Her husband was as elegant as a jade tree, an honorable gentleman with limitless prospects.

Everyone told her she ought to be satisfied. Her family no longer had anyone to rely on, so being able to marry into the Xie Family was an incredible stroke of fortune.

Yet on a snowy night, when her husband abandoned her once again for the woman in his heart, Ji Hanyi suddenly saw the truth: her husband had never loved her.

And so, at nineteen, she stubbornly took the Divorce Agreement and walked away alone, even as her husband mocked her and declared that she would regret it.

After the divorce, Ji Hanyi had planned to take her mother to Jiangnan, where she would run a shop and live a quiet, peaceful life. But then the most noble — and most aloof — scion among all the aristocratic families in the capital suddenly said he wanted to marry her.

Shen Si was like the high-hanging moon on a cold winter night, forever beyond reach. Noble by birth and immense in power, he was also notorious for his icy ruthlessness and unapproachable demeanor. Yet he told her, “You may take two days to decide whether you are willing to marry me.”

In his heart, however, he had already prepared what he would say next:

If you are unwilling, then I will keep waiting for you.

Ji Hanyi had no idea that Shen Si, that eternal block of ice, had fallen for her back when he first discovered love as a young man. Every trace of distance and aloofness he showed her was born of restraint and deep devotion. He had even hidden his possessiveness toward her perfectly.

At fourteen, naive Ah Yuan enters the imperial palace beside her fearless friend Xiaochun, believing the two of them can survive anything together.

But as Xiaochun rises through the emperor’s favor, the women around them are drawn into a harem where affection is political currency and every child can become a weapon.

Ah Yuan survives by holding fast to kindness, even as loyalty turns into leverage, ambition demands blood, and the people she loves make choices she cannot undo.

Across a lifetime shaped by palace secrets, she bears witness to the cost of clinging to power—and to the quiet courage it takes to walk away.

Zhao Qingzhu and I were betrothed through an exchange marriage.

The agreement was that his older sister would marry my older brother, and I would marry him.

He was a scholar, which meant his education was a money pit.

My family had to tighten our belts to provide for him, and the entire village laughed at us for being fools.

But five years later, he passed the imperial examinations with top honors and became the most sought-after bachelor around.

Suddenly, everyone was saying I was no longer worthy of him.

My father was the richest man in Great Zhou, and I was his only daughter.

To protect me, he arranged for me to marry into Marquis Manor with an enormous dowry.

On the day of my engagement, I had a dream.

I dreamed that Marquis Manor looked down on me for being born to a merchant family, while the Young Marquis doted wholeheartedly on his talented cousin.

After my father died, my dowry was swallowed up completely.

To make his cousin his legitimate wife, the Young Marquis bribed the midwife to murder me while I was in childbirth.

When I woke from the dream, the Young Marquis walked into my family’s jewelry shop with his cousin in tow.

“Since you’re going to marry into Marquis Manor, you ought to shed that stink of money. Marquis Manor can’t afford that kind of embarrassment.

“Give this shop to my cousin. Consider it a greeting gift from you, her future sister-in-law.”

I looked at his smug, superior face and let out a cold laugh.

Then I turned and ordered the steward to throw him out.

“What kind of down-and-out household starts eyeing a wife’s dowry before she’s even married in?

“Your highborn Marquis Manor has worse manners than a farming family!”

I am the only member of the Ice Clan born without a Snow Soul. To survive, I had to undergo Bonding with a man.

The partner chosen for me was the cold, ascetic High Priest. Eventually, I gave up on trying to win his heart. I abandoned the pendant he gave me and fled in secret.

When we met again, I was slumped weakly in a bath barrel, wearing nothing but that very same pendant. The High Priest’s deep voice drifted from behind me: “Princess, how is the water temperature?”

I can see the final moments of the deceased through their eyes, a gift that has helped the government solve countless cases.

Everything changed when the body of a drowned man was brought in.

Looking into his eyes, I saw him strangling me just before he died.

And on those hands, he was wearing the Jade Bracelet that had been buried with me.

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.

During the poorest year of my life, I sold myself to Zhou Jinyan for three hundred thousand yuan to serve as a substitute for his White Moonlight.

His friends once egged me on to drink until I suffered a gastric hemorrhage.

They asked him, “Don’t you feel bad for her?”

He looked down, his tone indifferent. “She’s just a substitute.”

Later, to save his White Moonlight, Zhou Jinyan stood by and watched as I fell from a cliff into the sea.

The search and rescue team never found my body.

He suddenly went mad, searching the entire world for me.

Five years later, I was invited back to the country and ran into him at an event.

He stared at me intently, his eyes rimmed with red. “I knew you weren’t dead. I’ve been looking for you-”

I took a step back, offering a polite yet distant smile. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

My father was famous throughout the surrounding villages for being a good man.

One freezing winter during a famine, he gave the last of our rice to a mother and child passing by.

After they left, they told everyone they met that my family still had grain.

The starving refugees, driven mad by hunger, came to our door to steal it, only to find an empty rice jar.

Humiliated and enraged, they forced my three-year-old sister into their arms and carried her away.

“If there’s no rice, then your daughter will do!”

I ran after them. In the end, all I found in the ruined temple was my sister’s mangled remains.

When I returned home, my father wailed through his tears, “I was trying to save people! It’s not my fault… That was just her fate!”

He saved someone else. In the end, my sister died, and I died too, in the bitter winter when I was fifteen.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw my father handing the freshly cooked rice to that mother and child.

I picked up the flower hoe beside me and stepped up behind him.

I was the heroine of a sweet-wife story: delicate, soft, and made to be swept off my feet.

All I had to do was behave and let one man after another dote on me.

My stepbrother was walking toward me with a glass of milk when a system appeared.

It told me that, according to the plot, I was supposed to develop a sex addiction that very day. From then on, the slightest contact with a man would leave me unbearably aroused, and it would only get worse.

That sounded pretty good to me.

I drained the milk in one gulp.

My stepbrother smiled.

I smiled too.

The system gave an even more wicked little chuckle.

“Except I just changed it into an addiction to studying.”

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.”

After Southern Xu fell, sixteen-year-old Princess Xihe fled through a land at war with the young heir to the throne, only to be delivered into a Northern Qian military camp.

An enemy general fell in love with her, believing her to be an ordinary girl, while she watched those dearest to her die before her eyes.

Hatred for a fallen nation and vengeance for her family drove her onto a road paved with thorns.

Years later, she became empress of Northern Qian and laid her plans one careful step at a time amid court intrigue and bloodshed.

Even when she had been wounded beyond bearing, someone still broke through every obstacle to reach her – but she would have to choose between her own love and hatred, and the lives of all beneath heaven.

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?”