Ranking

Today was the Qixi Festival, and the campus forum thread “How Are You Spending Today?” shot straight to the top of the discussion rankings.

The comments underneath were pure chaos.

On a sudden whim, I left one too.

“In Xie Yi’s arms.”

Then Xie Yi-the famously abstinent, untouchable teacher-replied to me.

“You said you’d be in my arms. Where are you?”

Me: ! ? ?

Disciples knelt all across the mountain, crying out in unison, “We respectfully send off the Patriarch on his ascension!”

But what I saw was a silvery-white hook piercing Master’s throat, dragging him up into the clouds.

His feet had left the ground. He couldn’t make a sound.

Like a fish.

I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around Master’s legs. “Let him go!”

Eldest Senior Brother struck me with his palm and sent me flying. “You madwoman! Can you bear the consequences of ruining the Patriarch’s ascension ceremony?”

Blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.

I laughed.

“Ascension? Are you all blind? That’s fishing!”

I was a Little Blind One, and I met an Old Swindler.

To keep ourselves fed, the two of us pretended to be Daoist priests, making a living by conning our way into wealthy households.

That day, the General’s Mansion put up a notice seeking someone with profound magical power to enter the estate and catch a ghost.

The two of us gritted our teeth and immediately decided to go big or go home!

Who would have thought that, inside the General’s Mansion, more people died with each passing day?

Oh my god. There really was a ghost.

The Old Swindler trembled as he shielded me behind him.

The malicious ghost’s shriek pierced our eardrums.

Silently, I formed a hand seal. “Gather the baleful qi of heaven and earth, thunder descend!!”

Old Swindler: “??? Wait, you actually know how?!”

I hung from the city wall while the rebel leader taunted my husband.

“My lord, choose: your old love or your wife!”

Beside me, Li Yaoyao cried out with righteous resolve, “Sui’an, don’t worry about me!

Storm the city!

Tell the crown prince I’ll marry him in my next life!”

Two arrows whistled through the air.

The rebel holding Li Yaoyao at his mercy fell dead.

I watched in silence as Shen Sui’an and the crown prince came flying toward us.

Both crowded around Li Yaoyao.

Neither noticed that my rope had been cut.

My sister was a goldsmith who entered the palace to deliver jewelry, only to be knocked unconscious by Consort Yi.

Consort Yi had quarreled with the emperor, so she stole my sister’s clothes and exit token and slipped out of the palace for fun.

Furious and frantic, the emperor cut my innocent sister down with a single stroke, then rode out to find the woman he loved.

In the end, my sister’s body was thrown into a mass grave.

The emperor and Consort Yi returned sweetly together on the same horse, and their reunion became a celebrated romance.

Half a year later, I became one of the emperor’s beauties.

After all, I am not human—I am a marten.

If a fox spirit can bewitch a ruler, so can a marten.

A bloody, brutal murder had shaken the city.

The prostitute Yuanyang was found dead and naked on her embroidered bed, her body slashed again and again, drenched in blood.

The authorities proved utterly useless at catching the killer. They could not find so much as a single suspect.

Just as rumors were flying everywhere, a young victim came to my stall.

With the only five copper coins she had, she begged me to find Yuanyang’s murderer.

Me: “?”

But I was only a fortune-teller.

The Marquis of Ningyuan’s favored concubine had been brutally murdered.

She had been arrogant, domineering, and spoiled by his favor, making countless enemies in the marquis’s mansion.

For a time, the authorities had no idea where to begin.

So Yuan Nanshan, the Vice Minister of Dali Temple, tossed this hot potato to me.

“The Marquis of Ningyuan’s concubine came from an official family, bore him children, and held a status no lower than the Marchioness.”

“You’re a woman, so it will be more convenient for you to investigate. You must find the murderer and give the deceased justice!”

“…”

But I was only a fortune-teller.

The second young lady of the Guardian General’s Residence was young, beautiful, and of noble status.

After attending a gathering of noble ladies, she suddenly hanged herself.

She left not a single word behind.

Her elder sister, Wang Ping’an, the Guardian General stationed at the border, rode back to the capital overnight.

Then, with lightning speed, she abducted the other four noble ladies who had attended the gathering-

the Grand Tutor’s daughter, the daughter of the Minister of Personnel, the legitimate daughter of the Censor-in-Chief, and the County Lady of Zhongwang Mansion-and brought them to a farmstead on the outskirts of the capital.

I, along with Yuan Nanshan, the Vice Minister of Dali Temple, was also dragged here to help uncover the truth.

Seeing me stare worriedly at the four top-ranking noble ladies, the Guardian General gave a chilling sneer.

“Master Yu, I hear your divinations are infallible, and that you can see the past and the future.”

“I want to know how my sister died!”

“If you can’t get to the bottom of it today, all of you can accompany her to the grave!”

Wait. I’m going to die too?

I’m just a fortune-teller.

Switched at birth to repay her father’s debt, Li Yuanxi endures ten brutal years at the northern frontier while another girl grows up as a noble heiress.

When she returns to the capital, her family sends her to die in a political marriage and deceives her betrothed, Fu Qingchuan, into marrying the favored daughter instead.

After Yuanxi’s death, Qingchuan turns his grief into a patient revenge, using love, ambition, and an old imperial conspiracy to destroy everyone who betrayed her.

Yet even when justice is done, the ghost beside him knows that nothing can cross the distance between the living and the dead.

In my senior year of high school, the school beauty, Song Shuyao, once came to me to borrow money for medical treatment and asked me not to tell anyone.

As it turned out, she used it to get an abortion. She hemorrhaged and died on the operating table of a shady little clinic.

Years later, Lu Jingnian-the untouchable top student everyone had once admired from afar-pursued me obsessively and proposed to me.

Then, when I was eight months pregnant, he locked me in a basement in the suburbs.

He cut open my belly while I was still alive and said, “This is what you owe Yaoyao and our child.”

Only then did I learn that before Song Shuyao died, she had held his hand and told him not to blame me.

But he was convinced I had deliberately killed the woman he loved and their child.

That day, I died under Lu Jingnian’s butcher knife, my eyes wide open in hatred.

Then, carrying a hatred vast enough to drown the heavens, I returned to the day Song Shuyao came to borrow money from me.

My sister died, leaving behind two young children.

Mother begged me to marry her widower.

I got straight to the point.

“Your grandson is precious.

If he misbehaves, may I smack him?”

Mother nodded repeatedly.

“Of course.”

“Your granddaughter is delicate.

If she does something wrong, may I scold her?”

“No problem.”

“And my brother-in-law?

I’ve never liked him.

May I beat him up?”

Mother wiped the sweat from her brow.

“You’ll have to ask your mother-in-law about that.

I didn’t give birth to him, after all…”

Pei Xu was the Chancellor’s son.

On a wager, he disguised himself as a poor young man and set out to win me over.

Instead, he fell deeply in love with me and swore he would marry no one else.

When his sister learned of it, she had my younger brother and sister killed, then sold me to a brothel to put an end to my presumptuous dreams.

Years later, she was to marry the young marquis.

But on their wedding day, he never came to fetch his bride.

Dressed in his wedding robes, he was at a brothel, spending a fortune on me.

When I was on the verge of death, Cheng An borrowed one tael of silver and bought me to be his wife.

He was so poor he could barely feed himself, yet he bought medicine on credit and saved my life.

Later, I told him, “If you don’t despise me for having once served as another man’s concubine, I am willing to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Cheng An nodded firmly. “Then it’s settled. A lifetime.”

My youngest sister had been flirting with three men.

Unfortunately, she had used my name and our middle sister’s.

All three came to ask for her hand.

To smooth things over, our parents suggested that we each marry one of them.

My other sister wavered.

I refused.

There was nothing wrong with me.

Why should I marry a man who had loved my sister?

Didn’t I deserve a love untainted by all this?

I looked up at my youngest sister, who kept avoiding my eyes, and said evenly: “First, tell me exactly what happened between you and those three men.”

When I was four, a fortune-teller said I was fated to bring misfortune upon my parents. So they sent me away to a rural estate. For ten years, they never came to see me, nor did they care whether I lived or died.

At fourteen, they brought me home-so they could marry me off.

My legitimate elder sister laughed. “A fool marrying a sickly wretch. A match made in heaven.”

My parents said, “If this engagement weren’t impossible to break, and if your sister weren’t about to marry into a noble family, you wouldn’t even be worthy of carrying his shoes.”

“A married daughter is water poured out. Once you’re gone, don’t come back for anything.”

Only he held my hand and taught me to write my own name.

And then he taught me to write: “A woman, too, must respect and cherish herself, strive without ceasing, and press ever forward.”

Sixteen-year-old maid Chen Yue’er has spent her entire life inside the House of Crimson Delight, where women who claim to have transmigrated are bought cheaply and broken quickly.

When the irrepressible Zhi Niang arrives expecting a trashy romance, she discovers an age that treats women as property and refuses to let it crush her spirit.

Through forced prostitution, betrayal, war, captivity, and flight, Zhi Niang and Yue’er cling to each other and turn survival into a stubborn march toward freedom.

Darkly funny and unflinching, their journey is a story of female friendship, dignity, and the courage to keep living without looking back.

When Xie Yan was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I was abroad, clearing my head.

He was calling for the hundredth time when my secretary-a man standing six-foot-two-finally picked up the phone.

“Where are you? Who is that with you?” I heard his voice crack over the line, sounding like he was on the verge of a total breakdown.

I couldn’t help but let out a mocking sneer. “Didn’t we agree to stay out of each other’s business? Why are you acting like such a sore loser now?”

By imperial decree, I was forced to marry into the Xiaoshan Earl’s Estate as the heir’s second wife.

I had heard that my future mother-in-law was cruel, my sisters-in-law were impossible, and my husband kept a pampered concubine so vicious and overbearing that she had driven his first wife to her death.

Every respectable family in the capital avoided the place like the plague.

Before I climbed into the bridal sedan, Mother clasped my hands with tears in her eyes.

“My daughter, you must be careful.”

“Don’t kill anyone in your husband’s family. Your father will have a hard time explaining it to His Majesty.”

Shen Qi had secretly loved my elder sister for years.

When she and I fell into the river together, he mistook me for her and pulled me out first.

My sister was swept away and drowned.

Knowing none of this, I fell hopelessly in love with him.

I made such a scene about marrying him that he gladly agreed.

After the wedding, however, he alternated between warmth and coldness.

At times he treated me tenderly.

At others, he looked at me as if he hated me to the bone.

Once bright and willful, I withered day by day and lived in misery.

Only as I lay dying did I discover the truth…

He was kind whenever I reminded him of my sister.

He was cruel whenever he remembered that he blamed me for her death.

After I was reborn, I climbed onto the bank by myself and watched him rejoice at having my sister back.

Then I turned and walked toward the most exalted man in the realm.