Ranking

My ex-boyfriend turned my ashes into a necklace and hung it around his son’s neck for eighteen years.

For those eighteen years, my soul remained trapped by the boy’s side.

Then one day, out of the blue, the boy told me something.

He said he wanted to marry me.

At the class reunion, my ex-boyfriend held his fiancée close as he announced their wedding date.

I snapped a photo and prepared to send it to his mother with the caption: “They look like a perfect match. Congratulations on finally getting what you wanted.”

Just as I was about to hit send, someone grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip.

“Oh? Still in touch with my mother?” He stared down at me, his expression dark and predatory. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you squeeze enough money out of her the first time?”

The surrounding room fell deathly silent. My face turned pale as I looked up.

I hadn’t even noticed when the music had stopped.

I had become the center of attention.

After announcing his marriage at a concert, the top-tier singer suddenly broke down in tears.

It was because he had just received news of my death.

Zhou Yan. We met at six and said our goodbyes at twenty-four.

I never had the courage to tell you that I truly, deeply loved you.

The day before our wedding, I accidentally stumbled upon a chat log between him and one of his old buddies.

“I’ve never met anyone so easy to fool.”

“She’s from a single-parent household, you know? She’s starved for affection.”

“So, even if I treat her just a tiny bit well, she comes crawling back to lick my boots.”

…

Honestly, I once believed he was the one who rescued me from the mire I was sinking in. As it turns out, he was just playing me for a fool the entire time.

I thought I had found love, but all my sincerity had been thrown to the dogs.

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.

On New Year’s Eve, my husband was trapped on the highway due to a blizzard.

“Honey, you’ve been working so hard. As soon as the snow stops, I’ll rush back home.”

Hearing the exhaustion in his voice, my heart softened.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control here.”

I spent the rest of the night busy until I was dizzy, right up until my best friend called me.

“Where did you say he was stuck?”

“The Shanghai-Shanxi Expressway.”

“That’s impossible! That road was cleared for traffic six hours ago. Are you sure he’s actually on the highway?”

Before my grandmother passed away, she left me three brocade pouches.

“On the seventh day after my death, give these to the seventh person who offers incense.”

On the day of the funeral, I followed her instructions to the letter. When the man who received them opened the brocade pouch, his face turned pale with terror, and he fled in a panic.

It wasn’t until later that I learned the man was a rapist and a murderer.

He had intended to target me that very night.

The first brocade pouch was filled with his criminal record.

She told me to open the second brocade pouch before I got married and consummated the union.

This time, the brocade pouch felt very thin.

Inside, there was only one word.

“RUN!!!”

My wife and I were a couple of influencers with over a million followers.

After she passed away, the account stopped updating.

Until one day, a stranger sent me a private message.

“I look a lot like her.

“I can be her double.”

Because he was poor, Zhou Jinyan never brought up the subject of marriage.

That was until the day I saw him casually open a bottle of wine that cost as much as my entire annual salary.

It turned out that being born into royalty and living a life of luxury was the true Zhou Jinyan.

His friend asked, “Aren’t you tired of playing the pauper after five years? When do you plan to come clean with her?”

Zhou Jinyan flicked his eyelids open with nonchalance. “On the day of the engagement, I suppose.”

I didn’t get hysterical. On the day of his engagement, I boarded a plane and crossed the ocean.

I later heard that on the day of his engagement,

He suddenly had a change of heart midway, driving back to an old rental apartment.

When he saw that the place was empty and I was gone, he completely lost his mind.

I was abducted and sold.

But I didn’t cry, and I didn’t cause a scene.

I even married a handsome man.

He asked me, “Do you want to escape?”

I replied with a beaming smile, “How could I, Brother?

“In life, I am yours; in death, I am your ghost.

“I will be with you for all eternity.”

He finally smiled and leaned down to kiss me.

I closed my eyes.

That’s right, of course I’m going to be with you for all eternity.

My life was destroyed by you.

Naturally, I’m going to drag you down to hell with me.

During an intimate moment, I accidentally scratched the tattoo on my boyfriend’s back, and he suddenly flew into a rage.

Feeling deeply wronged, I went to an emotional support livestream that night to talk about what happened.

The audience chimed in one after another to defend me, suspecting that my boyfriend’s feelings for me had changed.

Only the Host asked with a dead-serious expression:

“That tattoo on your boyfriend’s back-is it a bottle?”

I had been married to the heir of the Jiang Group for two years, and during that entire time, he had treated me with nothing but cold indifference.

Then, in the middle of the night, I got out of bed to use the bathroom when he suddenly grabbed my hand.

I turned around to find the man before me with the corners of his eyes flushed a faint red, his voice trembling.

“Shen Tingwan, are you trying to leave me behind again?”

I became a simpleton while saving my childhood friend.

He promised to repay me by finding me a good husband.

“Tonight, a man will collapse at your doorstep,” he told me. “That is the husband I have chosen for you.”

I followed his instructions to the letter.

Half a year later, my childhood friend returned from the borderlands.

I excitedly introduced my husband to him:

“This is the husband you picked for me back then. He’s a wonderful man, and he even said he wants to make me his Crown Princess.”

He froze in his tracks, his face turning deathly pale.

“It was supposed to be a beggar… How could it be the… Crown Prince?!”

During the first year of our marriage, at my birthday banquet, a songstress appeared wearing a silk dress identical to mine.

My husband’s expression turned ice-cold. “Someone, strip that dress off her.”

He was clearly defending my honor, yet I felt not a single spark of warmth in my heart.

For I knew that he was also the man who had once spent a fortune on that very songstress and made a pact to elope with her.

I caught COVID. When my fever hit 102 degrees, I saw my boyfriend.

But he’d been dead for years.

That meant what I was looking at was a ghost!

I held up the talisman on my chest and screamed, “Evil spirits, get the hell away from me!”

“What a powerful spell!” He clutched his chest, stumbling back step by step.

Then, with slow and exaggerated movements, he collapsed onto the floor.

“Oh no, I’m done for… I can’t go on…”

I stared at him. “Are you… mocking me?”

He stood right back up. “Haha, totally got you!”

I rolled my eyes.

It was definitely him.

My boyfriend had been just as much of a dork when he was alive.

In my past life, my sister was adopted by a wealthy family, while I was taken in by a street cleaner.

As it turned out, that wealthy family was plagued by vicious infighting. Her parents were cold, her brother was a bully, and she was eventually kicked out with nothing to her name.

My home, however, was full of harmony. To top it off, a wealthy young heir fell in love with me-the poor, innocent Little White Flower. My life was like something straight out of a romance drama.

Consumed by resentment, my sister killed me, and we both returned to the day we were adopted.

This time, she rushed forward and threw herself into the cleaner’s arms before I could move.

“Sister, this time, it’s my turn to be the leading lady of the drama.”

But what she didn’t know is that a leading lady is never defined by her background.

It was the fourth year of my marriage to my rival Alpha.

He had been in a car accident and lost his memory, with his recollections stopping right before our wedding.

When he saw my wedding ring, his voice was laced with ridicule.

“Who was unlucky enough to marry you?”

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?”

At thirty-five, I experienced a cliff-drop divorce.

In truth, it wasn’t entirely without warning.

I am a police officer and Liang Xu is a prosecutor; in the eyes of others, we were a match made in heaven.

Late one night, Liang Xu turned off the light, climbed into bed, and spoke slowly.

“I feel like my life right now is nothing more than a pool of stagnant water.”

After that, he changed careers to become a lawyer, specializing in litigation for the wealthy.

We changed houses, and we changed cars.

The day our son started elementary school, he asked me for a divorce.

“Even though we have sex once a week, it feels like a routine chore.

“Perhaps you should try someone else, too.”

And I really did.

But then Liang Xu lost control of his emotions, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me violently.

“You’re a cop and he’s a crook! Can you please wake up?!”

With a swift counter-move, I pinned his arm behind his back.

“I got used to drinking lukewarm water, so now I want to taste some strong liquor. He’s rich, handsome, and young-what could he possibly want from me other than myself?”

My husband holds the highest office in the land, and I am the most virtuous noblewoman in all of Shangjing.

The wives of the capital’s officials all claim I am blessed with good fortune, yet they have no idea that I have been neglected by him for years, my heart heavy with misery.

He finds me dull and is deeply in love with his concubines, with whom he has both sons and daughters.

Finally, after my mother-in-law had expressed her disdain for my inability to conceive countless times, I found myself pregnant.

But Cheng Wenting nearly lost his mind.

With bloodshot eyes, his hand trembled uncontrollably as he choked me. “Whose child is it?”

A gentle smile played on my lips. “My Lord, it is yours, of course.”

When I was eighteen, I didn’t dare push open that door. Behind it, my best friend was playing adult games with the male writer I secretly loved.

I remembered that moment for ten long years. In that decade, my friend died, the writer stopped writing, and my life was ruined.

I respectfully composed a letter and mailed it to the man I had once loved from afar: Chen Song.

Six years after our divorce, I ran into my ex-husband on a street corner while holding my three-year-old daughter.

He stared blankly at the girl in my arms for a long time before knitting his brows. “She’s almost six years old,” he said, his voice laced with accusation. “Why does she look so thin and small?”

Ha!

He actually thought the child I was holding was his.

I suppose he believed I loved him so deeply that even after he cheated and divorced me, I would have gone off and raised his child all on my own.

In our village, there was an abandoned Brick Kiln rumored to be haunted.

During my first year of middle school, a few classmates and I went to the kiln for an adventure. We unexpectedly stumbled upon a swarm of rats worshipping a wall, all of them throwing themselves against it until they died…

In that moment, I realized there was truly something in that kiln that shouldn’t be provoked.

Unfortunately, it was already too late. From then on, my friends began to die one after another.

Until one night, that thing finally stood at the head of my bed…

On the first day after I died, my boyfriend brought his first love back home.

They kissed passionately on the sofa I bought, acting as if no one else were there. They ate the celery dumplings I had made by hand and played with the gaming console I had given him.

One day, his first love asked curiously, “Where’s An’an?”

My boyfriend’s voice was calm. “We had a fight a few days ago. She applied for a business trip with her company.”

Oh, he still doesn’t know that I’m dead.

I was dating eight boyfriends at the same time.

They all treated me as a stand-in for someone else.

But I didn’t care.

As long as the money was right, they were all my precious darlings.

Later, they found out about each other.

And they absolutely lost it.

I married into an ancient manor. My husband was handsome and gentle, spending every day personally selecting hairpins and picking out dresses for me.

Later, I discovered the manor’s secret, and my eyes welled with tears of terror.

He said, “You’re trembling. It’s not because you’re afraid of me, is it?”

“It’s alright. You just haven’t adjusted yet. I’ll teach you, slowly…”

I picked up my boyfriend’s phone by mistake, only to see a message his ex had just sent: “I forgot to take the morning-after pill that night.”

Those few short words left me chilled to the bone.

The night before last, I had a sudden bout of acute gastroenteritis. He was supposedly working overtime at the office, and I called him over a dozen times, but I couldn’t get through.

Enduring the piercing pain, I eventually took a taxi to the hospital alone at three in the morning.

As it turns out, the reason his phone was off and he never came home that night was that he was with his ex-girlfriend.

I was in the middle of feeding the pigs in my village when I suddenly saw a Danmaku.

[Is this bystander the villain’s younger sister?]

[She still thinks she’s an orphan. She has no idea that the villainous Chancellor is actually the brother she got separated from back then.]

[It’s a pity the villain lost to the male lead. He’s about to hang himself.]

[The villain only became an official to find his sister in the first place. If they could just meet once, maybe he wouldn’t have to die.]

What?!

I immediately sold my pigs to scrape together some travel money and rushed to the Capital overnight.

I knocked on the gates of the Prime Minister’s Mansion.

A pale man draped in a heavy cloak stood at the entrance, his gaze deep and haunting.

I lunged forward and threw my arms around his legs, wailing, “Brother! Wang Ergou from the village is trying to force me to marry him!”

I had been with my boyfriend for three years.

During that time, I discovered that his handle on every social media platform was July.

I assumed he simply had a deep-seated love for the romantic month of July, so I never pried into it.

It wasn’t until our wedding day, when his ex-girlfriend sent a gift, that I saw the name signed on the box-

Qi Yue.

In that moment, I finally understood. It wasn’t the month of July he cherished; it was Qi Yue.

My heart sank into an abyss…

I transmigrated into a novel about the Apocalypse and became the daughter of the Zombie Emperor.

However, I awakened a Spatial Ability. When I was five years old, I accidentally teleported myself into the middle of the wilderness. To avoid starving to death, I shamelessly clung to the protagonists’ team, mooching off their food and supplies.

I spent my days spectating their drama and leisurely following them as they fought monsters and leveled up.

Until one day.

They came face-to-face with the ultimate villain, the big boss-

The Zombie Emperor. My dad.

While everyone else was on high alert, bracing for the fight of their lives…

…the Zombie Emperor gave me a sinister smile.

“Nianying, have you had enough fun? If you’re done playing, get your butt over here right now!!”

The Male Lead and Female Lead: “?!”

Everyone else: “?!”

Me: “…”

Over the weekend, while I was out grocery shopping, someone shoved a red envelope into my hand.

Inside was a note: [Three years of your life have been borrowed. If you pass this on or drop it in a merit box, your entire family will perish.]

Clutching the 900 yuan, I chuckled and chased after the person.

“Are you sure you want to try life‑borrowing from me?”

She shot me a glare, barked “Psychopath!” and spun around to bolt.

I couldn’t help but smile. To think someone actually had the nerve to try life‑borrowing from one of the Living Dead.

When I first started dating Xie Mingchen, he had absolutely nothing to his name.

My friends all told me not to be a fool. They said that with my looks and background, I could find any wealthy man I wanted; there was no need to suffer alongside him.

Now that he’s become the high-flying President Xie, a darling of the venture capital world, those same people say I only won out because I made my move early.

They claim that with his current status, surrounded by women of every shape and beauty, I wouldn’t even stand a chance otherwise.

Even my mother has switched sides. She keeps telling me to lower my guard and learn how to act vulnerable. She warns me not to spend all these years with him only to end up with nothing.

I couldn’t help but snap back, “If he doesn’t bring up marriage, am I supposed to beg him for it?”

“That stubborn streak of yours is going to be your downfall!” My mother sighed, frustrated by my lack of initiative. “What else are you going to do if you don’t play along? Are you really going to let someone else enjoy the shade of the tree you planted yourself?”

I didn’t want to argue; I just felt wronged.

Why was it that in this long-drawn-out relationship, I was the one who did the hoping and the one who felt the disappointment? And now, I was still the one expected to drop hints and nudge him into finally taking action.

At 3:00 AM, an official emergency alert jolted you awake. The message read: “Do not look up at the moon.”

At the same time, you discovered that your phone had received hundreds of messages from unknown numbers: “The night is so beautiful. Look out the window.”

I fell into a world of Strange Tales, but I thought I was playing a romance otome game.

At the stroke of midnight, the cobweb-covered landline rang. A raspy, eerie voice drifted through the receiver.

“You watched that videotape, didn’t you? In seven days… I will come for you…”

Me:

“Why seven days? Are you just not going to contact me at all during that time? Is this the silent treatment?

“And you’re only messaging me at midnight? Ah, I get it. You probably just finished spending time with someone else, and now your conscience is pricking you, so you’ve come to check on me.

“What’s the point of just calling? If you actually cared about me, you’d be by my side constantly. I absolutely hate long-distance relationships!”

Strange Tale: “Uh… I’ll come sooner, then.”

The other participants struggling to survive: “? No, wait, man! He said he’d take our lives in seven days-why the hell is he starting his shift early?”

After my husband cheated on me, I jumped. I threw myself off the twenty-eighth floor.

The wind howled past my ears as I closed my eyes. I had already done the math. Each floor in our complex was three meters high, making the twenty-eighth floor eighty-one meters up. From the moment I leaped until I hit the ground, I would have roughly four seconds.

Minutes earlier, my final conversation with Bai Yan had ended in disaster. I had screamed and ranted hysterically; I had begged and pleaded like a dog wagging its tail for scraps; I had even cursed him with the most vicious words and venomous language in existence. By the final moment, both of us were utterly drained. I sat on the edge of the balcony with my eyes rimmed red and my legs dangling in the air, asking him weakly, “Are you really set on this divorce?”

He looked at me calmly. The first time I had threatened suicide, he had been frantic with panic, but now his face held nothing but exhaustion. He asked me, “Are you quite finished making a scene?”

I said quietly, “If you leave today, I’m jumping.”

He gave me one long, deep look before turning to walk away. The door slammed shut with a deafening bang, and then I heard the sound of him waiting for the elevator.

By day, my straight roommate and I are sworn enemies.

By night, I secretly write slash fanfiction about the two of us.

[He slowly closed his eyes, his soft lips pressing against mine…]

That very night, in my dreams, we reenacted the exact scene from my story.

Later, I discovered that whatever I wrote, I would dream about that night.

I became addicted to it, losing myself in the fantasies until there was no turning back.

Still, I always made sure to maintain a sense of propriety, never daring to go too far or truly offend him.

Until one day, I finally plucked up the courage to reach out and touch my roommate in the dream.

The next morning, the look in his eyes when he turned to me was dark and unreadable.

“What’s the point of just dreaming?” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward him.

It turned out that I wasn’t the only one; he had been having those dreams too.

July 14, 2018. My flight was delayed due to weather, and I didn’t land until three in the morning.

As soon as I turned on my phone, I received a call from my senior. He told me to get to Baoshan Hospital immediately. Now!

I asked him what was wrong, telling him to explain himself first.

“Xiaoyu,” he said. “Something happened to Xiaoyu.”

My ears began to ring, and a splitting headache took hold.

That day was the third anniversary of my relationship with Qiu Xiaoyu. If the plane hadn’t been delayed, I would have proposed at midnight.

At four-thirty in the morning, I saw her at the hospital.

She was covered with a white sheet. Her exposed skin was deathly pale, and when I took her hand, it was cold and stiff.

It didn’t feel like Xiaoyu’s hand at all.

But the autopsy report stated it clearly: Qiu Xiaoyu had died in a car accident at 6:10 PM at the intersection of Qinghe Road and Wenshuo Road.

“It was a truck. The driver was exhausted and didn’t slow down before… Li Tong!” My senior suddenly grabbed my hand tightly.

My hand was just about to lift the white cloth covering Xiaoyu’s face.

“Let go,” I said.

“Li Tong, it’s better… if you don’t look.”

Choking back a sob, I repeated, “Let go.”

He stopped blocking me.

I slowly pulled back the sheet.

She was still beautiful, her features soft, just like when she tried to sleep in every morning.

Only, there seemed to be a wound on her neck.

And that wound extended downward. It grew deeper and larger, until her entire body…

Was completely destroyed.

I collapsed to my knees.

It felt as if a knife had been driven through my heart. My eyes stung, but there were no tears, and I couldn’t make a single sound.

“Did you forget our anniversary? You have to make it up to me tomorrow.”

I knew it was an auditory hallucination; those were the words from the WeChat message Xiaoyu had sent me.

The final WeChat message of her life.

Our entire story had somehow ended on such an unremarkable sentence…

Suddenly, my throat tightened, and I retched, vomiting up mouthfuls of bile.

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.

My virginity was sold by my family to a seventy-year-old tycoon for the steep price of one million yuan.

The price was fair, all things considered. After all, I wasn’t just selling my virtue; I was selling my life.

On our wedding night, the old man squeezed my throat and asked, “Do you have any final wishes?”

To stay alive, I told him three stories.

And then, I made a prophecy.

“You will die within my third story.”

The Emperor’s beloved Noble Consort, his one true love, was dead.

His one true love?

It was almost laughable.

And yet, the rumor had spread throughout all of Dayan.