Ranking

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.

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.

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: “…”

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 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 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 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 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.

Two years into our marriage, I finally became pregnant.

But then my husband brought home an eight-year-old girl.

That girl called him “Dad.”

My husband thinks I’m one of those women who bleed their husbands dry for their brothers and sisters. What he doesn’t know is that my “eldest brother” is actually the son I gave birth to at nineteen, my “second brother” is the son I gave birth to at twenty-five, and my “little sister” is the daughter I gave birth to at twenty-eight.

Unwilling to spend my life as a slave, I set my sights on Yun Jian, the young master of a local wealthy family.

Through countless schemes and every trick in the book, I managed to enter the Yun Manor to serve him.

I deceived him for his heart, gathered his wealth, and coaxed him into supporting me so I could travel to the capital for the imperial examinations and become an official.

“I, Jiang Rui, swear to the heavens that when I become a Female Chancellor or a high-ranking minister, I will personally petition His Majesty to grant us a marriage.”

Later, as I navigated the shifting tides of the imperial court, my career soared. I had long since forgotten the son of a mere local merchant.

While playing chess with me, the Seventh Prince would drop subtle hints, asking whether I was already betrothed.

Meanwhile, the Chief Censor-whom I had outperformed in every possible way-caught wind of this. He grabbed the sleeve of my official robes after the morning court session, refusing to let go.

Gritting his teeth, he hissed, “The sons of my Shen Family do not marry unless they are the primary spouse.”

In the midst of this overwhelming headache, His Majesty summoned me.

When I entered for the audience, a familiar figure was standing by his side.

“My dear minister, the Empress’s nephew wishes to file a complaint against you for abandoning your husband and breaking your promise.”

My sister was a transmigrator who originally planned to stay and watch me grow up.

However, because I was such a naive airhead, she completed her mission far too quickly and was forced to return to her original world.

Before she vanished, she screamed at the top of her lungs:

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! How are you so easy to win over?! Just make sure you remember what I told you!”

But the plot was too powerful. Over time, I gradually forgot I ever even had a sister.

When I grew up, I met and fell in love with Prince Rui, Pei Heng.

One day, he was targeted by assassins. Just as I was about to throw myself in front of a blade to save him, I suddenly remembered my sister.

Didn’t she say I was the tragic heroine of some story?

The way I looked at Pei Heng instantly became much clearer.

On the night before the college entrance exam, I was raped.

Two murderers broke into our home and brutalized me right in front of my grandmother.

Then, they strangled her to death right before my eyes.

I barely escaped with my life, but I went from being a star student destined for Tsinghua and Peking Universities to a useless cripple, paralyzed from the neck down and unable even to use the bathroom on my own.

Fortunately, I have been reborn.

I have returned to the very moment the killers knocked on the door.

In my previous life, as my Imperial Younger Brother and I were being hacked into mincemeat by a flurry of blades, the Imperial Son-in-Law stood outside the bamboo grove, cold and detached, as if he were a mere bystander.

In this life, I looked at the handsome gigolo kneeling before me-the same man who had once died while shielding me from a blade-and I couldn’t help but smile.

“You’ll do.”

After winning the lottery, the first thing I did was dump my sugar daddy.

Then, I turned around and sponsored the broke, handsome guy I’d had my eye on for ages, all while sending a three-hundred-point manifesto to my ex-benefactor, tearing him to shreds.

With money in my pocket and my pride restored, I was walking on air.

That is, until I decided to flaunt my new boy toy right in front of my former sugar daddy.

My handsome new man looked at him and said, “Hey, Bro.” Me: ?

When I was six years old, I first discovered I could see things that didn’t belong to this world.

My grandfather passed away that year, and we moved into his home in the Grain Bureau Residential Compound.

A week after he died, I saw him at home again. He was leaning on a dragon-head cane, tottering toward the bathroom all by himself.

I followed him, only to find the bathroom completely empty.

I told my dad about it, and he slapped me hard across the face.

Grandma said I was seeing “unclean things.”

But later, I realized I could see more than just the dead; I could see the living, too.

For instance, Aunt Chen from the compound had been away on a business trip to Beijing for several days. Yet one afternoon, I ran into her in the stairwell-just a fleeting glimpse.

I ran off to tell the adults who were outside enjoying the cool air. As a result, when Aunt Chen finally did come home, she and her husband had a massive row.

During my first year of graduate school, I hailed a ride and ended up in a Maybach.

That was when I met a man.

And from that moment on, the trajectory of my life was changed forever.

That dog of an emperor ordered me to marry a young eunuch, and I didn’t even blink before agreeing.

Yet, on the night of the wedding, I was tied up and hauled into the emperor’s bedchamber before I even had the chance to remove my bridal veil.

Chapter 0

I unexpectedly entered Wonderland.

But what awaited me was a rules-horror nightmare.

Players who violate the rules will become the red paint used to color the white roses.

Rule 2: Both cookies and potions are poisonous. Please consume with caution.

Rule 3: The hat is the Mad Hatter’s most precious possession. Do not touch it lightly.

Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

Rule 10: Under no circumstances should others be allowed to see your rules.

Welcome to Alice’s Nightmare.

Good luck, Player Tong Yu.

I stared at the playing card that had appeared in my hand at some unknown moment, printed with these bizarre rules, and fell into deep thought.

Five minutes ago, I was still sitting in a theater seat, quietly waiting for the post-credits scene of the movie Alice in Wonderland.

I had seen this animation when I was a child. While shopping at the mall, I had unexpectedly won a free movie ticket, so I stopped by to revisit the classic.

After the film ended, I intended to leave directly like most of the audience, but the theater staff blocked the exit and suggested we stay to watch the surprise post-credits scene before leaving.

Was my memory failing me? In my impression, there were no post-credits scenes at the end of this film.

It wasn’t until the credits finished rolling that the big screen suddenly went blank, and all the lights in the theater extinguished simultaneously.

The next second, a blood-covered, red-eyed rabbit suddenly appeared on the screen.

Accompanied by the screams of the audience, a terrifying giant rabbit crawled out from the two-dimensional screen, opened its bloody maw, and swallowed everyone whole.

When I opened my eyes again, I had arrived in this strange world along with the other audience members.

A mysterious forest and a White Rabbit in formal wear looked almost identical to the scenes from the film.

It had been exactly one week since the last time I entered a bizarre and absurd fairy tale world.

I had thought it was just a premonitory dream.

But the card in my hand with the eerie rules seemed to tell me that this was likely only the beginning.

Standing in the center of the crowd, Mr. White Rabbit glanced at the pocket watch on his chest, cleared his throat, and said:

“Everyone, welcome to the first stage of Alice’s Nightmare Trial: Broken Pocket Watch.”

As soon as the White Rabbit finished speaking, an identical pocket watch suddenly appeared in everyone’s hands.

“Adjust the time to the correct position and press the button on top of the pocket watch to submit your answer.”

I leaned in and saw the time on the pocket watch on his chest.

It displayed a fixed moment that never advanced.

20:27.

I lowered my head and re-examined the rules.

The only useful information was Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

But how could I know exactly how much faster it was?

There are thirteen ranks in a deck of cards, but I had only received four scattered cards.

The other half of the clues for this puzzle should be on the other cards I hadn’t received.

This was a game that required cooperation.

Just as I was planning to look for teammates among the people around me, the man standing in front of me suddenly exploded into a blur of flesh and blood.

Droplets of blood splashed onto my card.

At the same time, explosions began to occur one after another throughout the crowd.

The White Rabbit held a paint bucket, collecting plasma while saying, “A reminder to everyone: once an answer is submitted, it cannot be changed. Please cherish your only chance.”

The neighbor’s kid jumped off the building after being bullied.

She landed directly on my brand-new car, her head lolling, hanging off the windshield.

She died, and her mother lost her mind.

When the neighbors held the funeral, several of the bullies actually showed up at the scene.

They mocked the mother relentlessly: “Your family line is completely dead now. You don’t even have a single relative left, do you?”

They were making too much noise.

I slowly pushed open my door to teach them a lesson: “A near neighbor is better than a distant relative.”

Besides, her neighbor might just be insane.

Chapter 0

I am the most low-maintenance Canary in the Shanghai Circle’s elite social scene.

On the surface, I have no interest in causing trouble; in reality, I am single-mindedly focused on making money.

Everything the Big Boss gives me, I liquidate.

Stocks, bonds, and physical investments-I let the money breed more money, compounding the interest.

I secretly invested in his rival’s company and even took the opportunity to acquire shares in the Big Boss’s own firm.

On the day the truth finally came out, the Big Boss looked at my thick stack of asset reports and let out a cold laugh.

“Other Canaries want to climb the social ladder and take a seat at the table,” he said. “You, on the other hand, want to usurp the throne.”

I finally plucked up the courage to drug my brother.

Unexpectedly, I wasn’t very tired that night, but I ended up falling into a deep sleep myself and didn’t wake up until dawn the next day.

The second time.

I mustered my courage and tried to drug him again.

Once more, I slept like a log until morning.

When I woke up, my brother was in the kitchen cooking.

The bright morning sun shone on him, making his hair appear almost pale gold.

Hearing me move, he turned around and flashed me a smile.

He looked like an angel descending from heaven.

“Zhiyu.”

“I made your favorite pumpkin pancakes.”

Clutching my aching conscience, I drugged him for the third time that night.

And once again, I enjoyed the sleep of a baby.

-I finally began to suspect my brother.

I am the most pathetic Marchioness in all of the capital.

Marquis Jing’an married me for one reason only: I was honest, kind, and easy to manipulate.

Before our wedding, he told me quite bluntly, without a shred of hesitation:

“As long as you treat my beloved Concubine Bai well once you enter my home, and as long as you don’t get jealous or pick fights with her, I will grant you the dignity and status you deserve.”

For the sake of my family, I had no choice but to marry him.

From then on, whenever Concubine Bai sat, I stood.

When Concubine Bai ate meat, I drank the broth.

Whenever rewards arrived from the palace, Concubine Bai got first pick; I only received whatever she didn’t want.

I thought Marquis Jing’an was satisfied with my performance over the years, yet when I prepared to leave, he blocked the doorway, his hands trembling.

“You are my wife! You aren’t going anywhere!”

Me: “?”

I’m literally making room for your sweetheart!

On the final day of the divorce cooling-off period, I waited for Yuan Shiyu at the Civil Affairs Bureau for three hours.

The person who eventually arrived wasn’t him; instead, it was a hospital representative delivering a critical condition notice and a last letter.

Everyone thought he had finally agreed to let me go. Only I knew that the first sentence of that letter read: Wantang, I’m sorry, I really can’t make it this time.

All four of my Junior Sisters received a mission at the same time: to win our Master’s heart.

As the Eldest Senior Sister, I spent my days busy watching the drama unfold while enjoying my snacks.

One day, I accidentally overheard Master speaking:

“System, have you lost your mind? There are five female disciples here, and you won’t tell me which one is the Female Lead?”

The whole Immortal Sect was waiting for my archrival and me to perish together, but we secretly got married first.

On the Evil-Slaying Platform, I was ordered to kill Dong Linyuan. The moment the tip of my sword pierced through his heart, a spray of blood simultaneously erupted from my own chest.

The entire Immortal Sect was waiting to see us die together, but they didn’t know that at the stroke of midnight last night, he and I had just formed a Life-Binding Pact in the Ancestor Hall. If even one of us dies today, Yin Zhixiao will be able to ascend to immortality by stepping over the corpses of the entire Immortal Sect.

Chapter 0

On April Fool’s Day, a pregnancy test with two distinct red lines fell out of my coat pocket.

I turned to my wife in surprise. “Are you pregnant with our second child?”

Her voice was flat. “Chen Wei, we haven’t had sex in six months.”

I froze for a second before quickly spinning a lie.

“It’s a prank prop! It’s April Fool’s Day, I was just messing with you. Gotcha, didn’t I?”

As soon as I stepped out of the house, I called my mistress to demand answers.

If she was pregnant, she needed to get an abortion immediately.

She had a worse temper than I did and denied it outright.

What a joke.

I only had two women in my life, and neither of them was pregnant.

Was this pregnancy test supposed to be mine?

Li Xiuyi was my fiancé.

Yet, at his own birthday banquet, he announced that he was marrying another woman.

Everyone turned to look at me, their eyes filled with uncertainty.

Amidst the awkward atmosphere, I was the first to start clapping.

I even presented a ring as a blessing.

“I wish you a long and happy marriage, and may you be blessed with a child soon.”

I have been selling wontons in the capital for twenty years.

Prince Cheng’s Heir was galloping through the city when his horse’s hooves trampled my wonton stall. He even struck me with his whip.

The heir was incredibly arrogant. “You’re just a lowly commoner,” he sneered. “Even if I don’t pay you a copper, what can you possibly do about it?”

The next day, I went to the Capital Prefecture to beat the drum and cry for justice.

The Six Ministers of the Six Boards arrived in person, and the Left and Right Censors were present to observe the proceedings.

Marquis Ningzhao hauled the heir into the hall. “I’ve caught the little brat!”

The Emperor, seated upon the main throne, declared, “Beat this boy until even his father won’t recognize him.”

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 mother-in-law’s secret identity has been exposed.

I accidentally discovered that she is actually a legendary author of Stepmother Literature.

And my husband is her stepson.

On our wedding night, my husband apologized to me.

He said that to defend his true love, I had to take my own life.

“Tell me-poison, a dagger, a noose, or the river? Which do you choose?”

I asked, “Can I choose to die of pleasure?”

Three months after marrying into the Marquis Manor, I became pregnant.

A maid brought me a bowl of medicinal soup, claiming it was a gift from the Empress Dowager to help stabilize my pregnancy.

I took the bowl but didn’t dare to drink it.

In my previous life, not long after I drank it, I fell into a coma.

When I finally woke, I was trapped in a sea of flames, and both mother and child perished.

At that moment, the maid urged me, “Please drink it quickly, Madam. Refusing a gift from the Empress Dowager is a punishable offense.”

Chapter 0 During the sentimental retrospective at our wedding, my husband took one look at the screen before his eyes turned bloodshot.

He grabbed a chair and began smashing the display in a blind frenzy. Standing on the wedding stage, I laughed until tears streamed down my face.

I was the one who played that video. I had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

Before our wedding invitations could even be written, I was pinned down onto the Core-extraction Platform.

When the tip of Ning Changye’s sword pierced my chest, he suddenly coughed up blood before I did.

Only then did the entire sect see his Life Thread wrapped around my wrist.

But what they didn’t know was that if I failed to survive the next seven days, the Demon Abyss would tear open-and the person who truly deserved to die was still standing on the high platform, watching me with a smile.

Father Emperor is a transmigrator, and I have been able to hear his inner thoughts since the moment I was born.

[Huh, so this is the future villainess? She’s so soft and adorable; how did she end up turning out so wrong? No, I have to protect her. My daughter can only be the lead heroine.]

In the beginning, that was exactly what he did. He taught me self-respect and self-love, told me not to depend on men, and said that girls could hold up half the sky.

But later, things changed. He looked at me with eyes full of loathing, claiming I didn’t have a shred of the decorum expected of a young lady, and forced me to kneel in the Buddhist hall to copy Buddhist scriptures. And I could no longer hear his inner thoughts.

Three months after our breakup, my ex-boyfriend suddenly called.

“The bar is empty, Xixi. Why haven’t you come to pick me up yet?”

My eyes welled up instantly. Fighting back a sob, I asked him in a low voice where he was. A burst of wild laughter suddenly erupted from the other end of the line. He gasped for air between fits of giggles.

“Are you stupid? I’m playing Truth or Dare, for fuck’s sake!” A sob escaped my throat. “You can call me whatever you want, Gu Ye, as long as you come home with me.”

The other end of the line went dead silent… “Dammit, who the hell is Gu Ye?”

The roars of zombies echoed from the street below.

Inside the apartment, my mother and I were tied together, forced to watch as my so-called “friends” ransacked our entire food supply, their faces twisted with disdain.

“Is this it? This will barely last a month or two. If we bring these two along, it won’t even last us a month.”

Liu Jinjin shot a meaningful look at her burly boyfriend. Taking the hint, he picked up a knife and started walking toward us. They were going to kill us!

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.”

On the night of my wedding, the Queen ordered her guards to pin me down and force those Glass Slippers back onto my bleeding feet. She said that if the shoes were not sated by my blood before the thirteenth bell toll of midnight, she would carve out my heart to feed the mirror. The entire hall waited for me to become a Princess Consort, but only the groom, Su Zhichuan, leaned in and whispered into my ear, his voice trembling and hoarse. He said, “Don’t believe in fairy tales. Kill me before dawn, or you’ll be the one who dies.”