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The first day of the fifth month, outside the Hanlin Academy of Great Qi. The new second-place scholar Xie Wei reported for his first day of morning roll call. He had risen at cockcrow, dressed with m...

The anonymous message sat in the middle of my screen like a medical examiner's scalpel, peeling the Fu family's festered sore skin and bone into the open in front of me. Around eleven, I changed into ...

"I'm begging you. Give me something to eat. At least—at least let the child eat her fill." A-Lan knelt on the ground, pleading with the man. The man sat on a bench smoking opium, the white smoke of ch...

Yu Chong stared at him, cold as frost. "Say that again." Ding Peichen was already laughing too hard to breathe, though he fought to keep his volume down. "Godzilla! Or one of those three-headed, six-a...

It was the only piece of evidence she had left behind. When all this was done she lowered her head again and pressed forward quickly, not daring to look up once more at her surroundings. Following the...

Gong Si left, and only Gong Shiwen and Gong Zheng remained in the office. Gong Shiwen walked over slowly and reached out, stroking the sharp line of Gong Zheng's cheek with unexpected tenderness. "The...

As his fingertip roughed across the yellowed edge of the photograph, the whole slapdash, glib, don't-give-a-damn act on Chi Xingran's face wiped itself clean. On the front of the photo was a mud-cover...

Yan Yu's pale eyes flew wide open in shock. He couldn't understand why Gu Huaizhi would say that. Before he could ask, the man closed in and closed a hand around his throat. “I don't need your explana...

Gu Qingbai's furious questioning left her with nothing to answer back. "I've told you — your big brother is not a good person. Staying with him will ruin you!" "That's not how I see it." What Gu Qingb...

Guan Zhiyan, just coming down from upstairs, stopped at the sight of Hu Yan's hesitant back. She didn't take off her gloves; she only asked, "Hu Yan, why don't you take a break?" Hu Yan's expression t...

Chapter 1: The Debt and the Sale (Part 1) Emma Craven discovered that her life was over at exactly 2:37 p.m. on a rainy Tuesday, while trying to untie an impossible knot in her shoelace. The kitchen p...

It had never occurred to Xiao Wang that catching Li Tan would be so easy. He thought the man was bold, all right—pulling a knife in broad daylight, in front of a crowd. But say he wasn't bold, and tha...

"A kiss? And here I thought you had grander ambitions... That first time we met, you were threatening all sorts of..." "I said a kiss, so a kiss. Nothing more." Gong Si said it word by word, watching ...

After that scene, tear tracks marked both their faces—especially Qin Ting's. Zou Songpu had just tried to wipe them for her and instead smeared the tears perfectly even; now he had gone off to watch t...

A chill shot up Chi Xingran's spine, but the moment his eyes landed on that handsome face inches away, he froze all over again. The heavy bruise-dark circles under Zong Wen's eyes had faded by more th...

Zou Songpu closed the door and swallowed one pill straight away. When he woke the next morning, his throat was indeed much looser, and speaking took no effort. The call sheet's first scene had him fac...

As the drowsiness drained away, Lu Nan took in his surroundings and slowly came back to himself. So they were all café cats—fellow workers, brothers and sisters in fur. He stretched, then tilted his h...

Ling Wu frowned. "Eldest Senior Brother, how sheltered can you be? You've never seen a night-luminous pearl?" Ji Xunzhi stared fixedly at the object in her hand and asked again, "Duying came to find y...

A week passed in the blink of an eye, and nothing happened. Things were so peaceful that even Shen Li's separation anxiety was improving. The ship cruised along smoothly, and through the viewport a bl...

Crying drifted in faintly from outside—"Wuwuwu..."—enough to unsettle anyone's heart. Qian Duoduo mouthed silently: "Someone's crying." "I'm not deaf," Xu Changhuan replied. Well, fine then. The cryin...

Xue Wenbin had not gone far down the path toward the back courtyard when he stopped. Autumn darkened early. Just past the you hour, the sky had already deepened to dark indigo. No lamps were lit in th...

Qingchen's words were like a thunderclap, setting Ling Wu's ears ringing. Over and over, one line repeated in her head. —"When you ascend, I will take you as my bonded companion." Her jaw hung open, h...

After hanging up, Xiao Wang sent over all the files at once. On the personal file, Zhou Xun lingered longer than once: Li Tan had served three years in prison, and not for anything dignified—petty the...

The man at the door stood against the light, tall and broad-shouldered, in an indigo-dyed rough-cloth working outfit, a short knife at his waist, his boot tops caked with yellow loess - he had plainly...

He Yuanxia didn't move. She crouched on the edge of the ledge, the wind snapping her blue dress like a small flag. She looked at Fang Runing, and in those black eyes something was shaking violently. N...

The wind blew briskly today. Ling Wu sat beneath a tree, chin propped in her hands, gazing off into the distance. She had set a wind-blocking barrier around herself, and peach blossoms drifted down pa...

The last golden light of sunset fell across his young, resolute face, across that shimmering bouquet of a thousand paper cranes, across the crabapple tree strung with loving reminders. The breeze pass...

In the days after the funeral, Chen Jingming, against my protests, insisted on sneaking out of the hospital. His fever had broken, but his face was still pale, the skin around the needle mark on the b...

Ling Yu thought: something about this was odd. The old man had no idea why Pei Jin was here—he had said someone told him... Who? She looked up at Chen Mo. Chen Mo's face did not exactly broadcast inte...

Ling Yu took Chen Mo to a small coffee shop nearby to wait while Pei Jin dealt with his business, choosing a seat by the window, glancing out from time to time. Chen Mo kept his eyes on his phone inst...

By the time Yin Xigui reached the Municipal Bureau, the sky had gone dark. The car hadn't fully stopped before he pushed the door open and got out; Zhou Ling moved to follow and was stopped with a rai...

The reconciliation that night lasted until dawn. Yin Xigui fell asleep in Sheng Linyou's arms, traces of not-yet-dried tears still on his lashes, his breathing gradually evening out. Sheng Linyou kept...

Back at the apartment building, Su Die had finished the romance novel she'd been writing for the past while. Now, its final chapters complete, she was deep in planning her new work: Silentium. In that...

"Young man, do you have a girlfriend?" "No. Are you offering, Auntie?" "My niece is quite a catch—a teacher at the county's No. 1 high school, very pretty. Shall we exchange WeChat and have a chat?" "...

Chapter 30: A Heart of Stone The next day, Tang Yu had barely reached school when a text message came in. "Did you sleep well last night? Was the hot chocolate to your taste?" He didn't need to guess ...

Chapter 29: Fondness He Zhuokun had touched him three times tonight—chin, neck, collarbone. Lin Juefei would not wash them off. He would never wash them off, not in this lifetime. Slowly, he braced hi...

Meanwhile, Luna and Mike had returned to Dihuan Residences, where Trimble stood waiting at the main gate. The moment she got out of the car, Luna hurried over. Trimble rapid-fire gave them the whole s...

By the time Luna arrived at the hospital, Victor was still inside the emergency room, fighting for his life. She stepped out of the elevator and ran to the doors of the emergency room—only two people ...

Sunday, 11:40 p.m. Shen Miaomiao stood before her full-length mirror, having rumpled her outfit past counting with all the adjusting. In the past two hours her room had looked like the aftermath of a ...

Back at his high-rise apartment, Lu Chen stripped off the suit he'd worn all day at the signing event and changed into loose loungewear. He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, a freshly brewed u...