Smack!

A hard slap landed on her face.

The force knocked the little girl to the ground. Her cheek throbbed with pain, and the taste of blood spread through her mouth.

A fierce-looking woman stood over her, one hand on her hip and the other pointing at her, scolding down at her from above: “Let this old lady tell you. You’re getting married whether you want to or not.”

The girl was about thirteen or fourteen, painfully thin, her sallow little face filled with panic and unease. She murmured shakily, “…Mother, I’ll work harder. Please don’t make me marry that man…”

The woman spat at her and shrieked, “That’s the family of the county magistrate’s brother-in-law! You should be laughing that you have the chance.”

“You look down on this and that. Do you think you’re some young lady from a great household?”

“With behavior as disgraceful as yours, you think you’re worthy?!”

…

The woman wore a clean gray cloth outfit with a gleaming silver hairpin stuck in her hair. Judging by her appearance alone, she might almost seem kind and benevolent… if not for the stream of curses that twisted her features into something vicious and cruel.

With her temper flared up, she lifted her foot and brutally kicked the young girl several times in the waist.

She was stout and very strong, and these merciless blows made the young girl recoil in pain.

“Speak! Are you going to marry or not?!”

The young girl shook her head, gritting her teeth: “I won’t marry…”

She had met the Young Master Xu they wanted her to marry before. He was very fat, grinning foolishly at her with snot running from his nose and drooling while calling her “little wife”.

Terrified, she ran away immediately.

She didn’t want to marry a fool!

“Mother, I’m begging you, please don’t…”

Before she finished speaking, she was struck hard on the head with a broom. Her vision went back and she collapsed limply.

“Damn brat! You dare pretend to be dead!”

The woman’s face contorted with rage, showing no intention of stopping as she relentlessly beat her with a broom.

“This old lady’s going to beat you to death!”

Again and again!

Qin Jiu woke up in the middle of this pain.

It hurt!

Her head was buzzing, and pain wracked her entire body. The next instant, countless memories surged in like a flood.

She transmigrated!

Not only that, she had transmigrated into a novel she had finished reading not long ago: a lengthy “strong female lead” historical romance titled [Flourishing Proud Phoenix].

The novel’s heroine was named Qin Xin, the legitimate eldest daughter of the main branch of the Marquis of Zhongyi’s household. She had been raised with meticulous care in the marquis’s residence since childhood. But when she was eight years old, the old marquis accidentally discovered that she was not actually a daughter of the Qin family!

It turned out that eight years earlier, the Qin family had been implicated in a case of treason. At the time, the eldest daughter-in-law of the main branch had just given birth to a legitimate daughter. In order to preserve a bloodline for the Qin family, the old marquis made a swift decision: he announced to the outside world that the baby had been stillborn, secretly entrusted the infant girl to a wet nurse, and gave the woman a sum of silver.

Later, every member of the Qin family was sentenced to exile.

It was not until three years later, when the crown prince ascended to the throne, that the Qin family was finally exonerated.

Only then did they go to retrieve the child, never expecting that the wet nurse—Zhao Aman—had secretly passed off her own biological daughter as the Qin family’s legitimate young miss.

When the truth came to light, Zhao Aman’s entire family was sentenced to exile. Qin Xin fell from being a pampered “noble daughter of a marquis’s house” to a lowly daughter of criminals, and was exiled together with them to Lingnan.

Qin Xin lived out her life in mediocrity in the place of exile. Consumed by deep resentment and unwillingness, she died in depression.

Then, she was reborn.

After her rebirth, Qin Xin naturally refused to repeat the mistakes of her previous life.

She was blessed by heaven itself, unstoppable in all she did, and caused a whole group of outstanding young men including the Second Prince to fall hopelessly in love with her.

After marrying the Second Prince, she devoted herself to plotting and strategizing for his ambitions, helping him stand out among the many princes and seize the throne.

In the end, she was crowned Empress, enjoying a lifetime of exclusive devotion.

This novel moved at a fast pace. The all-powerful heroine relentlessly humiliated and crushed the vicious supporting female characters who, driven by jealousy, resentment, and vanity, tried to frame and sabotage her. It was a plotline that was especially satisfying. Among these malicious female side characters, one played a particularly prominent role: the noble daughter of the marquis’s household who had been swapped at birth by the wet nurse.

Her name was also Qin Jiu.

In this life, the original owner of this body only returned to the marquis’s residence at the age of sixteen. Her manners were crude, and she was fiercely jealous. Seeing how everyone in the household doted on Qin Xin while she herself fell short in every way, she repeatedly made things difficult for Qin Xin, scheming and framing her with ruthless methods. Yet, she was slapped down again and again, her ugly behavior fully exposed, and little by little she exhausted what guilt and pity her relatives felt toward her. In the end, after climbing into the male lead Second Prince’s bed, she was expelled from the family and driven out of the marquis’s residence, dying a miserable death…

After sorting through the whole situation, Qin Jiu felt thoroughly unwell.

Before she could even collect herself, a broom came swinging at her. Instinctively, she grabbed it and shoved it back with all her strength.

The woman staggered backward several steps, crying out in pain as she fell to the ground.

She clearly hadn’t expected Qin Jiu to fight back. Her eyes widened in shock, “Damn girl, you dare to hit back?!”

She did hit back! Qin Jiu sprang up from the ground, gripped the broom, and lashed it at the woman.

This time it really hurt!

The woman let out a scream like a pig getting slaughtered, “OW! You damn girl, you don’t want to live anymore!”

Qin Jiu didn’t linger. She decisively ran out of the woodshed, slammed the door shut, and braced it with the broom.

She rubbed her throbbing forehead. The moment she moved her arm, a sharp wave of pain spread through her entire body.

Hiss—

She sucked in a breath of cold air, lifted her sleeve, and froze.

This body’s arm was thin and bony, covered in crisscrossing bruises and a mix of old and fresh wounds. No wonder everything hurt—there were probably injuries all over her body, not just on her arms.

Had the original owner been beaten every single day?

What kind of hatred, what kind of grudge, justified such heavy blows?

In the novel, there wasn’t much written about the original owner’s past. It was only much later that one of the heroine’s admirers exposed that she had once married a fool, was unfaithful, and even carried on an improper relationship with her father-in-law. Later, for the glory and wealth of the marquis’s household, she kicked away her foolish husband, undid her married woman’s hairstyle, and pretended to be a pure unmarried maiden when she returned to the capital.

That woman just now seemed to keep insisting on sending her off to marry a fool, and even said the bridal party would come tomorrow?!

Qin Jiu shuddered.

If things followed the novel’s plot, she would most likely be forced to marry the fool and endure everything until she was acknowledged by her birth family. Then after helping to juxtapose the heroine’s gentleness and magnanimity, she would die with an arrow through her heart.

Just thinking about it made Qin Jiu’s chest ache.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Suddenly, excited pounding and shrill shouting came from behind the woodshed door, “Damn girl, let me out!”

“When I get out, I’ll beat you to death!!”

The woman’s voice grew more and more hysterical.

Qin Jiu narrowed her eyes and shouted back, “Zhao Aman, I know everything now! You wicked servants betrayed your mistress and swapped the phoenix at birth. I’m going to the county office to file a complaint!” With that said, Qin Jiu turned and ran without hesitation.

Inside the woodshed, Zhao Aman was stunned. A thought surfaced in her mind: ‘Could that damn girl know everything?’

At that moment, beyond rage, fear crept in.

Zhao Aman panicked and began pounding on the door even harder, “Er Ya, come back here!”

(Note: Er Ya is a nickname, something like Second Child.)

“Er Ya! Er Ya…”

She called out again and again, but the only response was silence. It wasn’t until about the time it took to drink half a cup of tea that her husband, Li Jinzhu, came running over after hearing the commotion.

Li Jinzhu pulled the broom out from the door and opened the woodshed, “What happened?”

Zhao Aman’s face had gone deathly pale. She grabbed Li Jinzhu by the sleeve, “Bao… Bao’er’s father, Er Ya said she knows everything. She said she’s going to the county office to file a complaint.”

“Do you think she found out about her background?”

Zhao Aman’s voice was trembling, her whole body shaking.

Li Jinzhu was terrified as well.

Even commoners didn’t dare fight officials, let alone a powerful marquis’s household like the Qin family!

If the Qin family found out that they had unknowingly raised someone else’s daughter for all these years, they would definitely throw their entire family into prison. Their whole family would be finished!

Li Jinzhu felt both agitated and flustered. Losing his patience, he snapped at her, “You have the face to say that?!”

“If you’d treated Er Ya even a little better, she wouldn’t have suspected her own origins. And if you hadn’t insisted on marrying her off to that fool Xu, she wouldn’t have run off to report us to the authorities.”

“Everyone knows that Fool Xu is almost twenty already, but he can’t even use the latrine by himself and needs to be fed to eat. Er Ya is only fourteen…”

“So now you’re blaming me? What’s so bad about Fool… no, Young Master Xu? He’s the county magistrate’s nephew! A fine match that others wouldn’t be able to get even if they begged for it!” Zhao Aman bristled and shouted angrily, “That damn Er Ya is nothing but an ungrateful white-eyed wolf! If it weren’t for me back then, she would’ve been exiled with the Qin family and would’ve died without even her bones left! I saved her life!”

“So what if the Qin family gave two thousand taels of silver back then? We’ve fed and raised her for all these years for nothing! If we don’t marry her off, are we supposed to support her for the rest of her life and see her to her grave?!”

“Besides, who do you think I did all this for? Wasn’t it for this family? Don’t forget how our Bao’er got into the county school! And Da Ya even said…”

Zhao Aman rambled on endlessly. Li Jinzhu’s head started to ache from the noise, and he cut her off bluntly. “Keep yelling, and Er Ya will be at the county office already!”

“Right, right! We have to stop her!” Zhao Aman answered in a panic and rushed straight out the door.

Li Jinzhu hurried after her.

Once everything was quiet, Qin Jiu emerged from behind the woodshed and looked in the direction where Zhao Aman and her husband had run off.

Under the sunlight, those large almond-shaped eyes on her palm-sized face shone astonishingly brightly.

Moonlight/Starlight Novels Note:

Hi everyone, we’re now back on the website! Just FYI, you can earn 1 free stardust every day by checking the site while logged in. Don’t miss out on a way to unlock advanced chapters for free!

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