When my soul settled into my new body, a flood of memories followed.
They weren't mine—but they became mine all the same.
This world was called Earis.
Earis was divided into three great kingdoms: Shengli, Hangyi, and Haiyang. I was currently in the Shengli Kingdom.
This world recognized three genders: male, female, and ger.
Gers were men who often appeared androgynous or delicately feminine. Each ger bore a heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of one wrist. While not exceedingly rare, they were far less common than ordinary men and women.
Unlike men, gers could not impregnate women. Instead, they were the ones who conceived and gave birth.
The color of their birthmark determined their fertility. The darker the mark, the higher the fertility and the easier it was to conceive. A lighter mark meant the opposite.
I was now a ger.
My new name was Sun Mingzhe, and I had just turned eighteen.
My father, Sun Qiangwei, was forty-two years old—a wealthy butcher in town. Though not as affluent as merchants or nobles, he earned more than enough to live comfortably.
My biological mother had been a ger with low fertility. He died giving birth to me.
Within three months of his death, my father remarried.
My stepmother, Fan Hui, was thirty-six but looked no older than her mid-twenties. She wore a gentle smile like a mask, but beneath it lay cruelty sharpened by calculation.
She had three children: Sun Baihui, Sun Xinyi, and Sun Yuexi.
Baihui will turn seventeen this year. As the only male heir, he stood to inherit everything my father owned.
Xinyi and Yuexi, fifteen and fourteen, would be married off eventually. As daughters, they would not inherit.
As a ger, neither would I.
None of my half-siblings possessed even a shred of kindness. Spoiled and indulged by their mother, they treated the original Mingzhe like little more than a servant.
Despite the family's wealth, Mingzhe was fed only once a day—plain bread and thin soup. Meanwhile, he rose before dawn to complete every chore in the household: cooking, cleaning, hauling water, tending fires.
Fan Hui and her children did nothing.
They simply ate the meals he prepared.
Years of abuse shaped Sun Mingzhe into a timid, shrinking figure who avoided eye contact and apologized for breathing too loudly.
He endured it all quietly, waiting for one thing—his eighteenth birthday.
On that day, he was meant to marry his fiancé, Bai Weiyuan, the young master of the Bai family. The engagement had been arranged by Mingzhe's mother before he was even born.
Marriage was his only hope of escape.
What he didn't know was that Fan Hui and Sun Xinyi had no intention of letting him leave so easily.
A month before his eighteenth birthday, Xinyi drugged him with a powerful aphrodisiac—one that could only be neutralized through intimacy with a man.
Her plan was simple.
Have Mingzhe discovered in bed with an old, disreputable man. Ruin his reputation. Break the engagement. Claim Bai Weiyuan for herself.
But fate had other plans.
Mingzhe avoided the trap laid for him.
Instead, he ended up in bed with Cao Chenxi.
And that single deviation changed everything.
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Cao Chenxi was twenty-six years old—a hunter from a poor mountain village.
He had been married once.
At fifteen, he rescued a woman named Qiu Suyin from drowning in the river. Afterward, Suyin insisted that because he had touched her body to save her, he had to take responsibility and marry her.
Chenxi never realized he had been manipulated from the beginning.
Suyin had staged the incident to avoid marrying the man her parents had chosen for her.
Despite the rocky start, their marriage was not miserable at first.
Chenxi was not wealthy, but he was skilled. His hunting ensured they rarely went hungry. Occasionally, they even had meat—something most families in the village only tasted during the New Year, and even then, it was usually reserved for the men.
Over the years, they had six children together.
The eldest was eight. The youngest still an infant.
But Qiu Suyin was never satisfied.
She was strikingly beautiful, even after five pregnancies (one set of twins). Time seemed kind to her. Her figure remained graceful, her features refined.
And she knew it.
Beauty fed her arrogance. Arrogance fed her ambition.
She believed she deserved silk robes, fine jewelry, servants—luxury.
Cao Chenxi, no matter how hard he worked, could never provide that.
Eventually, her looks attracted the attention of a wealthy older man. He already had three wives and several concubines, yet he lacked one thing—a son. He had only three daughters and one ger.
He offered Qiu Suyin a tempting bargain.
If she could bear him a son, she would become his primary wife.
She agreed without hesitation.
Without remorse.
She left with him, abandoning Cao Chenxi and their six children—including the youngest, who was only a few months old.
And just like that, Chenxi's life collapsed into something colder and harsher than before.