I Never Play by the Rules

Transmigrated into a poor village girl in a chaotic era, with all the able-bodied men dead, Du Shanu was forced to take a husband. Six men of unknown origins and varying appearances stood in a row: A lame, rough blacksmith, a gloomy yet refined scholar, a disfigured and self-abasing mute, a frail widower with a child, a sweet puppy-like boy who called her Big Sister, and... The excessively handsome, perpetually deferential blind invalid who was always sick. The village elder forced her to choose one and marry him. But Du Shanu swept her gaze over this lineup of “old, weak, sick, and disabled” men and declared decisively: “Choose? I’ll take all six.” In chaotic times, one more mouth means one more helping hand, and one more person means one more path forward. Seven bowls of wild-vegetable porridge and a few tattered straw mats came together to form a precarious “home.” Later, the blacksmith forged her the first firearm, while the scholar wrote a declaration of war for her. The widower handled domestic affairs with ease, and even the child he had brought along became the youngest strategist under her command ten years later. And the blind invalid who was always coughing and seemed the most useless of them all... On a blood-red dusk, he slowly knelt, raised his clear yet languid eyes, and placed a jade imperial seal into Du Shanu's palm: “Wife-lord, back then, you chose me, this ‘blind man.’” “Now, it’s time for you to choose the realm.” Choose? Choose what? Of course, she would take both the beauty and the realm in one sweep!