Crossing a Spring Night

[The female lead isn’t exactly a good person. Place your bets!] When Jiang Nian was very young, a fortune-telling Daoist weighed her bones and foretold a lifetime of hardship, giving her a fate worth only two liang and three qian. After that, her mother died in childbirth, and her father never received another promotion. Before long, everyone believed Jiang Nian had thin bones and little fortune, and that she brought misfortune upon her whole family. She was the only one who didn’t believe it. Her life was hard, but she kept going. So she wasn’t gentle or deferential, and she wasn’t anything like a proper young lady. She’d flirt with one man and then seduce another. She never passed up anyone she could use to get ahead. Everyone got what they wanted, so it wasn’t as if anyone was losing out. Then one day, four men showed up in front of her at the same time, their varying degrees of fury enough to burn her to a crisp. “What a coincidence,” Jiang Nian said, her scalp tingling as she forced a smile. “You’re all… all here?”