The Villainess' Joyful Married Life (59 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 1
#Prologue
[Ten-Li Devilfire Crimson Lotus Diagram]A forbidden demonic art that consumes the caster’s body and transforms a ten-li radius into the Scorching Hell [Jiaore Diyu].
The blazing karmic flames of Scorching Hell, ignited by the Ten-Li Devilfire, burn unceasingly for a hundred years, consuming all trapped within in karmic fire.
The vines of hellfire, known as Bundari, spread across the entire ten-li area, ensnaring and crushing anyone who tries to hide or flee, reducing them to ash.
The eunuchs and maids who had followed Young Ryung from the demonic sect and shared palace life with her bowed deeply before her.
Young Ryung sat in lotus position, slowly drawing demonic energy into herself.
Clouds began to blanket the once-clear sky, and people tightened their collars against the chilling, ominous aura that seeped up from somewhere unseen.
The Emperor, cradling a newly acquired young consort, was enjoying a boat ride on the pond of the Hexagonal Pavilion when he suddenly looked up at the sky.
Even the Empress Dowager, who had been flaunting her authority among her consorts at the Shu Fang Zhai banquet, furrowed her brow at the sinister energy.
Thud—
Instantly, an eerie silence enveloped the entire imperial palace.
Then, with an ear-splitting roar, the earth cracked open, and torrents of karmic lava erupted violently from the fissures.
Beautiful pavilions and the trees surrounding them were instantly engulfed by demonic flames.
The Emperor’s boat capsized, and the consort, floundering in the water, screamed desperately for her life.
The Emperor, alone, clutched a stone and scrambled onto the pond’s edge, gazing around in horror at the hellscape before him.
Everything around him was engulfed in crimson-red flames.
The memorial stones he had erected for his children born of his consorts tore open from bottom to top like paper being ripped apart.
Heaving harsh, ragged breaths, he began to flee.
The cries of the consort begging for her life were swallowed by the pond, now transformed into scalding, flaming muck.
The earth trembled grotesquely, continuing to split apart.
He desperately wanted to believe this was merely a nightmarish illusion—but the moment he locked eyes with a woman fleeing from Shu Fang Zhai, shrieking as flames clung to her body, he froze in place.
“Mother…!”
Palace maids and eunuchs threw water, but the flames on her body only grew fiercer.
‘Your Majesty, Your Majesty, please save me!’—though her desperate cries reached his ears, he could not stretch out his hand to his mother.
This place, erupting in horrific screams, was nothing short of a living depiction of the Scorching Hell.
“…….”
Young Ryung.
My Young Ryung.
Amid her fading consciousness, a man’s voice echoed.
Before Young Ryung, who opened her eyes like a blooming lotus of flame, stood a man crying out in anguish.
“Young Ryung, I cannot let you go like this.”
He leaned her burning shoulders against his own body.
Though the hellfire leapt onto him, he paid it no heed.
“All this time, I have loved only you. I wished only for your happiness—but if all that remains for you is bitter resentment and suffering….”
His sorrowful voice seeped into her ears.
“Then let us descend into hell together.”
It burns.
Everything burns.
“If I meet you again in our next life, I will never hesitate—I will take your hand without fail.”
#1. Awakening Through Betrayal
“Your husband does not love you.”
In the lush garden of the ducal estate, two women stood.
The pale-faced woman in a splendid red dress was Duchess Eshika Klaus.
Born into immense wealth, she possessed beautiful silver hair and blue eyes.
And standing rigidly before her was Yuri Anesis.
Daughter of the wet nurse who had raised Eshika, and her only childhood friend.
Yuri’s lips moved slowly.
“The one he loves…”
Yuri’s composed face reflected clearly in Eshika’s blue eyes.
With golden hair and red eyes, Yuri spoke in a strangely wistful tone, as if offering comfort.
“…is me.”
The rustling of leaves in the wind filled the silence.
Eshika’s blue eyes trembled violently with shock.
“He seems to have taken another woman. What should I do?”
She had confided those very words to Yuri just three months ago.
Yuri, daughter of the wet nurse, had followed Eshika all the way to the Klaus ducal household after her marriage, devotedly serving her.
Even when her mother-in-law, Leona Klaus, criticized her as “the daughter of a family that bought their title with money,” and when her husband, Duke Kalian Klaus, treated her with icy indifference…
In this hellish ducal household, Yuri was the only person Eshika could trust.
“But now… Yuri has betrayed me?”
She realized something suspicious about Kalian after learning he had purchased an “Allet ring” from a jeweler.
A ring traditionally gifted by lovers to swear eternal devotion.
She had thrilled at the thought he might give it to her—but a whole month passed, and Kalian never spoke a word.
And now… on Yuri’s left ring finger sparkled an Allet ring identical to the one Kalian had bought.
“……!”
The shock lingered for a long while before Eshika finally raised a trembling hand.
With all her strength, she slapped Yuri across the cheek.
Slap—
The sound rang out sharply, almost cheerfully loud.
“Yuri! How dare you…!”
Just as Eshika, clutching her shattered heart with her other hand, was about to unleash a torrent of curses—
“It seems you have no intention of ever correcting that habit of yours.”
Kalian’s voice cut in as he caught Yuri before she could stumble.
His sharp brown hair and cold violet eyes radiated an icy chill.
“…Kalian….”
Eshika’s eyes wavered.
Duke Kalian Klaus—one of only three dukes in the Empire—was her husband.
Towering in stature, powerfully built, and possessed of a face ranked among the Empire’s top five, his presence alone was imposing.
When they first married, she had believed she possessed the whole world.
“The maids who devoted their entire lives to this household are quitting one after another due to your tyrannical behavior. Now you even raise your hand against your own devoted friend.”
Kalian held Yuri’s waist to steady her—
that same hand which had never once held Eshika’s since their marriage.
“How much longer must I stand by and watch this rampage?”
From his cold gaze, Eshika could clearly sense one undeniable truth:
Kalian despised her.
Kalian, heir to a ducal house descended from founding nobles, and Eshika, daughter of the newly risen Baroness Bridget whose family had amassed sudden wealth through gem trading—they were worlds apart from birth.
Everything about them differed—from their trivial interests to their habits—and just as Kalian could not understand Eshika, she too struggled to comprehend him…
Yet, Eshika had believed they could become a good couple.
After all, Duke Klaus was noble, handsome, and precisely the ideal man she had always dreamed of.
Even after three years of indifference, Eshika had kept hoping Kalian would eventually see her, tirelessly striving in her own way.
And this was the reward she received—betrayal.
“…Kalian! You have no right to say such things to me…!”
“Don’t ever call my name again.”
Kalian’s icy voice cut through her outburst, making Eshika’s eyes tremble anew.
At the corner of Yuri’s red lips curved a subtle, mocking smile—
as if ridiculing all of Eshika’s countless efforts as nothing but futile dreams.
“Let’s go, Yuri.”
Kalian placed a hand on Yuri’s shoulder and murmured softly.
Eshika could endure no longer.
She charged forward, ready to grab Yuri by the hair—
for that was the only vengeance left to her against Kalian and Yuri.
But Kalian’s firm arm blocked her, keeping her from reaching Yuri.
“Let go of me! Release me! I’ll kill you!”
Eshika snarled, eyebrows raised in fury, as Kalian’s cold voice drifted into her ear.
“You truly are… utterly despicable and exhausting.”
Then Kalian forcefully shoved Eshika, who was lunging at him with all her might—
“Aaah!”
—and she tumbled backward onto the ground.
A tremendous impact struck her head, and blood seeped from her into the grass.
All she wished for was to die right there.
**
She burned with fever for ten days and nights.
At first, Eshika thought she had seen illusions.
But it was neither dream nor delusion—it was memories of her past life.
All she had lost now flooded back vividly through her eyes, ears, and skin.
In her previous life, her name had been “Chun Young Ryung,” and she had lived in the martial world of the Central Plains.
As the wayward daughter of the Demon Sect’s leader, she had met and fallen in love with the Emperor of the Empire.
Abandoning her free life in the martial world, she chose to become a man’s woman and embrace a new life within the imperial palace.
“Brother Dok Young, I… have someone I love.”
“A hawk can never find happiness in a cage, Young Ryung.”
Though everyone who had protected her like family pleaded against it, the world of imperial consorts into which she’d leapt for love proved just as cruel and ruthless as the martial world—demanding shrewd political maneuvering.
Young Ryung stained her hands with blood countless times and survived the war among flowers.
At some point, the Emperor’s consorts began whispering this title behind her back in fear:
“The Peerless Demoness of the World, Chun Young Ryung.”
All she had sacrificed everything for was the love of a single man.
Yet, consorts kept entering the palace endlessly, and the Emperor—who once swore he’d give her his heart—grew weary of her schemes and stopped seeking her out.
Eventually, trapped in the Cold Palace by the consorts’ machinations, Young Ryung withered like a dried flower.
Her final memory was of searing pain as if her whole body burned, and a man’s anguished cry thick with sorrow.
She couldn’t recall why she had died.
“Young Ryung. I…”
“…Hah… hah….”
Drenched in cold sweat, Eshika awoke in bed after ten days, the blurry shapes in the room gradually sharpening into clarity.
“…Ugh….”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, her body jerking violently.
Her wide eyes were filled with shock.
Though her frail body felt nauseous, the vivid memories of her past life remained crystal clear.
‘This place… is exactly like the book I read in my previous life.’
That Young Ryung, while withering away, had passed time reading Western novels was a secret known only to her demonic sect attendant.
was a novel set in the fictional “Tureshian Empire.”
Its protagonist was Resban Deon Lusaine, Crown Prince of the Tureshian Empire, and the Klaus Dukedom was a faction that supported the Second Prince and opposed the Crown Prince.
In the book, Eshika Klaus was the wife of Kalian Klaus—only daughter of the newly ennobled Baroness Bridget’s house—whose extravagance and violent temper led to her divorce after five years of marriage, after which she took her own life.
The woman Kalian took as his second wife immediately after divorcing Eshika…
‘Yuri Anesis.’
Childhood friend of Eshika Klaus and former maid in the Klaus Dukedom.
Recalling how Young Ryung cursed the Klaus household until her very last breath, Eshika murmured:
“This woman… she’s just like me… It’s strange—I feel as if we’re sisters.”
A woman who had everything, yet lost it all for love.
There could be no fate more regretful or cruel.
Young Ryung had found empathy and solace in the book’s Eshika.
She was neither smarter nor more ruthless than herself, nor did she possess the ability to control her enemies—yet her ending was the same as Young Ryung’s.
And now, she had become that very Eshika from the book.
Destined to lose her husband to her childhood friend and, after divorce, to curse them both before taking her own life.
And Kalian… His face and presence resembled the man Young Ryung had loved.
So much so that she wondered—perhaps the Emperor had been reborn as Kalian, just as she had become Eshika.
Maybe that was why she had clung to him all the more desperately.
‘In the past, I was Young Ryung; now, I am Eshika. If both are me…’
Her posture, once slightly slumped, now straightened unnaturally rigid.
‘I will never regret this second life.’
Above all, Eshika’s eyes were no longer the timid, hazy eyes of before.
In the dark room, only her blue eyes gleamed fiercely.
**
Cella, one of Eshika’s maids, entered her room carrying stale bread and a glass of water.
She had been ordered to do so by the Grand Duchess after hearing the Duchess had awakened.
“Punish her for causing discord in the household—bring only stale bread and cold water.”
The room was pitch-dark.
The Grand Duchess had always disliked Eshika, calling her “the daughter of vulgar upstarts,” and even denied her an oil lamp, forcing her to rely on a candle for light.
“What time is it—still sleeping?”
Cella grumbled in a sharp tone, glaring at the lump under the bedcovers.
“How lazy you are.”
The Duchess of Klaus was a helpless woman who did nothing but cry and complain.
When mocked by maids, she’d tremble and then burst into anger—but such outbursts only harmed herself.
All food and supplies in the ducal estate were managed by the Grand Duchess.
If the maids turned against her, it was the Duchess herself who would suffer.
Because, under the Grand Duchess’s orders, every maid who resigned had blamed the Duchess by name—her reputation within the Klaus household had long since hit rock bottom.
Probably, as soon as the Duchess rose from bed and saw this bread and water, her pale blue eyes would fill with tears again.
‘Cella… this bread is too hard… Can’t you please bring me something warm to eat?’ she might beg.
‘Should I make her kneel and beg before me? When will I ever see a noblewoman beg me? Heh.’
Smirking, Cella bent down and yanked back Eshika’s blanket.
She expected to find Eshika curled up beneath it.
“…?”
But the bed was empty—only a pile of crumpled sheets remained.
And in that instant, Cella felt something cold press against her throat—but she was too terrified to even scream.
When male lead is the homewrecker
“I know she doesn’t love him.”
I’ve read the novel below twice already. Girls, I’m highly recommending it to you!
The female lead? Not a good person.
The second male lead? Not a good person.
The male lead? Willingly plays the third party, breaking up the female and second male lead’s relationship despite all the warnings from his friends—so yeah, he’s definitely not a good person either.
Basically, nobody in this novel is simple-minded or without scheming.
The female lead starts off as the male lead’s secretary, but don’t worry—later on, she takes over the company while the male lead steps back to support her. He won’t steal her spotlight, overshadow her, or dull her shine.
I love novels where men are out here snatching wigs, tearing each other down, and going to war just to win the female lead’s affection. And this is exactly that kind of novel. Most of Hai Dai Ran’s works have this dynamic. You’ll see the male characters’ emotions being pushed to the absolute extreme.
There’s even a scene where the second male lead exposes the male lead online for being a homewrecker. The brotherhood immediately gangs up on him, dragging him through the mud. I find it compelling —it completely flips reality on its head, where usually, women are the ones fighting over a man and getting torn apart by the sisterhood.
For me, female leads in the novels I read should only struggle in their careers, not in love. But if the brainless romantics in the story are all men? I have zero complaints.
I’ve pretty much read all of Hai Dai Ran’s novels and even translated all of them—her works are just my thing. I’ll slowly upload everything here. One day, when my website is official, I hope I can invite her to join as one of the star authors.
Here’s the story synopsis:
One-line summary: She is his lifelong obsession, to the point where he was willing to be a third wheel, scorned by society, just to wedge his way into her relationship with her fiancé.
Cold-hearted and indifferent female lead + Scheming and subservient CEO male lead
Intro 1:
“I know she doesn’t love him.”
With blood trickling from his clenched fist, Rong Xiu gazed at the woman before him, his eyes clouded with anguish. Hidden in the wardrobe, he had witnessed Fan Xia – the woman he desperately loved – in an intimate embrace with her fiancé. Yet his heart still yearned for her, defying all reason.
Fan Xia, the elegant and composed assistant, carried something mysterious in her eyes whenever she looked at her fiancé, Wen Lan Sheng. Strange occurrences began to surface – secret meetings with the young Gu Jin Yi, an unexplained withdrawal of 5,000 yuan… Then suddenly, her fiancé’s sister, Wen Jing, violently attacked her.
In this matriarchal society, Rong Xiu had risen to become the chairman of a powerful healthcare conglomerate, breaking through gender prejudices. But for the first time, he willingly stepped into the shadows as the other man, disregarding his friends’ warnings to become her secret lover.
Because he had discovered the truth – Fan Xia wasn’t the pure angel everyone believed her to be. And perhaps, he was the only one capable of helping her execute her mysterious plan…
Intro 2:
Rong Xiu’s biggest regret in life was missing out on Fan Xia.
He secretly loved Fan Xia for 7 years.
Watched her go public with her boyfriend.
Watched her kiss her boyfriend at their wedding.
Until that man blissfully nestled in Fan Xia’s arms, obtaining everything he could only dream of.
The crazy jealousy stripped away his hidden secret love, layer by layer, burning like wildfire.
Fan Xia, how can I have you!
【Reading and Trigger Warning Guide】
1. Female dominant, male submissive, male pregnancy
2. Male lead schemes his way to the top, male competition
_____
Please help me, I want to bring you the best possible things.
If you find any chapter or novel with poor translation and editing quality, let me know by commenting directly under that novel or chapter. I will retranslate it as soon as possible.
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MANGA DISCUSSION
2 Comments
Chapter Comments (385)
What I really appreciate so far is that the reincarnation isn’t being used as a simple redo my romance kinda device. Young Ryung’s first life directly informs Eshika’s second one- she knows what blind devotion to a powerful man cost her, and now she refuses to make the same mistake twice. Her revenge isn’t just emotional— it comes from experience, information, and a completely different understanding of power. That makes her transformation feel much more earned!
(On Kalian’s thoughts at the end)
“I hope she just dies” is such an important glimpse into how far gone their relationship already was. He isn’t merely indifferent to her suffering, he genuinely wants her gone. Which makes Eshika’s decision to stop chasing his affection feel even more satisfying. She isn’t losing a loving husband; she’s finally realizing she has nothing worth saving here. Worthless piece of a husband. (Doesn’t even deserve that title)
For the line: “I’ve learned that a man’s love cannot protect me”
THIS is the lesson her first life should’ve taught her. She sacrificed her freedom and everything she was for the Emperor, only to learn that being loved by a powerful man doesn’t necessarily mean being protected by him. I really like that her second chance isn’t simply about finding a better man-it’s about becoming someone who can protect herself.
Inline Comments (39)
“You betrayed your friend, stole her jewels, and now you fawn over the Grand Lad
Why did they become friends to begin with? It’s not like yuri knew eshika would marry him
Cella spat out bloody saliva and glared at Yuri.
Does cella know martial arts at this point or no? I remember she asked
“This mother… can’t bear living under such injustice… uuhuhu….”
This guy is hopefully just gonna be an endgame final boss or something
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VKotaku28
I love how the past life one pushed everyone into hell!!! Instead of drying with regret. Now raise another hell… !
VKotaku28
Show these duckers hell that they deserve Eshika….