Tragedy

On New Year’s Eve, my husband was trapped on the highway due to a blizzard.

“Honey, you’ve been working so hard. As soon as the snow stops, I’ll rush back home.”

Hearing the exhaustion in his voice, my heart softened.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control here.”

I spent the rest of the night busy until I was dizzy, right up until my best friend called me.

“Where did you say he was stuck?”

“The Shanghai-Shanxi Expressway.”

“That’s impossible! That road was cleared for traffic six hours ago. Are you sure he’s actually on the highway?”

On the day the divorce was finalized, I booked a high-speed rail ticket back to my hometown. A phone, an ID card, and a bank card with a meager balance were all I had left.

When the butler called to say the young master was crying for his mother, I finally understood that the son I had borne and his father loved the same woman.

Before the train left, I made one last promise: I would never disturb him again.

Chapter 0

My Empress Mother was a transmigrator. Before she returned to her original world, she told me:

I am the vicious villainess in a side story. I would supposedly be consumed by hatred born of love, commit all sorts of evil, and ultimately bring about my own destruction, my corpse abandoned in the wilderness.

“Until you have the power to protect yourself, remember: you must stay far away from Gu Qinglan.”

At first, I truly intended to stay away from Gu Qinglan.

But the plot still forced us to cross paths in the capital.

Left with no choice, I took on the role of the villain and began actively sabotaging him.

Yet, Gu Qinglan looked at me in confusion and said:

“Why is it that even though you’re so wicked, I still find myself falling for you?”

Tsk, tsk. Honestly? I have no words!

On the final day of the divorce cooling-off period, I waited for Yuan Shiyu at the Civil Affairs Bureau for three hours.

The person who eventually arrived wasn’t him; instead, it was a hospital representative delivering a critical condition notice and a last letter.

Everyone thought he had finally agreed to let me go. Only I knew that the first sentence of that letter read: Wantang, I’m sorry, I really can’t make it this time.

He Died Before Spring When Lu Chen died before my eyes for the sixth time, I finally stopped trying to block that car, that river, and that fire.

I no longer clung to a medical report, fruitlessly arguing with fate.

Over the past three years, I had dragged him back from the brink of spring time and time again, only to finally realize that someone eventually has to walk that path to the end.

But I still couldn’t let go. At the very least, this time, I wanted to tell him I loved him to his face before he closed his eyes for good.

While we were conducting a quantum computing experiment, my graduate student suddenly asked me a question. “Professor, do you know what it means when they say, ‘Primordial Chaos Gives Birth to the Two Poles’?”

I set down the equipment in my hands, but before I could speak, she began to strip off all her clothes right in front of me.

She placed my hand against her softness, her seductive eyes locked onto mine.

“Primordial Chaos Gives Birth to the Two Poles, and the Two Poles Return to One Place.” “The height of nobility is also the height of debauchery.”

After an argument with Zhou Mingyu, I jumped from the thirtieth floor with my five-month-old daughter in my arms.

When I opened my eyes again, time had actually returned to yesterday.

On this day, because the baby wouldn’t stop crying, Zhou Mingyu snapped at me for the first time: “Chen Ran, you don’t have a mother yourself, so it’s no wonder you don’t even know how to take care of a child!”

Our relationship had always been good, so I thought he hadn’t meant it; I blamed it on my own volatile temper and for taking things too hard.

But time continued to flow backward, and I discovered that this wasn’t the first time Zhou Mingyu had said such things: During my postpartum recovery month, he joked, “If your mother were still alive, my mother wouldn’t be so exhausted.”

On the day I was hospitalized to give birth, in response to the nurse’s questions, he said with a smile, “Her mother passed away, so who else could be her caregiver but me?”

At our wedding, he held my hand and vowed, “Chen Ran, I will definitely take good care of you in your mother’s stead!”

… It turned out he had always cared about the fact that I didn’t have a mother.

But the strange thing was, why didn’t I have any memory of my mother at all?

Had she ever truly existed?

If time continued to flow backward, would I eventually see her?

After I was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I bought three necklaces and hid them in three different places.

“Honey, this is my favorite necklace. Make sure you burn one for me every year on the anniversary of my death, okay?”

With that one sentence, I put a leash on that mad dog Shen Ci.

It made him give up on jumping off a building and throw away the sleeping pills.

Clinging to that promise, he endured year after year.

Until a young girl appeared by Shen Ci’s side. She was innocent and kind, like a warm little sun.

Shen Ci moved out of our marital home and sent away the puppy I had raised.

By the third anniversary of my death, Shen Ci didn’t come.

I slipped into his dream and put on my cutest act.

“Honey, you’re such a dummy. You still haven’t found this year’s necklace.”

Shen Ci, who had always chattered endlessly at me, was strangely silent now.

After a long time, he finally said, “Qingqing, it’s been three years. I need to start a new life too.”

After my Imperial Mother Consort died, I was given three foster mothers in succession.

Of those three foster mothers, some were deposed, and the others were ordered to die.

In the end, I landed in Beauty Lin’s care.

For three years, she and I lived together in peace, without incident.

Until she offended the wrong person and was thrown into the Office of Punishment.

My heart gave a jolt. Oh no. It looked like I was going to have to change foster mothers again.

Worse still, this time, she was the only one I wanted.

The day I died was the day my betrothed celebrated his wedding.

In a ruined temple on the outskirts of the city, blood poured from my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. I lay collapsed over a prayer mat, weeping before the long-dust-covered statue of Guanyin.

In this life, this humble believer had never wronged Heaven or Earth. So why had I ended up betrayed and abandoned by everyone?

Guanyin did not answer. She only gazed down at me with compassion.

Outside the door came the hurried thunder of hooves. Someone, carrying the chill of the night on his shoulders, was walking toward me.

My eyes could no longer see. I could only turn uselessly in his direction and beg in a hoarse voice,

“Whoever you are, please… give me a proper burial. In my next life, I will repay you.”

Trembling, he gathered me into his arms. A single scalding tear fell onto the center of my brow.

On the night of the first snow, the cold was bitter.

The young granddaughter, cherished like a pearl in the palm of the Marquis of Loyalty and Valor, died in the wilderness at the age of sixteen.