Mysterious Past

My senior brother was both pitiful and broke.

His sect had been destroyed, his master captured, and his junior brothers and sisters were missing.

As for him, he carried a battered sword on his back and would go hungry for three days after every meal.

Even so, he still kept me by his side and bought me big steamed buns to eat.

“Once you remember your parents’ names, make sure you pay me back!”

“Mm-hmm!”

I prayed in secret that I must have been born into a wealthy family, so I could properly repay Senior Brother.

But before I could regain my memories, Senior Brother lost me again.

All he left behind was a bag of steamed buns and a letter.

[Dongze will execute my master at the Four Regions Assembly. I have to go save him.

[After I leave, eat the buns sparingly. You don’t have to pay me back anymore.]

I sobbed until my heart felt torn apart, clutching the letter as I chased after him.

But in my carelessness, I missed my footing, rolled down a hillside, and struck my head.

And then I remembered.

I was originally from Dongze.

And the Dongze Sect Leader who was going to execute Senior Brother’s master was none other than my father.

I run a science-debunking channel.

I’m also a Taoist priest.

Every day, I livestream ways to expose feudal superstition for what it is.

One day, a young woman asked me to help sever a toxic romantic entanglement.

The next day, her boyfriend was dead.

During an intimate moment, I accidentally scratched the tattoo on my boyfriend’s back, and he suddenly flew into a rage.

Feeling deeply wronged, I went to an emotional support livestream that night to talk about what happened.

The audience chimed in one after another to defend me, suspecting that my boyfriend’s feelings for me had changed.

Only the Host asked with a dead-serious expression:

“That tattoo on your boyfriend’s back-is it a bottle?”

I waited bitterly for Qu Huang for three years, only to receive a letter of divorce.

When the message arrived, I was still wiping down his bedridden mother.

It was March, and the late spring cold had returned, yet I was drenched in sweat from exhaustion.

My hands shook so badly I could barely take the thin silk letter the attendant handed me.

“Where is my husband?”

“The young master has already arrived in the front hall.”

I sighed, set down the damp towel in my hand, and smoothed back the stray hair at my temples.

“Very well. I’ll go with you.”

I woke up in my arch-rival’s bed.

His clothes were in disarray, his body was covered in red marks, and his eyes were clouded with the lingering haze of intimacy.

Shocked and enraged, I pointed at him and yelled, “Traitorous Chancellor, how dare you defile me-”

“This Chancellor has fulfilled every custom from the three letters to the six rites. Why would I not dare?” he countered calmly.

“Nonsense!” My eyes widened. “When did I ever marry you?”

“Not long ago,” he said, his long eyes narrowing as he looked at me, “while you were suffering from amnesia.”

I have a secret.

From the moment I was born, I carried memories of my previous life.

I buried that secret deep in my heart and never dared reveal the slightest trace of it.

Until the year I entered the palace as a maid.

The other maids warned me never to provoke Shen Ruyun, Imperial Consort Shen.

They said she was a vicious, ruthless woman, and that countless eunuchs and palace maids had died by her hand.

I did not believe it.

Because I had once seen Shen Ruyun’s portrait.

And I recognized her.

She was my daughter from my previous life.

When I died, she was only ten years old.

I wanted to understand why that sweet, sensible child had become such a wicked ghost now…