Past Trauma

I was the unloved young lady of the Marquis Mansion.

My father gave me to my elder sister’s fiancé and forced me to bear his child.

I was compelled to write a breakup letter to the man I loved.

“How could a Mountain Village Bumpkin ever be worthy of a lady of my station?”

Later, the bumpkin from that letter had risen to the highest ranks, and he mocked me with disdain,

“And you, an Abandoned Wife – how could you ever be worthy of me?”

I died of a sudden asthma attack while being bullied.

My family sent my bruised and battered body straight to the incinerator; no one went to my school to demand justice for me.

Later, my brother started dating the girl who bullied me.

He turned her into the blade he would use to avenge me.

I picked up my boyfriend’s phone by mistake, only to see a message his ex had just sent: “I forgot to take the morning-after pill that night.”

Those few short words left me chilled to the bone.

The night before last, I had a sudden bout of acute gastroenteritis. He was supposedly working overtime at the office, and I called him over a dozen times, but I couldn’t get through.

Enduring the piercing pain, I eventually took a taxi to the hospital alone at three in the morning.

As it turns out, the reason his phone was off and he never came home that night was that he was with his ex-girlfriend.

The moment our daughter was born, my husband immediately named her Xingyue.

He looked at me gently and said, “From now on, you and Xingyue are my most precious treasures in this world.”

I was so touched-until one day, I discovered something.

His ex-girlfriend’s name was also Xingyue.

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.

Shen Shiji once saved my life, pulling me from a pile of corpses.

In the years before I was recognized by the palace and returned to my royal roots, he taught me to read and practice martial arts, treating me with the utmost tenderness.

That was until I killed the woman he had loved for years.

To avenge her, Shen Shiji became my Prince Consort.

He spent years plotting to turn everyone against me, stripping me of my allies and family. After subjecting me to every imaginable torment, he threw me back into that same pile of corpses.

Shen Shiji told me his greatest regret was saving me all those years ago.

And so, having been reborn, I scrambled out of that pile of corpses on my own, wasting no time.

Later, I heard that it rained heavily that day.

The usually aloof Young Marquis Shen ignored the filth and the mud, kneeling in the pile of corpses and digging until his hands were bloody and raw.

All just to find a Little Beggar.

I was the Young Master’s maidservant, and I stayed by his side through every hardship.

When other servants tried to steal the credit that was mine, I put on a bitter little act to make him pity me.

When someone poisoned him, I risked my life to save his.

Step by step, I became the person he trusted most, hoping that, for the sake of all we had been through, he would help erase my name from the slave registry.

But once his wings had fully grown, he destroyed my freedom with his own hands.

Wei Ze’s first love got divorced after her husband cheated on her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he broke up with me and posted to his social media feed:

“I really wish I could go back eight years and change Xu Nianxia’s fate so she never married that scumbag.”

Xu Nianxia was the woman he had never stopped pining for.

Later, he and I both traveled back in time to eight years ago.

He set out to change his first love’s fate of marrying a scumbag.

I set out to change my fate of being with him.

When I was a child, my father once gave me a ten-yuan bill as pocket money.

He said he had picked it up on the road.

I remember very clearly that on the back of that bill, written in black ink, was a line:

“There is a pyramid scheme on the fifth floor. Help.”

I took the money to show my father, and he smiled and told me,

“Who knows how many people have used this bill? Who knows when those words were written? Maybe the person who wrote them has already been rescued.”

I was in a hurry to buy chocolate, so I didn’t think much about it.

Because chocolate is sweet, after all.

Not long after, there was a piece of news on TV.

“A man mistakenly entered a pyramid scheme den, was beaten to death, and then dismembered.”

As a child, I stared blankly at the television.

My father also stared blankly at the television.

I asked him what was wrong.

He shouted at me angrily, telling me not to meddle in his business, and then left the house.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on; I just felt confused.

It wasn’t until the New Year, at the family dinner, that my father got drunk and cried uncontrollably. In front of all the relatives, he confessed to picking up that bill.

The place where he found the money was directly below the den mentioned in the news.

In other words, the words on that ten-yuan bill were very likely written by someone who had fallen into that pyramid scheme, possibly even the person who was dismembered.

He sobbed, clutching a bottle of liquor, saying that it was his fault that the man died. The whole family comforted him, but I just stood aside, dumbfounded and at a loss.

So… I used that money to buy chocolate…

Something indescribable seemed to awaken within me.

Throughout my later life, I would often think of that ten-yuan bill.

I wondered, was the original owner of that money alright? Was he really rescued? Or… did that money really come from the man who was dismembered?

If it really came from him, he must have endured painful beatings and inhuman torture before finally seizing a chance one day to write those words for help on the bill and toss it out the window.

He must have clung to hope for rescue until the very moment he died.

Yet my father ignored that hope.

I always ask myself, if I had been the first to find that bill, could I have saved him? Or would I have overlooked the writing, just like my father?

This thought haunts me like a ghost, tormenting my mind more and more as I grow older.

Until that day.

A new “bill” appeared before me.

…

I am Cui Yin, the eldest daughter of the Vice Minister of Rites.

I was raised in my maternal grandparents’ home since I was a child.

When I was seventeen, they brought me back to the capital, each of them appearing kind and benevolent.

But in private, my grandmother was indifferent, my father despised me, and my Stepmother Su hid a dagger behind her smile.

My older brother, born of the same mother, warned me, “Cui Yin, you must know your place and behave yourself. Otherwise, I will not show you any mercy.”

My innocent and romantic younger sister said with a beaming smile, “Sister, you grew up in a rural manor, and the clothes you’re wearing are quite out of fashion. I’ve gathered a few pieces I no longer wear to give to you.”

They even planned to marry me off as a successor wife to a profligate from the Commandery Duke Manor, a man who had beaten his first wife to death. …

Before entering the capital, I had originally intended to hang myself.

It was my maid, Huaihua, who desperately clung to my legs.

“Miss! Miss, don’t die! People from the Cui Family of the Capital have arrived. Let’s go to the capital and find some fun!”

I am ill; I suffer from hysteria and have no interest in life.

When I lose my mind, I only find pleasure through killing.

Well then, I hope they can bring me some joy.