Reincarnation

While we were fleeing the famine, my elder brother, He Peizhi, insisted on taking in a mysterious mother and daughter, heedless of the danger to our whole family.

Later, the young woman was carried off by bandits and vanished without a trace, and my brother blamed me for refusing to save her.

Years afterward, his success brought us neither relief nor reunion, only Bai Yuanqing’s merciless revenge.

Given another life, I will no longer work myself to the bone for a brother who cares only for his precious Qingqing.

“Fine.

I’ll marry him.”

Everyone around me breathed a sigh of relief when I said it.

My elder sister most of all.

She didn’t want to marry him.

I didn’t mind.

Mostly because the Crown Prince was offering far too much to refuse.

Besides, he’d treated me rather well in my previous life.

Now that I’d been reborn, of course I would clear the thorns from his path.

I wanted to make his journey to my side a little easier.

Would living my life over again make it any better?

After I was reborn, I still chose the young general who had treated me with icy courtesy in my previous life, and rejected the devoted Tanhua scholar.

A road whose every pitfall I had already crossed ought to be easier the second time.

Across two lifetimes, I was already an eighty-year-old woman at heart.

I asked for no great romance, only a safe and steady life.

I was reborn on the very night Liang Zhiyan and Zhao Lingyi had arranged to elope.

As his fiancée, I gave him money for the journey.

Grateful to me, he slipped out of the city with her under cover of darkness.

What awaited them was a life of sleeping rough and grinding poverty.

He would never again have the chance to wield the power he had held in my previous life.

“Oh, very well.

I will marry him.”

My sisters’ eyes went round.

Everyone knew how hopelessly I adored Ninth Young Master Cui: his literary gifts, his youthful grace.

I had led his horse, ground his ink, and made an utter fool of myself over him.

Why would I now agree to help our aunt the empress build her faction by marrying Pei Yao, that Turkic bastard neither of his parents cared for?

“Quick, tell Father!

Sanniang has agreed!”

My eldest sister reacted at once.

Afraid I might change my mind, she loudly applauded my decision and sent a servant off with the news.

The others recovered, hastily put on smiles, and clasped my hands from either side.

Such a sensible girl, they told me.

I was bound to go far.

I knew none of them would accept this splendid opportunity if it were offered to her.

But for me, it was already the best future I could hope for.

After all, in that dream, I had fought against it.

My elder sister was said to be a bodhisattva reborn.

Her kindness cost me my dowry, my home, and finally my life.

When a magpie chose two brides for the crown prince, she became his virtuous wife, and I became the concubine who would bear children for her and do her dirty work.

Even my own son wished she had given birth to him.

I ended that life with a plate of poisoned pastries.

Now I have opened my eyes on the day of the consort selection again.

This time, I will not be her stepping-stone.

For a thousand-year-old black snake demon, humans are dangerously clever creatures best avoided.

But curiosity draws Yun Chongyu into the mortal world, where she becomes entangled with the ruthless monk Yuanzhen and befriends the kindhearted scholar Su Kan.

Through desire, grief, vengeance, sacrifice, and reincarnation, she slowly learns that love takes many forms—and that even a monster can find a home, a family, and a heart of her own.

In my last life, I saved He Yan, the young master of a marquis manor.

He took me as his wife, and for a time, our marriage was the talk of Shangjing.

But I had been born and raised in the countryside.

My manners were crude, and my reputation gradually soured.

He Yan, too, slowly grew distant from me.

I wept day after day, and before I even reached thirty, I died in misery.

Given a second chance, I swore I would never live that way again.

Only, after eating wild greens for three days straight, I realized I simply could not let go of the marquis manor’s soy-braised pork knuckle, sticky rice chicken, crab roe lion’s head meatballs, scallion-fried lamb…

Meng Yuanxi and I were rescued from the fire at the same time.

But after we woke, her talent shocked the world, and her policy essays stirred the hearts of all who read them.

Even my fiancé, the Crown Prince, wanted to break off our engagement for her sake.

She said that in this world, she was destined to be the winner.

But I only said lazily, “After getting the chance to do it all over again, you still haven’t improved at all…”

When my elder sister tossed her embroidered ball to choose a husband, it split in two.

The heir to the Marquis of Yongning and young General Xie each caught half.

Neither would give way.

They even came to blows, setting the whole city talking.

In the end, my sister had no choice but to push me forward.

“My little sister is beautiful and gentle, and bears a strong resemblance to me.”

“General Xie, marry her and think of me when you look at her.

Please, don’t make this harder for me.”

In my last life, Xie Chenzhou had married me unwillingly.

He despised me and never so much as touched me.

I gave as good as I got, with cold, mocking words.

“My sister simply didn’t want you.

Stop flattering yourself.”

“She’s already showing, and you still haven’t let her go.”

And so we spent our whole lives bickering, loathing the sight of each other.

Now I had another life.

And I was back on the day my sister tossed her ball to choose a husband.