Reincarnation

My sister was a transmigrator who originally planned to stay and watch me grow up.

However, because I was such a naive airhead, she completed her mission far too quickly and was forced to return to her original world.

Before she vanished, she screamed at the top of her lungs:

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! How are you so easy to win over?! Just make sure you remember what I told you!”

But the plot was too powerful. Over time, I gradually forgot I ever even had a sister.

When I grew up, I met and fell in love with Prince Rui, Pei Heng.

One day, he was targeted by assassins. Just as I was about to throw myself in front of a blade to save him, I suddenly remembered my sister.

Didn’t she say I was the tragic heroine of some story?

The way I looked at Pei Heng instantly became much clearer.

On the day of the Flower-Viewing Banquet,

I accidentally spent a night of passion with Second Young Master Yan.

Forced to abandon my previous engagement, I was hastily married into Prince Yan’s Mansion.

I had thought such a noble household would be impossible to survive in.

Who would have guessed that after the wedding, my mother-in-law would be kind, my husband easy to coax, and my children sensible?

Aside from taking medicine, I never suffered any real hardship.

Comfortably and contentedly, I lived to the age of seventy-five.

On my deathbed, as I looked back on the past, I could not help but take Yan Zhao’s hand.

“In this life, you and I came together by a twist of fate, but it turned out rather well.”

“If there is a next life, would you be willing to be with me again…”

To my surprise, Yan Zhao’s face suddenly went cold.

“Shen Yao, if we could live this life over, you would still want to have an illicit affair with me without so much as a matchmaker?”

“What do you take me for? It is not as if I cannot live without you!”

Seriously?

We already had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, yet he was still this resentful?

He should have said so sooner.

Then the husband I had known since childhood, the one who was supposed to marry into my family, would not have ended up leaving alone after I broke off the marriage.

He would not have died so young in a distant land.

Thinking of Rong Zhen, I grew even more melancholy.

There had been three perfectly good people. How had I ended up the only one to live a happy, peaceful life?

My eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the Flower-Viewing Banquet.

The day I married into the Gu marquis’s household, my father-in-law died and my mother-in-law fell ill.

The wedding feast became a funeral banquet, and I was forced to take charge in the midst of the crisis, assuming control of the household and carrying the funeral through with composure.

My husband thanked me for preserving the Gu family’s dignity, yet never set foot in my room again.

In time, he filled the household with concubines and fathered a brood of sons and daughters by them.

I raised them conscientiously and planned for their futures.

Then I overheard my husband speaking to them behind my back.

“I have never met anyone as coldhearted as your mother. Your grandfather died, and she did not shed a single tear. You may call her Mother, but never learn from her. She is unworthy of the name.”

By then, a physician had already told me I did not have long to live.

Not one of those children came to visit me or bring me medicine; they simply left me to die.

With my last strength, I set fire to the Gu residence and burned that cold, loveless place to the ground.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn.

The Gu family came to propose marriage, and as I looked at the refined, handsome man before me, we spoke the same words at the same time.

“I refuse.”

It turned out I was not the only one who had returned.

My husband was upright and restrained, a gentleman praised by court and commoners alike.

He took no concubines and kept no maidservants in his chamber, so everyone believed he cherished me.

Only I knew the woman he loved was the Empress.

I had resigned myself to it, until the year rebels stormed the capital, seized our only daughter, and forced him to surrender the Empress and the Crown Prince.

Before the two armies, he shot our daughter dead with an arrow and said, “Since ancient times, loyalty to the realm and love for family cannot both be preserved.”

My hair turned white overnight. In despair, I dragged the Empress down with me.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to our wedding night.

Facing his still, emotionless face, I smiled sweetly.

“Since you love each other so much, I will make sure your love story is sung throughout the world.”

One month after I died.

My childhood friend, the top celebrity I had long since cut ties with, did something completely out of character.

He canceled every job and shut himself away to write music.

In the end, he bid farewell to the music industry with a song called I Miss Her.

Everyone said he must have gone insane to give up such a dazzling future.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on New Year’s Eve, at the height of my fame.

The host prompted me as part of the program, asking me to call someone and wish them a Happy New Year.

Without the slightest hesitation, I dialed his number.

His voice trembled on the other end.

“Happy New Year to you too.”

This time, I want to live toward hope.

My elder sister loved sweets.

Every year, when lychee paste was sent from home, the first box was always hers.

As a child, I was greedy and stole a taste.

Mother frowned and said,

“Your sister is frail. Let her have it.”

Later, I kept giving way and giving way, until even my marriage was pushed behind hers.

When the Crown Prince came to consider a match, my elder sister disliked all the rules of the Eastern Palace and turned around to choose an Idle Prince instead.

So everyone’s eyes fell on me.

The Crown Prince said gently,

“The Second Young Lady will do as well.”

I married him.

After our wedding, he treated me well enough. It was just that every year, when lychee paste was presented as tribute, he would first send someone to deliver it to my sister’s residence.

I asked him about it once.

He smiled.

“Your sister loves this.”

“You’ve always been sensible. You won’t mind.”

Until, on his deathbed, he clutched my hand and suddenly called out my sister’s childhood name.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the Crown Prince came to consider a match.

Mother pushed me forward.

I took one step back and said softly,

“This subject’s daughter already has someone in her heart. I fear I am not blessed enough to enter the Eastern Palace.”

My husband Chen Jing and I lived in harmony as a married couple, raising a son and a daughter.

Everyone said that for a merchant’s daughter like me to marry Chen Jing was a stroke of divine luck.

I deeply believed that too.

Reborn back to the year I turned sixteen, I held up the embroidered ball, waiting quietly for the new top scholar as he made his triumphant ride through the streets.

But Chen Jing waved the embroidered ball away.

He didn’t even care who the ball hit. It was as if, in this life, whoever I married had nothing to do with him.

I suddenly realized with a start- In this life, Chen Jing wanted a different wife.

Later, the good man I married was the very one he had caused the embroidered ball to strike.

When I was six years old, I first discovered I could see things that didn’t belong to this world.

My grandfather passed away that year, and we moved into his home in the Grain Bureau Residential Compound.

A week after he died, I saw him at home again. He was leaning on a dragon-head cane, tottering toward the bathroom all by himself.

I followed him, only to find the bathroom completely empty.

I told my dad about it, and he slapped me hard across the face.

Grandma said I was seeing “unclean things.”

But later, I realized I could see more than just the dead; I could see the living, too.

For instance, Aunt Chen from the compound had been away on a business trip to Beijing for several days. Yet one afternoon, I ran into her in the stairwell-just a fleeting glimpse.

I ran off to tell the adults who were outside enjoying the cool air. As a result, when Aunt Chen finally did come home, she and her husband had a massive row.

Three months after marrying into the Marquis Manor, I became pregnant.

A maid brought me a bowl of medicinal soup, claiming it was a gift from the Empress Dowager to help stabilize my pregnancy.

I took the bowl but didn’t dare to drink it.

In my previous life, not long after I drank it, I fell into a coma.

When I finally woke, I was trapped in a sea of flames, and both mother and child perished.

At that moment, the maid urged me, “Please drink it quickly, Madam. Refusing a gift from the Empress Dowager is a punishable offense.”

The Prince was searching the entire city for the girl who had lost a Crystal Slipper.

My Stepsister stole my shoe, falsely claiming that she was the one who had danced with the Prince the night before.

Little did she know, the Prince had committed a murder that night.

And I was the only eyewitness.