Second Chance

My husband claimed to despise one of his concubines, while treating me, his lawful wife, with perfect devotion.

I pitied her and protected her at every turn.

After I died in childbirth, he made her his wife and handed her my entire dowry.

Reborn on the second day of our marriage, I decided to stop shielding his so-called true love—and see what their devotion was really worth.

Jiang Yue was the stand-in my family had chosen to bear my misfortunes.

She ate and slept beside me, raised as though she were the marquis’s second legitimate daughter.

She won Grandmother’s favor and Father’s affection, and she and my fiancé fell in love.

Only when she urged Pei Yu to push me into the fire did I learn that she was the cherished daughter of Father’s mistress.

I had been the one bearing her misfortunes all along.

She took my place, inherited my mother’s dowry, and married into the Duke of Yan’s household.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day she was first brought to our estate.

She took my hand and promised to protect me.

For twenty years, I hated Shen Rou for stealing my husband.

I outlived her, rich and honored, yet on my deathbed I remembered that she had been only fifteen.

Given another life, I returned determined to expose her scheme and send her far away to a better fate.

But when I reached the pavilion, the hand sprinkling powder into the incense burner belonged to my husband.

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.

Xie Chengze transmigrates into a novel about a powerful minister, becoming its vicious villain – the Second Prince, a man who murders his own brothers, treats human life as worthless, and ultimately dies when the powerful minister Shen Yuan drives a sword through his heart.

To escape that fate, Xie Chengze resolves to keep his head down and stay far away from the struggle for the throne. Whenever matters of state come up, he has only three answers: “Dunno. Ask the Crown Prince!” “Dunno. Ask Shen Yuan!” and “Dunno. Ask the Eldest Prince!”

Yet the looks Shen Yuan and the princes give him only grow more dangerous – and in every possible sense of the word.

–

After killing Xie Chengze with a single thrust of his sword, Shen Yuan opens his eyes to find himself ten years in the past.

In his previous life, the Second Prince flouted the law, brought ruin upon the country and misery upon its people, and threw the imperial court into chaos for nearly a decade. This time, Shen Yuan intends to uproot his faction as early as possible and restore peace and order to the realm.

Instead, he watches the once-vicious man devote himself to the common people, transform a wilderness into a land of abundance with his own hands, and usher in an age of peace and prosperity.

He has endless tenderness for the world – yet before Shen Yuan alone, he refuses to bow his head or bend his back.

By the time Xie Ruo’an realized he had mistaken me for someone else, I was already his wife, three months with child.

That night, the eldest young master, always so dignified and composed, got drunk.

He looked at me for a long time, then sighed.

“Very well.

Let things stay as they are.”

And so I spent my whole life as the Marchioness of Xie.

I alone shared his bed, adorned in pearls and jade.

Everything seemed perfect.

Yet whenever I woke from dreams in the middle of the night, I remembered the stillness in Xie Ruo’an’s eyes that evening.

There had been no joy in them.

No dislike, either.

A twist of fate had kept him from marrying the girl he loved.

So he accepted it, and spent the better part of his life quietly by my side.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day he came to ask for my hand.

Lavish gifts filled the hall with gold and jade.

I refused the marriage and told him calmly, “My lord, you have the wrong woman.”

For the ten years my parents were away at war, I was fostered on a country estate and grew up rough around the edges.

I was nothing like the gentle, refined Shen Miaoyi, who had grown up beside them.

She was the daughter of their fallen comrades and had followed my parents to the frontier from the age of six.

“Miaoyi may not be our daughter by blood, but she is dearer to us than one.”

I resented her for stealing my parents.

I resented her for keeping them to herself for ten years without sparing me even one.

So, for once, I fought back and stole her marriage to the Young Prince.

But after Shen Miaoyi married another man, her life turned miserable.

The Young Prince felt guilty and secretly helped her.

A rift opened between us.

I fought back one more time and refused to speak to him until the day I died.

Kneeling beside my bed, he said he regretted it.

“Ningshu, please don’t leave me alone.”

“Once you recover, we can go back to the way we were and ride side by side again…”

I did not want that life anymore.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my parents were arranging a marriage for Shen Miaoyi.

This time, I spoke first.

“The Young Prince likes powder blue. Sister Miaoyi would look perfect in it.”

In my previous life, I married the Sixth Prince and helped him win the throne.

For eighteen years, I mistook his gestures for love.

Only as he lay dying did I discover that he had always wanted my twin sister, and blamed me for his unhappy life.

Now I am back at the banquet where we chose our husbands.

This time, my silk flower will fall on another prince’s painting.

But my former husband remembers everything too, and refuses to believe I no longer want him.

After refusing to enter the imperial harem in her elder sister’s place, Shen Wanning awakens in the past with every memory of the life that destroyed her.

Emperor Qin Zheng remembers that life too, and his determination to reclaim her draws Shen Wanning back into the palace she tried to escape.

Surrounded by a resentful sister, ambitious consorts, and powerful men who mistake her compliance for dependence, she turns their desires against them and plots a ruthless path to freedom.

Before my fiancé, Cui Ning, left for his long journey, he gave me a harsh scolding.

It was because I wanted to borrow thirty-three taels of silver from him to buy back my mother’s keepsake, a paulownia qin.

He accepted my promissory note and recorded the debt in his ledger, yet he refused to give me the money.

“Xiaoyu, you don’t even know how to play the instrument. What’s the point of buying it?” He added, “Besides, thirty-three taels is enough to buy two of you.”

This winter, I had spent my days on the pleasure boats, combing the hair of the older sisters and doing their laundry, only to painstakingly save up a single tael.

But the instrument shop couldn’t wait any longer.

They said someone else had their eye on the instrument and it would be sold the day after tomorrow.

When I returned to the Cui Family home wiping away my tears, Matchmaker Liu saw my red eyes and tried to persuade me again with a kindly expression.

“The Shen family is sincere about their proposal. Don’t even mention mountains of gold or silver-you only need to ask.” She continued, “They said that even if you wanted the stars or the moon from the sky, they would pluck them down for you.”

I thought about what Cui Ning had said-that thirty-three taels was a massive sum of money, enough to buy two of me.

Afraid that the Shen family would be unwilling, I dried my tears and asked cautiously: “I don’t want the stars, and I don’t want the moon.”

“I want a paulownia qin. It costs thirty-three taels of silver.”