Second Chance

I risked my life to save the Commandery Prince and my half sister from drowning.

But because my clothes were soaked through,

they slapped me with the filthy accusation of “deliberate seduction and forcing a marriage to climb the social ladder.”

From the woman who had saved their lives, I became a scheming tramp reviled by all of the capital.

On the day of our wedding, Murong Ling did not even lift my veil. His eyes were filled with disgust.

“You used such despicable means to force me to marry you. I, the Commandery Prince, will never let you have an easy life.”

Yun’e, whom I had dragged ashore with my own hands, twisted her handkerchief, her face full of grievance.

“What a deep schemer you are, Sister. When you saved me, you were swift and decisive, yet under the water, you lingered so intimately with the Commandery Prince for so long…”

I had poured my heart out to save two lives, only to end up condemned from both sides.

I endured every torment the Commandery Prince’s Manor could throw at me.

When I opened my eyes again and saw the two of them bobbing in the river,

I neatly changed direction.

Then I strolled into town and bought a skewer of candied hawthorns.

I took a bite-

So sweet.

I was a male celebrity drowning in scandals.

Online, people said I had schemed my way to the top. They said my private life was filthy and promiscuous.

My family said I was jealous of the adopted son they had taken in, that I had racked my brains trying to ruin him.

My friends said I was two-faced and treacherous, not someone worth getting close to.

Even my fiancé believed I could never compare to my younger brother, who was generous, graceful, kind, and innocent.

If that was how it was, then I would leave your world behind.

I was never meant to be defined or controlled by anyone.

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.

I knew nothing of the zither, chess, calligraphy, or painting.

Before I married Yu Huaiqian, the matchmaker asked me what I was good at.

I thought for a long while, then said,

“Picking rice.”

The whole room burst into laughter.

Yu Huaiqian laughed too, but there was no mockery in it.

He said, “Being able to pick rice is quite good. A household still has to eat.”

He was a famously refined young gentleman of the capital.

Everyone thought he should have married that childhood sweetheart of his, the one who could compose lyrics.

But he married me.

After the wedding, we each did our part and supported each other.

I asked him if he ever found me dull.

He placed a chopstickful of greens into my bowl. “Dull is good. I’ve heard enough of all that outside.”

I remembered those words for a very long time.

Until his childhood sweetheart broke off her engagement and returned to the capital.

At the Qushui Banquet, she casually recited a single line from a new lyric.

The wine cup in Yu Huaiqian’s hand froze in midair.

After the banquet ended, he sat in the study and filled an entire page with that one line.

I picked up the paper and looked at him. He immediately reached out to snatch it away.

“Don’t look.”

I asked, “Is it so good that I can’t see it?”

He was silent for a moment, then his voice lowered.

“You wouldn’t understand anyway. Why insist on asking?”

Ten years after transmigrating into a novel, I had spent seven of them trying and failing to win over the Second Male Lead, the villainous Archdemon.

There was only ever room in his heart for the Female Lead, pure and white as moonlight.

So I spent three years saying goodbye to him, and from then on, I let him go completely.

But he seemed to be the one who could never let go again.

When my elder brother returned to the capital after investigating a case, he brought back two Liuxian Skirts, one blue-green and one pink.

He first asked my eldest sister which one she liked.

When it was my turn, my brother smiled gently.

“Pink is delicate, and it suits your complexion too. Do you like it?”

If I didn’t, there would be nothing left for me.

I nodded and took it.

Later, when choosing tutors and selecting study companions, it was always the same.

It was no different on the day we were to choose our husbands.

The Crown Prince won my eldest sister’s hand, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

The Third Prince was crushed. He pointed at me at random.

“Then the Second Miss it is.”

After we married, the Third Prince regretted it a little.

But he was a good man.

He was willing to hand over management of the household to me, and he took no concubines.

Even when my eldest sister and I fell from our horses on the same day, he was the one who risked his life to save me.

At the very end, he touched my brow bone and let out a long sigh.

“Even if all I can ask for is a resemblance, so be it. In this life, I sought the highest, and in the end got only what was second-best.”

And so, when I was given a second chance at life, at the banquet where husbands were chosen,

I covered my brows and eyes and answered the Third Prince in a muffled voice.

“Yinyin already has someone she loves.”

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.”

Because I coveted the Crown Prince’s beauty, I snuck into the Eastern Palace and became a Dark Guard.

The Crown Prince was temperamental and unpredictable, so I only dared to drool over him in secret.

Until the day he was deposed and reduced to a commoner.

Taking advantage of the chaos, I locked him inside the dungeon I had painstakingly built.

“You wretched slave! Release me at once!”

The proud Crown Prince’s eyes reddened with fury, making him look even more enticing.

I slowly undid his belt and pinned him against the damp brick wall.

“Let you go? I can’t do that. But… having you? That I can do.”

I devoured the Crown Prince completely and forced him through one position after another.

Until later.

I caught a Dark Guard slipping into the dungeon and kneeling as he begged the Crown Prince to return to the palace.

And the man who, just last night, had refused to yield beneath me even if it killed him, curled his lips in a lazy smile.

“No hurry. The Crown Princess and I still have some candlelit reading to do tonight.”

…

The freshly printed copy of Dragon and Phoenix Harmonizing Eighteen Positions in my hand fell to the floor with a smack.

In my senior year of high school, the school beauty, Song Shuyao, once came to me to borrow money for medical treatment and asked me not to tell anyone.

As it turned out, she used it to get an abortion. She hemorrhaged and died on the operating table of a shady little clinic.

Years later, Lu Jingnian-the untouchable top student everyone had once admired from afar-pursued me obsessively and proposed to me.

Then, when I was eight months pregnant, he locked me in a basement in the suburbs.

He cut open my belly while I was still alive and said, “This is what you owe Yaoyao and our child.”

Only then did I learn that before Song Shuyao died, she had held his hand and told him not to blame me.

But he was convinced I had deliberately killed the woman he loved and their child.

That day, I died under Lu Jingnian’s butcher knife, my eyes wide open in hatred.

Then, carrying a hatred vast enough to drown the heavens, I returned to the day Song Shuyao came to borrow money from me.

After my elder sister learned she was a false heiress,

she disguised herself as a man and went out drinking at a pleasure house to drown her sorrows.

Who could have known she would accidentally enter the wrong room?

There, she spent a night of passion with Zhou Huaixu, who had come to investigate a case.

Zhou Huaixu had been drugged. His mind was hazy, and he did not know who the woman from the night before had been.

He only remembered that she said she came from the Qinghe Cui Clan.

The Zhou Family was known for its upright traditions, and Zhou Huaixu soon came to propose marriage.

But by then, my elder sister had already left.

As it happened, I had gone looking for her that night and did not return to the estate until dawn.

He mistook me for my elder sister and married me.

It was not until our wedding night that he realized he had the wrong person.

Filled with regret, he blamed me. “If you hadn’t been so vague, how could I have married you?”

Zhou Huaixu treated me with the utmost coldness, yet in bed, he showed me no mercy at all.

When I cried and begged him, he only covered my face and sneered, “She would never be as frivolous and lowly as you.”

Then I was reborn on the day Zhou Huaixu came to propose.

I spoke softly. “That night, I went to bed early and never left the estate.”