Second Chance

In my first life, I married Shen Yan, and everyone envied me for securing such a fine match.

Shen Yan won fame while still young, rose swiftly through the ranks, introduced new reforms, became Grand Chancellor, and wielded immense power as he guided a boy emperor.

But that glory belonged to Shen Yan alone.

No one knew how much bitterness I swallowed behind the gates of his illustrious household.

When I was given another life, I waited until Shen Yan’s name was renowned throughout the realm, packed my belongings, wrote a letter of divorce, and sat smiling outside our gates to await him.

“Congratulations on your triumph, my lord. I ask to leave your household of my own accord. From this day forward, may each of us be free.”

Ever since I was little, I had refused to let anyone get the better of me.

When my elder brother gave my sister perfume from across the seas, I cried until I got some too.

When Mother hired a palace matron to teach my sister court etiquette, I threw a tantrum until I was allowed to learn beside her.

When it came time to arrange our marriages, the family chose the finest husband imaginable for my sister.

Then came my turn.

“There is only one Crown Prince in the realm,” they told me.

“His full brother is imperial blood as well. You can marry him.”

In my last life, I refused to accept that.

Why should I settle when the two princes were born of the same mother?

So I devoted myself to serving the Empress and winning her favor.

At last, I got my wish and became Crown Princess.

But Pei Jin despised my competitive nature.

The moment he ascended the throne, he made my elder sister his empress instead and sneered at me.

“Why struggle for something fate never meant you to have?”

When I was reborn in the year of my coming-of-age ceremony, I stopped fighting.

“Prince Rui is a fine match too. Thank you for arranging it, Mother.”

On the eve of my wedding, my elder sister handed me a cup of fruit wine and drugged me unconscious.

I awoke half-dressed beside my brother-in-law.

My reputation was ruined overnight.

My fiancé broke off our engagement before dawn.

My parents were bitterly disappointed in me.

They bundled me into a little sedan chair and hurried me off to become Liang Yanxiu’s concubine.

My sister later died of illness.

Liang Yanxiu never made me his lawful wife.

The world praised him for his undying devotion to my sister.

I spent my life neglected and scorned.

As I lay dying, I overheard my parents whispering with my nephew, who had just placed first in the imperial examinations.

“Your mother was gravely ill and feared there would be no one to care for you after she died, so she drugged your aunt’s wine. Looking back, it was the right decision.”

My nephew’s voice choked with tears.

“Now that I have taken first place, Mother can finally rest in peace.”

I died in disbelief, the last breath torn from my lungs.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the banquet on the eve of my wedding.

My sister stood before me, smiling as she offered me that cup of fruit wine.

After Shen Linzhang fell from his horse and lost his memory, the House of Shen fell out of imperial favor.

Everyone avoided them as if they carried the plague.

Only I begged my father to let me marry into the Shen household at its most precarious hour.

Shen Linzhang had the mind of a child.

He understood nothing of worldly affairs; he knew only that I was his wife.

Three years later, the woman general who had guarded the frontier rode back to the capital.

The instant he saw her, Shen Linzhang was seized by a splitting headache.

A moment later, he abandoned me, vaulted onto a horse, and galloped after her.

When we met again, his eyes were clear.

He handed me a letter of divorce.

He said that I had been raised in the inner courtyard like a bird in a cage and had never seen how vast the world was.

He declared that the love of his life was a brilliant, valiant woman general like Feiying.

He spoke with easy arrogance, his chin held high.

Then I calmly accepted the letter.

This time, he was the one left speechless.

A week ago, the true heiress of the Cheng family came to our door.

Only then did I learn that I was a fake.

But my biological parents were already dead, so the Cheng family decided to keep raising me.

The heiress who had just returned was very dissatisfied with a fake like me.

Not only did she take away all of Dad, Mom, and my older brother’s attention, she also wanted to reclaim the fiancé who should have been hers.

I didn’t really care.

I only wanted to scrape by and keep a roof over my head.

But when I tried to give my fiancé back to her, the man who had always been gentle wore a dark expression I had never seen before.

He locked an arm tightly around my waist, lowered his head, and looked at me with an air of effortless menace.

“Yangyang, ever since we were little, I’ve known you could only be mine.”

Just then, the heiress pushed open the door.

She blinked, revealing two adorable little canine teeth as she smiled.

“Brother Yan, didn’t you promise Auntie that you’d have dinner with me?”

Strangely, I suddenly heard the roar inside her head.

—“That fucking perverted male lead—stay away from the heroine; she belongs to the second male lead!”

In the twelfth year after my rebirth, the first thing I did upon leaving the Xie estate was visit my grave from my former life.

It lay alone in the wilderness, with Qingming as cold as winter and weeds growing ten feet high.

I added a shovelful of fresh earth and told myself, “Ah Lan, don’t look back. Keep walking.”

With my mission to win over the male lead on the verge of failure, I broke down sobbing.

I cried so hard I practically gave my system a CPU ache: “Quit your damn crying. I’ll just kill him.”

Later, the male lead asked why I no longer loved him.

My system wailed in exasperation: “Doesn’t he have a wife of his own?”

“Tell him to get lost!”

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.

In my fourth year as Song Jingyuan’s kept woman, he tired of me and asked to break up.

I had meant to cry, make a scene, and threaten to kill myself to keep him, putting on the same devoted performance that had pleased him countless times before.

But the floating comments before my eyes said he meant it this time.

He had fallen for someone else, and this truly would be the last time we ever met.

I fell silent at once.

While tears slipped down my face, I hooked a bill from the floor with my little finger, rolled it into my palm, and tucked it deeper into my sleeve.

The year I turned eight, I was trampled to death beneath the Crown Prince’s horse.

His guards paid my parents one tael of silver to make the matter go away.

My parents did not even retrieve my body; they took the money with ingratiating smiles and said, “For our daughter to die beneath His Highness’s horse is a blessing she could never have hoped for.”

Before my first seven days of mourning were over, Father divorced Mother and took another wife.

Mother remarried with every appearance of joy.

It seemed they had forgotten me.

Later, just as I was about to be reincarnated, Father and Mother dragged the Crown Prince to my grave and made him pay for my death with his own.