Second Chance

Marquis Dingbei, Lu Chenzhou, had three wishes in life. First, a smooth career in court. Second, a prosperous household. Third, to marry the woman he loved. The first two were within easy reach. Only the third remained beyond him-unattainable, forbidden, inescapable. They said another man’s wife was not to be taken. But what if that woman was the wife he had divorced in his previous life?

I fell for the beautiful, powerful, tragic second male lead.

For his sake, I shattered my spirit meridians and lost every trace of my cultivation.

Yet when the heroine burst into our wedding hall, he still abandoned me for her.

I called after him, “Xie Qingxing, take one step beyond that door, and I’m done with you.”

He merely held the girl in his arms and showed me the cool, aloof line of his profile.

“She needs me. How can I stand by and do nothing?”

But he had forgotten that Meng Zhiyuan was not the only person who needed him.

My spirit meridians were completely severed, and without pure-yang spiritual energy to sustain them, they would wither within half a month and take my life with them.

But that was all right.

Xie Qingxing was hardly the only cultivator in the world who practiced the Formless Sword.

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

After I died, the System gave me two options:

1. Come back to life.

2. Bring my best friend’s true love back to life.

I didn’t want to be the True Young Master everyone hated anymore. I didn’t want to keep trying to please my whole family and wronging myself in the process.

So I chose option 2.

A flash of white light passed before my eyes, and I woke up in a hospital.

The person waiting for me wasn’t my family.

It was my best friend, Lu Tinglan.

His eyes were red-rimmed as he climbed onto my bed.

In my last life, I married Wei Zheng, and everyone in the capital said that the eldest son of the Wei family and I were a match made in heaven.

Wei Zheng and I spoke of the realm and its people, dreaming of peace beneath all four seas.

We spent more time apart than together, never dwelling on petty romance, because greater duties filled our hearts.

When he went north to guard the frontier, I set up porridge kitchens outside the capital.

When he reviewed official papers in his study, I sat beside him annotating ancient texts.

When work kept him overnight at the government office, I thoughtfully sent him a letter: “All is well at home. Do not worry.”

He said I was unlike other delicate young ladies who cared only for moonlight and flowers and pestered their lovers to count their eyelashes.

He praised me for being calm, sensible, and mindful of the greater good.

What he never knew was that, as an imperial princess, I had once been the most pampered, vivacious girl of all.

I had simply spent everything I had chasing after him, running until I could barely breathe.

Then one day, I quarreled with someone while Wei Zheng watched coldly from the side.

Only after we returned home, when no one else was present, did he say in that mild voice of his, “The other person did have more reason on their side.”

That was when I realized he had never once stood on mine.

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.

My funeral was held with the highest honors.

After all, I was Zhao Xun’s first wife. For four years I had reigned as empress, mother to the nation, carrying out every duty without a single misstep.

Even after he began doting on Consort Chen and fell out with the Empress Dowager over her, I was the one who mediated between them.

When Consort Chen fell ill, he stayed at her bedside for three days without changing his clothes or taking so much as a sip of water.

When my turn came, there was no grief on his face. He merely held my slowly cooling hand and sat there for a long while.

“If there is another life, I will make you my empress again.”

Another life truly came.

Zhao Xun had not yet met the love of his life. He had agreed to let the Empress choose a virtuous young noblewoman to be his princess consort.

The Empress pointed to me.

Then, just as he looked my way, her fingertip shifted an inch and settled on someone else.

“On second thought, let us choose Second Miss Li.”

My stepmother had been my mom’s best friend, and she had always doted on me.

She spoiled me so thoroughly that Dad became utterly disappointed in me and turned to grooming his stepdaughter instead.

After Dad died, my stepmother swallowed up the inheritance and threw me out of the house.

I died on the streets one snowy night.

When I opened my eyes again, my stepmother was secretly stuffing money into the hands of my soon-to-be second-year high school self.

“Don’t worry about your dad. I support you studying music and chasing your dreams.”

I waited bitterly for Qu Huang for three years, only to receive a letter of divorce.

When the message arrived, I was still wiping down his bedridden mother.

It was March, and the late spring cold had returned, yet I was drenched in sweat from exhaustion.

My hands shook so badly I could barely take the thin silk letter the attendant handed me.

“Where is my husband?”

“The young master has already arrived in the front hall.”

I sighed, set down the damp towel in my hand, and smoothed back the stray hair at my temples.

“Very well. I’ll go with you.”

In the year I was desperately poor, I deliberately fed two of my fingers into the factory machinery and had them crushed, all for the thirty thousand yuan my grandmother needed for surgery.

The factory manager frowned with such pain that he wanted to compensate me eighty thousand yuan. I was too guilty to take it, so I only asked for thirty thousand.

Years passed. My grandmother had been gone for many years.

Then I saw a trending news report: the factory from back then had been swallowed by a fire.

The factory manager had died of a heart attack. His wife had vanished.

Their twelve-year-old son had been sent to an orphanage.

Looking at those helpless, terrified eyes on the screen, I poured the medicine I had been about to swallow down the drain.

Then… let me live once more.

For that thirty thousand yuan from back then.