Second Chance

Meng Yuanxi and I were rescued from the fire at the same time.

But after we woke, her talent shocked the world, and her policy essays stirred the hearts of all who read them.

Even my fiancé, the Crown Prince, wanted to break off our engagement for her sake.

She said that in this world, she was destined to be the winner.

But I only said lazily, “After getting the chance to do it all over again, you still haven’t improved at all…”

The Crown Prince fell in love with the Mute Girl who saved him and insisted on breaking off our engagement.

Out of kindness, I advised him:

“The Mute Girl is alone and without support. Why not take her as a concubine first?”

The Mute Girl felt humiliated and, overwhelmed by shame and anger, took her own life.

Ten years later, the first thing the Crown Prince did after securing the throne was to depose me as Empress and exterminate my entire clan.

“This is what you all owe Ruoruo.”

When I awoke again, it was the day of my sixteenth Birthday Banquet.

The person seated at the head of the table asked me what I wished for.

“I only wish for Your Highness the Crown Prince and Miss Liu… to grow old together in harmony, forever united in heart.”

I bowed reverently:

“Your Majesty, please bestow a marriage upon the two of them!”

A year after I married Xie Yunye, he met with danger at the border and was saved by a passing female physician.

To repay her for saving his life, he brought her back to the manor and took her in as his sworn sister.

Gu Qinghan never married after that. She practiced medicine all her life, healing the sick and earning the people’s deep respect.

Later, when Xie Yunye was poisoned, she tested medicines day and night. In the end, the accumulated poison took her life.

And I became the Old Madam of the Marquis Manor for fifty years.

My son was afraid I would be hurt, so he never let me enter the ancestral hall.

Only when I was on my deathbed and wanted to offer Xie Yunye one last stick of incense did I discover that a memorial tablet had appeared in the hall. On it were the words: Wife of Xie Yunye, Gu Qinghan.

My son sighed helplessly. “Mother, Father said before he died that only after meeting Aunt Gu did he understand who his true love was. Sadly, Aunt Gu was too proud to become a concubine, so he promised her burial beside him as his lawful wife.”

“Mother, it is only a title. Once a person dies, everything is empty. Please let Aunt Gu have it.”

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day Xie Yunye brought Gu Qinghan home.

“Rong Yu, Qinghan has no father or mother. I want to take her in as my sworn sister. You…”

My expression was indifferent. “As you wish, my lord.”

My elder sister cared more about dignity than anything else.

After our family was stripped of everything, we were sold together to the Red Pavilion as entertainers, and my elder sister, a gifted qin player, declared, “Even if I must sell my art, I will do it with dignity, for my qin is meant for nobles and high officials, not common rabble unworthy of refined music.”

The patron she insulted lunged at her, and I sacrificed my body to preserve her dignity while she went on to become the Red Pavilion’s foremost art courtesan.

When a wealthy merchant took a fancy to her and made her his lawful wife, I begged her to redeem me too, but she only said, “Wait a little longer, and I will take you out once I find a respectable excuse.”

I waited five whole years, until she had become one of the capital’s celebrated noblewomen, yet her rescue never came.

In torn clothes, I stopped her sedan in the street and asked whether she had forgotten her promise.

She looked me over in disgust and said, “I have no sister as disgraceful as you.”

Through my tears, I demanded, “Did I not become this way because of you, and do you truly not understand what I suffered?”

She pouted and replied, “I watched every step that brought you here, so what hardship could possibly excuse you?”

With that one sentence, she turned the whole street against me, and they cursed me as a shameless whore.

Fury overwhelmed my heart, and I died coughing blood.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day she refused to play for the patrons.

She was standing there with her neck stiff, arguing with a man.

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.

During the year of our purest love, Chen Ming and I shared a kiss in front of everyone when we won the Zhengfa Cup debate competition.

But later, when our son was diagnosed with autism, we both came to regret it.

After ten years of love, the wear and tear of life had transformed us from a match made in heaven into a pair of bitter rivals.

Time skipped forward to our son’s fifth birthday.

Chen Ming and I were in the car, arguing once again over our child’s illness.

Right in front of our son, we cursed each other, screaming for the other to drop dead.

The next second, an out-of-control heavy truck barreled toward us.

Chen Ming went against his instincts and jerked the steering wheel to the right, but the violent impact swallowed all the shouting and cursing anyway.

When I woke up again, we were back on the day we won the Zhengfa Cup.

This time, facing a stadium full of cheering and jeering, we pretended we barely knew each other.

I took an arrow for my husband and suffered grave internal injuries.

After four years recuperating on an estate in the south, I returned to the capital and found another woman had taken my place.

My son relied on her, my daughter adored her, my mother-in-law valued her, and even in our marriage bed, my husband called out her name.

I could not bear it and made a scene.

Together, they drove me to my death so the obstacle I had become would disappear and they could live happily as one family.

For twenty years, I wandered as a ghost and watched the end they brought upon themselves.

Then I was reborn on the road home.

I had returned.

“Don’t go back to the estate yet; I want to visit the Empress Dowager in the palace,” I said.

At our wedding, Duan Yingze’s first love showed up in a bridal gown to steal the groom.

“Duan Yingze, if you still love me, come with me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, he took her hand.

He left me alone to face the pity and ridicule of every guest in the room.

Everyone thought I would be devastated, that the pain would destroy me.

What they did not know was this: The one I had never stopped loving had come back too.

Duan Yingze was nothing but a poor substitute.

I no longer cared about him at all.

At sixteen, Fu Zhiya wakes on the day she finished her high school entrance exam, decades before her husband, sister, and mother shattered her life.

This time, she refuses to carry anyone else’s debts.

As she cuts ties with a family that never truly chose her, faces old betrayals in their earliest forms, and fights for her education, she begins to discover what it means to live for herself.

But freedom is never given freely—and every boundary she draws forces the people around her to reveal who they really are.

My sister took my jade hairpin, then used it to frame me for an illicit palace affair.

Our parents and my fiancé begged me to take the blame.

Three years of torment ended with my death.

When I opened my eyes again, I was kneeling before the emperor on the day it all began.

This time, I would spare none of them.