Second Chance

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.

I fell in love with my rival—and my roommate.

The good news: she was a woman.

The bad news: she was straight.

On the surface, Pei Ruoqing and I couldn’t stand each other.

In secret, I was practically begging, “Big Sister, slap me.”

We stayed tangled up like that until our five-year college reunion.

After the reunion, I used my drunkenness as an excuse to climb into her car.

When I saw that our old class president was still hopelessly in love with her, I deliberately picked a fight.

She shot back coldly, “He likes me.

Does that really make you so jealous?”

Before I could answer, an out-of-control truck came hurtling toward us.

I threw myself over her without thinking—and died protecting her.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on freshman move-in day, staring straight at Pei Ruoqing as she pushed open our dorm-room door.

The boy I loved died in the prime of his life.

So, I traveled back twenty years, giving everything I had to bring him even a single glimmer of hope.

Gu Zhixian, you probably won’t believe me, but I’m your future wife…

Gu Zhixian, the future you is a wonderful, kind-hearted person.

Gu Zhixian, we’re going to have a precious child in the future. They’ll have your eyes and my eyebrows.

So, please don’t give up on yourself, okay?

The boy I loved believed me.

As the clock prepares to strike midnight, it’s time for me to go.

I’m sorry. I lied to you. I am not your wife.

And in our future, we will never meet again.

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.”

After being reborn, I met Song Shixing again.

He was slumped at the end of an alley, covered in wounds and barely clinging to life.

I knew that in three years, he would become the ruler who stood at the pinnacle of the world.

And I would be his empress. Power and riches would all be within my grasp.

But this time, I didn’t want to save him.

Song Shixing, in this life, I don’t want anything to do with you ever again.

After her parents die, Shen Heng survives only because her elder sister becomes a concubine in the Dingyuan Marquis Manor.

Drugged and framed on the day she comes of age, Shen Heng is forced into a brutal life with Chu Heng, while her sister pays an even deadlier price.

Reborn on the morning of the same banquet, Shen Heng refuses to repeat her fate and throws herself into a fight for freedom, dignity, and the sister who once sacrificed everything for her.

When her path crosses Prince Chen’s once more, an old act of kindness becomes the key to a future neither of them dared to imagine.