Tragic Past

Five years ago, I left Qi Tan in a fit of pique.

Later, after he won the Best Actor award, he stood at the Hundred Stars Awards Ceremony holding my photograph, pleading for help to find me. “My lover has been missing for a month,” he said. “Please, help me find her.”

But the news of my gruesome death had already broken countless times back in 2018. Qi Tan, however, had suffered a trauma-induced bout of amnesia, forgetting everything that happened after I died.

On the day his manager announced that Qi Tan was retiring from the industry indefinitely, the news of his suicide exploded across the headlines.

Elder Sister was a physician.

After she treated the Noble Consort, the Emperor praised her for having a “miraculous touch.”

Consumed by jealousy, the Noble Consort had Elder Sister’s hands severed.

She smiled and said, “I hear Doctor Song’s medical skills are peerless. In that case, heal your own stumps.”

She denied Elder Sister water and medicine, watching as she slowly succumbed to the agonizing pain.

Six years later, the Noble Consort contracted a strange illness that left her wishing for death.

I stepped forward and reported, “There is one person in this world who can cure this ailment.”

Hope flared in the Noble Consort’s eyes. “Bring this divine physician here at once! I will pay any price!”

I shook my head with regret. “Six years ago, Your Ladyship killed her with your own hands.”

On the night before the college entrance exam, I was raped.

Two murderers broke into our home and brutalized me right in front of my grandmother.

Then, they strangled her to death right before my eyes.

I barely escaped with my life, but I went from being a star student destined for Tsinghua and Peking Universities to a useless cripple, paralyzed from the neck down and unable even to use the bathroom on my own.

Fortunately, I have been reborn.

I have returned to the very moment the killers knocked on the door.

Ever since Noble Lady Lin fell into the water, it was as if she had become a different person.

She had originally been born lowly and kept to herself, so much so that the Emperor barely noticed there was someone like her in the Harem.

But now, she had won His Majesty’s favor.

In just half a year, she was exceptionally promoted to Noble Consort.

Whenever it was just the two of us, she would flash me a brazen smile.

“Lu Lan, sooner or later, your seat as Empress will be mine.”

She was a transmigrator. I couldn’t beat her.

So the next day, I pushed another consort into the water.

And just like that, in the Harem under my command, there were now two transmigrators.

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.”

I’m an influencer who specializes in adventure content.

For the sake of the show, I bought a cabinet that had once been used to hide a corpse.

Supposedly, the cabinet was cursed.

Anyone who owned it would die an unnatural death within ten days.

I’ve always been stubborn, and luck has always been on my side.

I absolutely didn’t believe it.

The night I had the cabinet moved into my home, I had a dream.

A girl covered in blood crawled out of the cabinet.

She beckoned to me, then glanced at the clock on the wall and used her fingernail to carve a “9” into the cabinet. …

I followed an underworld Big Brother for six years.

But on my birthday, he brought home a girl.

He was covered in blood, and the pretty, delicate girl was hiding in his arms.

From then on, the man who had indulged my every whim never looked at me again.

Everyone thought I loved Xu Chang but could never have him, and that I was heartbroken beyond words.

I only smiled and toyed with the watch on my wrist.

I was an undercover police officer planted inside Huaxi’s largest criminal gang.

I’d stayed by his side all these years for one reason: to treat him to a taste of prison food. So how could I possibly… fall in love with him?

In my last life, Xie Wujiu stormed the capital, and blood ran like rivers before the palace gates. In this life, before he could fall into darkness, I forced him into a private school and made him recite The Analects every day.

Only later did I understand: asking a starving person to speak of benevolence and righteousness can itself be cruel.

Before she died, my closest friend gave me two things.

A piece of skin she had cut from her own body, and her lover.

She asked me to use that skin to make a shadow puppet for the opera…

I think I understood what she meant. She was telling me: Ah Mei, I’m giving you a generous gift. You should return the favor-kill someone for me.

I held my little sister’s hand as we crossed the street.

A police officer stopped me and asked, “Whose hand are you holding?”

I glanced at the empty space behind me and smiled.

From the moment I decided to become a criminal, I never thought of regretting it.