chapter 1

chapter 1

When my godmother forced Yun Zheng to come and propose, his face was black as the bottom of a pot, with the faint outline of a handprint still visible on his cheek.

Beside Lu Guan, the handsome, blushing Tanhua scholar whose eyes brimmed with affection, Yun Zheng hardly looked like a suitor. He looked like a virtuous maiden being dragged into a brothel.

We had grown up together and got along well. Even if there had never been a spark between us, one would not expect us to spend a lifetime behaving like enemies.

But he happened to love my elder sister.

His mother happened to insist that he marry me.

And I happened to genuinely want to marry him.

One thing led to another, until seeing me was like seeing a ghost to him.

In my previous life, I truly had loved Yun Zheng.

The young general on his white horse with his silver saddle had burst into the seclusion of my family estate like a ray of sunlight. At sixteen, he could charge alone through an enemy camp, yet he would still climb a tree to retrieve my runaway kite.

When I finally married him, I sincerely hoped we would be a loving, harmonious couple. But he never liked me.

I was jealous of every new woman he brought into the residence, yet I still had to feign generosity, play the gracious hostess, and work tirelessly to become a general’s wife whom no one could fault.

Like a candle burning through one long night after another, my love for him slowly burned itself away.

By the time it was gone, my hair was white and my skin wrinkled.

On his deathbed, in a rare moment of tenderness, he wiped away my tears.

“If there is another life,” he said, “do not marry me again. Find someone who loves you.”

With tears in my eyes, I nodded.

After he died, I lived another twenty years before passing peacefully of old age.

Then I woke again on the day my marriage was to be decided.

Ignoring Yun Zheng’s frantic signals, I calmly accepted the Yun family’s betrothal gifts and watched the Tanhua scholar leave, just as devastated as he had been in my first life.

I did not choose Yun Zheng because I loved him.

Between my two lives, I had already lived eighty years.

All that talk of love and passion was utter nonsense to me now.

Just as my sister entering the palace was the best chance for the declining house of the Marquis of Changyang to recover its fortunes, marrying into the General’s Residence was the best choice I could make after weighing every advantage and risk.

I had been ordinary since childhood, inferior to my sister in beauty, cunning, and talent.

The Marquis of Changyang’s family had not produced a capable descendant in three generations, so my parents placed all their hopes on my brilliant sister.

Her admirers were as numerous as fish in a river.

The only one who slipped through the net and reached me was Lu Guan.

Of course I knew he would hide his love for me all his life. I also knew he would one day rise to the highest ranks of the court.

But I knew about his difficult widowed mother, his affected younger sister, and the princess who would pine for him for half her life.

I knew, too, of the ten years he would spend in the sweltering south and the ten years in the windblown northern frontier before becoming the effortless, commanding Chancellor Lu of later years.

Even though I had regained the body of a seventeen-year-old girl, an ancient woman still lived inside it.

Old people tended to prefer an unchanging life.

The same food, the same tea, the same operas.

The same wedding dress I had worn before.

The same husband.