Chapter 1
The first thing I did after being reborn was gather some money for travel. Under cover of darkness, I went to the bamboo grove west of the city and placed it in Liang Zhiyan’s hands. Gratitude showed on his face.
Liang Zhiyan and Zhao Lingyi eloped.
Watching their figures retreat in haste, I could almost see the wretched lives that lay ahead of them.
The legitimate son of a distinguished family had willingly disgraced himself, giving up status, wealth, and privilege for a wandering woman physician…
The news spread like wildfire, making him the laughingstock of the capital.
“A childhood sweetheart is no match for a beauty who appears out of nowhere.” The story was a favorite joke in every teahouse and tavern.
And I was the poor fiancée everyone said had been so cruelly abandoned. I obligingly wept before them, lending weight to the rumors.
His father looked utterly defeated when he came to see me. The affair had utterly humiliated him. “Our family has wronged you.”
With hurt brimming in my eyes, I accepted his apology and murmured, “Perhaps he and I were simply never meant to be. I don’t blame him.”
Then I took my leave with unhurried grace. Once I was alone, a faint smile curved my lips.
In this life, I would grant him his wish.
The tale of how he and Zhao Lingyi had met was rather touching, too.
While traveling through the southern borderlands, he had been bitten by a venomous snake. Zhao Lingyi saved him.
He posed as an impoverished young man cast out by his family and told her he was unmarried. In time, they naturally fell in love. What he neglected to mention was the fiancée to whom he had been betrothed for years.
When his family urged him to return and marry, he brought Zhao Lingyi home with him. He wanted to make her his wife; he insisted on giving her a proper place beside him.
The Liang family refused to admit a lowborn wandering physician as their son’s wife.
He went on a hunger strike. It accomplished nothing.
As our wedding drew near, he began to think of eloping.
He was willing to abandon everything he possessed and wander the world with her.
In my previous life, after learning of his plans, I followed his parents’ instructions. When he came to return our betrothal token, I seized the chance to get him drunk and took him back to the Liang residence.
Zhao Lingyi arrived at the bamboo grove and mistakenly believed he had broken his promise. She left in bitterness and vanished without a trace.
After that, he spent his days drowning his sorrows in wine. Gone was the refined dignity of a noble young gentleman.
“I was so close to spending the rest of my life with her…”
With all hope extinguished, he bowed to his family’s wishes and married me.
After the wedding, he devoted himself entirely to his official career, accepting every advantage my family and I could provide.
But once he reached the highest office a subject could hold, with immense power in his hands, he sent men searching city after city, east across the seas and far beyond the mountain passes, all to find some trace of her.
Only then did he reveal his true face.
“Everything I’ve planned these many years was for this: to rise high enough to find her and bring her back, with no one left who could stop me.”
For seven full years, his obsession had never faded. It had become the demon that possessed him.
He imprisoned me in the rear courtyard and made me drink a bowl of medicine every day.
Looking at my wretched state, he wiped his hands with a handkerchief and said casually, “Fu Qining, by the time Lingyi returns, you’ll be just in time to make room for her.”
When Zhao Lingyi saw me lying on the bed, barely alive, contempt flashed in her eyes. She lifted her chin. “All that effort, and nothing to show for it. Do you regret it?”
In their earthshaking love story, I was merely the inconsequential first wife.
She should not have asked whether I regretted it. She should have asked whether I hated them—whether I hated this life in which nothing had ever been mine to decide.
The chancellor was entrusted with a dying emperor’s child in an hour of crisis. He supported the young sovereign and came to dominate the court.
His first wife had died young. After searching the world, he was reunited with the love of his youth. Their story was celebrated far and wide.
And I was the stone in his path, kicked aside without mercy.
Heaven had given me another life. This time, I could choose for myself.
I had been wrong in my previous life. I should never have stopped him from rushing toward his lowly fate. This time, I would honor their love and respect the destiny they had chosen.
From now on, sleeping in the open and trudging through wind and snow could become part of their beautiful love story, too.