chapter 1
My maid found a man lying by the roadside.
The moment she saw that motionless, possibly lifeless figure, Qingtao—usually the steadiest and most composed of women—grabbed my hand.
“Miss, the poor man looks so pitiful. Please, have mercy and save him.”
Warning bells erupted in my head.
First, she was already talking about saving him before she had even established whether he was alive. Such haste was nothing like the Qingtao I knew.
Second, I was an unmarried woman. If I rashly took in a strange man, there was no telling how foul the gossip would become. Qingtao was my most loyal maid. She could not possibly have overlooked that.
Third—and most important of all—I suddenly remembered the note Mother had left me before she died.
It was densely covered in phrases I could not understand. The very first lines read:
[Never pick up a man by the roadside, especially one who has lost his memory.
[If you have already picked him up, sever all ties with him at once.
[Ignore this rule at your own peril.]
While I stood there distracted, Qingtao leaped out of the sedan chair and hurried toward the man.
“Miss, he is so handsome!” Her voice brimmed with delighted tenderness. “I have lived all these years and never seen such a beautiful man.”
I frowned.
In full view of everyone, she had drawn close to a man of unknown origin and begun praising his looks. Could this brazen woman truly be the Qingtao I knew?
My thoughts returned to the day Mother left this world.
Everyone said my mother was insane. She knew nothing of the Three Obediences and Four Virtues, showed no interest in supporting a husband or raising his children, and even went out in public to build a fortune like a man. Worse still, she preached equality between men and women and spouted absurdities about women being perfectly capable of living well through their own efforts.
That was what she said, and that was precisely how she lived.
Mother was the most formidable person in the world. Relying on no one but herself, she endured endless mockery and condemnation and became the richest merchant in Great Zhou.
Before her death, she left me riches beyond counting and a note covered in strange words.
“Transmigration.” “Heroine of a tragic romance.” “Protagonist halo.”
I had never encountered any of them in my life.
Confused, I asked her what they meant.
She smiled. Her voice was perfectly calm, but her answer left me frozen where I stood.
“Zhao’er, what would you do if I told you this world was a storybook—and you were its heroine?”
I knew what storybooks were. People around me had read some aloud: romances about beautiful, well-bred young ladies from official families and brilliant but destitute scholars.
Was Mother saying that when I grew up, I would have to marry a poor scholar?
I did not want to.
I could not bear to give up my fine silks and exquisite food for coarse hemp and wild greens. I could not bear to exchange a life in which maids handled every chore and I could do as I pleased for one spent serving a husband, raising children, cooking, washing, and waiting on others.
Most of all, I could not bear to leave Mother and my home, abandon everything I wished to do, and surrender being Yan Zhao so I could become someone’s wife, someone’s daughter-in-law, someone’s mother.
I nervously told Mother everything I was thinking.
She doubled over laughing.
“Good. Good! I did not teach you all these years for nothing. You have promise!”
She planted a resounding kiss on my forehead, ruffled my hair, and said, “The story I mean is nothing like the ones you usually hear. This is not a romance. It is a horror story.”
A horror story?
My face went even paler. I immediately remembered the terrifying tales she often told me: a celestial maiden trapped by a thief who stole her clothes, a snail maiden enslaved by a man, and a rich young lady reduced to digging wild vegetables to survive.
Each time, Mother would announce with a mournful expression, “And from then on, she lived a life of misery and tears.”
She would frighten me further by saying, “A woman who loses her head over love, cannot judge character, and throws herself at the first man she sees ends up leading an old ox with one hand and digging wild greens with the other. One child strapped to her chest, another to her back. Up before dawn to cook for the whole family, then on her knees at night washing her husband’s stinking feet.”
More than once, she scared my younger self into sobbing so hard I fainted.
Now, seeing me white-faced and trembling, Mother seemed increasingly pleased. She continued her alarmist tale.
“Yes, a horror story. Not only will you give up a colossal fortune for a man and live on husks and scraps, but you will also be misunderstood, forced to kneel, slapped, thrown into the water, and have your eyes gouged out. You will get pregnant for him and then lose his child. In the end, the only escape you will find is burning yourself alive.
“But after you die, he will be punished too…”
Mother deliberately slowed her voice.
By then, terror had almost scattered my soul, yet the word punished still made me ask, “What punishment?”
Climb a mountain of blades? Be plunged into boiling oil? Flayed and dismembered? Condemned never to reincarnate?
Mother pinched her throat and answered in a peculiar, affected voice.
“At last, he realizes whom he truly loved. From that day onward, he can do nothing but possess ten thousand miles of mountains and rivers while enduring boundless loneliness. You may be dead, but he has lost the ability to love!
“Oh, how tragic for the hero!”
I burst into wails. I cried until I hiccupped, tears and snot smeared across my face.
“Why would he do all that to me?” I sobbed. “Is it because I killed his entire family?”
Mother wiped my face with a handkerchief and shook her head.
“No. Because you saved him.”
My mind stopped.
However furiously my small head worked, I could make no sense of that answer.
“Why would he hurt me after I saved him?” I whispered.
Mother sighed and muttered, “Old-school tragic romances do not need logic.”
Then she slapped the note down in front of me again and pointed to the first rule.
“That is why you must remember: never, ever, ever pick up a man by the roadside. Especially an amnesiac. Especially a handsome one. The better a man looks, the better he is at deceiving women…”
That distant memory suddenly flooded back.
I stepped down from the sedan chair and approached the unconscious man. Qingtao was wiping his face with her own handkerchief.
I looked closely. He was indeed extraordinarily handsome, as though Heaven had lavished every trace of its artistry upon his features. Anyone who saw him would feel their heart stir and hold their breath without thinking.
I was no exception.
In the next instant, however, I pulled the gold hairpin from my hair and slashed it viciously across that flawless face.