Chapter 1
My third younger sister, Wen Shuyi, was the greatest beauty in the Great Yin Dynasty. She was also simple-minded, with the understanding of a young child.
She had lived that way for sixteen years, yet she possessed a fiancé envied by all: Prince Yan, the emperor’s sixth son.
Among all the imperial princes, he was the most capable and the most handsome.
If there was one great humiliation in his otherwise enviable life, it was probably having a fool for a fiancée.
He hated her so much that he allowed others to bully and humiliate her.
He would sit above them with his beloved in his arms, laughing at Shuyi with open contempt as though she were nothing but a joke, while everyone around him competed to mock her.
Yet my sister, whose mind had never grown beyond childhood, spoke every day of the fiancé who would one day ride up on a tall horse and marry her. Everyone else only laughed at her impossible dream.
Prince Yan did come to our door.
Unfortunately, he came not to marry her, but to end their engagement.
He brought a crowd of the capital’s young wastrels to witness the grand spectacle. He also brought his beloved, Liu Xuran, the daughter of a minister.
He meant to wash away years of shame before the eyes of the world, sever every tie between himself and Wen Shuyi, and prove his devotion to Liu Xuran in the bargain.
In my previous life, he had looked down at Shuyi, thrown the repudiation letter and their betrothal token at her feet, and spoken with cruel disgust.
“A fool like you dares dream of becoming a princess? Once this engagement is dissolved today, there will be nothing between us.”
Whispers rose around them. Smirking faces turned toward Wen Shuyi, and people pointed at her without the slightest attempt at discretion.
“No… His Highness will come and marry me.” Confusion and helplessness filled her lovely face.
Liu Xuran frowned and snapped, “He will never marry you. A fool standing between us is nothing but an eyesore. You might as well die.”
Somehow, my sister, whose mind remained trapped in childhood, seemed to understand her.
She ran headfirst into a stone pillar.
Blood poured down her face.
They behaved with such abandon only because they knew this helpless girl had no one to protect her.
Father had despised her for years. He blamed her for tarnishing the family’s reputation and making him a laughingstock at court. Even the servants bullied her in secret.
Shuyi was the daughter of Concubine Lu. During an autumn hunt years ago, assassins had stormed the imperial grounds, and Concubine Lu had died saving Noble Consort Ying, Prince Yan’s mother. Grateful for the sacrifice, Noble Consort Ying had promised that her son would marry Concubine Lu’s daughter.
Wen Shuyi had still been an infant then.
No one expected that her body would grow while her mind did not.
Great clans like ours could rarely tolerate such a disgrace. Without the engagement, she might have been sent to a country estate and left there to fend for herself.
But she was Prince Yan’s fiancée. Even if she was a fool, even if the court and capital whispered about her, even if Father loathed her, the Wen family still had to keep her in the main residence.
I looked at the chaos before me, at a scene identical to the one from my previous life, and my heart trembled.
I had awakened too late.
By the time I regained consciousness, disaster had already struck. Unable to stop it, I could only hurry forward, take out my handkerchief, and wipe the blood from her brow.
At that moment, her eyes opened.
For a single instant, a keen light shone in them—nothing a simple-minded child could ever possess.
She seized my wrist warily. Once she realized I meant her no harm, she released me, and her expression turned vacant and childish again.
She was pretending.
She had finally arrived.
The heroine of this world.
And I, Wen Shuyan, wanted only to change my fate.