Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I should have been dead.

Yet, when I opened my eyes again, I was lying once more amidst a pile of corpses.

The stench of rotting flesh mixed with the metallic tang of blood was so overwhelming it took me a long moment to process my reality.

I had become Shijiu the Little Beggar again, not the later Princess Shi Jiu.

“Shijiu, my greatest regret was saving you all those years ago.”

Shen Shiji’s voice, still dripping with hatred, echoed in my ears.

I waited a moment for the world to stop spinning, then endured the agonizing pain wracking my body to crawl out from the heap of the dead.

If I crawled out on my own, I wouldn’t owe Shen Shiji anything.

I am actually very afraid of pain.

But it seemed I was always in pain.

War raged in the north, compounded by a great famine, and bandits were everywhere. The old servant who looked after me had hidden me in this pile of corpses before he died.

Who would have thought these bandits were so cautious? They intended to burn the bodies to ashes.

In my past life, I had been discovered by the bandits while fleeing in a panic.

Shen Shiji was the one who saved me.

He saved me, only to kill me in the end.

And I just wanted to live.

So, I gritted my teeth and carefully crawled over body after body.

However, my luck was truly quite poor.

I escaped the bandits and avoided Shen Shiji, only to run straight into Jiang Xiubai-

Shen Shiji’s arch-rival and the Capital’s most notorious young hell-raiser.

“Look at this. There’s actually a filthy little Kitty hiding here.”

A youth dressed in fine silks sat atop a horse, looking down at me from his high vantage point. He toyed with a riding crop, a half-smile playing on his lips.

But the moment I saw Jiang Xiubai, a voice-both familiar and strange-suddenly rang out in my mind.

“She was a girl, after all. You all should bury her properly; do not be disrespectful.”

The Young General had unfastened his bright red cloak to cover my broken, battered body.

He had given me a grave so that I might have a place to rest.

That was a scene from after my death.

In my previous life, I had caused no end of trouble for Jiang Xiubai for Shen Shiji’s sake.

Yet in the end, he was the only one who granted me a final shred of dignity.

And so, I felt that I had finally encountered a stroke of rare good luck.

Because the one I met was Jiang Xiubai.

“Truly, you have the courage of a tiny Kitty-useless.”

Seeing me staring blankly at him, Jiang Xiubai seemed to think I was frightened witless. He raised his riding crop again to scare me.

But then, a pouch of silver landed by my feet.

“Take the money and get lost. Don’t block the Young Master’s path!”

The pain throughout my body made it nearly impossible to stand, so I decided to take a gamble.

A corner of the bright red cloak draped down from the horse’s back, and I grabbed onto it with a death grip.

Jiang Xiubai instinctively pulled back his whip.

“Save me… please…”

My voice was raspy, barely a whisper.

I only had enough strength left for those few words.

But I truly wanted to live.

Before I lost consciousness, I vaguely heard Jiang Xiubai let out a furious yelp:

“This cost me a thousand taels of silver!”

A thousand taels?

Then he got swindled; this fabric isn’t worth nearly that much.

I couldn’t help but think hazily as I drifted away.