chapter 2

I had fought so hard to live again, so I had no intention of dying like this.

I knelt on the ground, clutching at my father’s robes.

“Father, do you truly mean to drive your own daughter to death?”

He pretended to sigh helplessly, then flared up in anger again.

“If you had married Pingqing earlier, none of this would have happened.”

But was a life like that really any better than death?

Perhaps my earlier defiance had infuriated him completely, for he no longer spared a single thought for our bond as father and daughter.

He called coldly for the steward. “Qing Wen, the eldest young lady refuses to take her own life. Do it for me.”

I froze in place, a chill rising slowly from the soles of my feet.

My mother cried out in shock. “Have you lost your mind?”

My eldest brother tried to reason with him. “Father, you cannot!”

My youngest brother clung to his leg, begging for mercy.

On instinct I looked at Cui Shuran. She curved the corners of her mouth ever so slightly, though she could only kneel down like the rest and say, “Father, is sister more important than the hundred-year reputation of the Cui clan?”

In the end, I still died.

In that moment when the white silk tightened around my throat, when I could not breathe, it felt as if something inside my chest was about to burst.

It was my boundless grievance and hatred.

In that life I never saw how the Cui family ended.

But I suspected it was not good.

Because scholars all over the realm sang praises of my integrity.

They said the imperial house had driven the finest daughter of the Cui family to her death.

The rift between the great families and the imperial house only deepened.

After my death, my father faced Xie Pingqing with an apologetic expression. “Heaven is unjust. A mayfly tries to topple a tree.”

Xie Pingqing answered with a face full of righteousness. “There will come an era of peace and order.”

I could not help but find it amusing.

Anyone listening might have thought the realm was in flames and the land in ruins.

In truth, the new emperor was indeed a wise ruler, and he had brought about a true era of peace and prosperity.

But that had nothing to do with my stubborn, tradition-bound father or the scheming Xie Pingqing.

It was only a pity that I never lived to see it.

My second life had been so brief and so useless.

Leaving behind nothing but an empty reputation.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the Xie family came to discuss the marriage.