Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Even knowing that the destitute youth before me would one day hold the world in his palm, I still intend to break our engagement.

Having been reborn, I am not only breaking the engagement, but I have also repeated the exact same actions from my previous life. I look down at the thin youth forced to kneel in the snow and ruthlessly grind my foot into his hand.

My shoes, crafted from Mermaid Silk Silver Beads, press down on his frostbitten, cracked hand. His spine is thin but straight, unbending even if struck by a blade. His gaze shifts slowly from my shoe to my face-a look like the coldest snow of a winter night, harboring the ferocity of a lone wolf. His lips are turned blue from the cold, and snow falls upon his youthful features. He has not yet learned to hide his emotions as he would in the future; he grits his teeth, his humiliation barely concealed.

This year, Shen Guichi is seventeen. His family has fallen into ruin, and he has traveled thousands of miles to Shangjing to take the imperial examinations. Dressed in rags, he arrived at my family’s door carrying our marriage contract. My parents and brother took him in with proper courtesy, but they never mentioned the engagement. I am fifteen this year, delicate and overbearing. Unable to stomach the thought of marrying someone who looks like a beggar, I used a petty excuse to make him kneel in the snow. This single act caused him to hate me for a lifetime, leading him to seize my family’s estate once he rose to power.

He is a man who remembers every slight and repays it in kind; he remembers only the bad in others and refuses to remember a single shred of good. To him, my family’s hospitality was merely a form of calculated humiliation, and I, the fiancée who looked down on him, was nothing short of malicious. He has his own “white moonlight,” my concubine-born younger sister whom I have despised since childhood. In my past life, I regretted making Shen Guichi kneel shortly after the fact. I had rushed back with medicine, only to see my sister smiling as she applied ointment to his wounds. I turned and left immediately.

When his name topped the golden list of successful candidates, he petitioned the Emperor in the grand hall. Claiming the marriage contract could not be easily discarded, he married my sister with the rites of an equal wife. On our wedding night, he never came to lift my veil, and he never stepped foot in my quarters again.

When bandits captured both me and my sister, demanding ten chests of gold and silver for our release, he sent only five. He said one wife was enough. Even the bandits looked at me with pity.

None of that would have mattered, except for two mistakes I made. The first was my youthful ignorance and impulsiveness-making Shen Guichi kneel when we first met. The second was that I eventually fell deeply in love with him. With such a beginning, how could the story ever end well?

I once traveled thousands of miles to find a renowned physician for him and used my family’s influence to recruit talents to his side. Shen Guichi mocked me, calling me a social climber who wouldn’t lift a finger without profit. I closed my eyes and said hoarsely, “Yes, I am.” All I had left was a sincere heart, but since that heart was trampled and torn apart, I could only tuck it away, never to be seen again.

My sister once appeared before me, cradling her protruding belly. She leaned close and smiled. She resented the Song Family for treating me like a precious pearl, yet she couldn’t help but gloat over her years of plotting. She said, “Sister, you are nothing now.” She then fell down in front of me, and Shen Guichi slapped me. The child was born prematurely and looked just like him.

From the moment I married him, he finally got his wish, repaying the humiliation he had suffered a hundredfold, a thousandfold. But he felt it wasn’t enough. When my sister-in-law had just given birth to my little nephew and Shen Guichi had reached the pinnacle of power, he seized the Song Family’s entire estate. I knelt and begged him. He pinched my chin and chuckled, just as he had when we first met in the snow. I bit my tongue to end my life, only to see his eyes widen in shock. He watched helplessly as blood stained his palms, trembling as he held me, the mockery and contempt on his face not yet fully faded.

He could not stand my pride, so he used every means possible to clip my wings. Seeing me as lowly as a dog must have brought him great satisfaction. My life, however, was destined to be one of disappointment.

I had thought many, many times that if I could start over, I would never be so reckless and arrogant during our first meeting. I would be soft-spoken and smiling, just like my sister-a bit of hypocrisy to win his favor and gain the things I spent so many years and nights praying for.

I thought of so many things, yet now that I have truly returned, I have stepped on his hand once again.

Shen Guichi does not deserve my kindness.

The seventeen-year-old Shen Guichi looks up at me, snow clinging to his long lashes. He grits his teeth and says, “Fortune is fickle, Miss Song. Do not look down on a youth just because he is poor.”

Of course I know that. I meet his eyes, slowly move my foot away, and look him over again. This year, he is destitute enough that he can’t even afford a padded coat in this freezing weather. But a man like him doesn’t need thirty years; in just three years, he will climb to the highest position.

I lean down and whisper softly, “I’m sorry.”

Shen Guichi froze. The snow fluttered and danced through the air like willow catkins. A fine beginning leading to a bitter end-it turned out there had never been a ‘fine beginning’ between Shen Guichi and me; it was all just drifting catkins.

“I’m sorry for making you kneel. I have a bad temper and I’m too overbearing. If you’re unhappy about it, I can kneel back to make amends. In short, it was all my fault. I didn’t look down on you.”

This was the apology I had obsessed over in my previous life, yet never found the chance to say. I was the one who had done wrong, and it had tormented me for a lifetime. I often thought that if not for such a disastrous first meeting, he and I might not have ended up in such a state.

“But I’m only fifteen this year, and we’ve never met before. You don’t like women like me anyway. Rather than the two of us being bound together in a lifetime of misery, it’s better to just call off the engagement, right?”

The sound of the wind faded. The youth kneeling before me tilted his head slightly, his back ramrod straight. His dark eyes stared at me as he said calmly, “How do you know I don’t like ‘women like you’?”

I lost myself for a moment. How could I not know? In my last life, it took me many years to realize the truth. I always thought it was my haughty attitude that earned his loathing, so I gradually restrained my temperament. I became his perfect wife, caring for his subordinates and smoothing his path through officialdom. Back then, he had looked at me with those same eyes.

He had said, “The members of the Song Family have always been hypocrites, but among them, you, Song Yanshu, are the most disgusting.”

I had never brought him joy; there was only ever hatred.

Who would have thought that in this life, the seventeen-year-old version of him would ask me such a question?

I snapped back to reality and looked at the youth kneeling in the snow. I reached out a hand from my warm, white fox-fur-trimmed sleeve, passing through the catkin-like snow to touch his face. He froze. His skin was ice-cold to the touch. It turned out this snow was truly freezing.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a pink hem hiding behind a corridor pillar. It was my younger half-sister. She had loved snatching things from me since she was a child, though she had never won. In my previous life, Shen Guichi was the only thing she ever took from me. I lost my entire life, while their meeting-a timely rescue in the snow-was a match made in heaven.

In my last life, I suppose my interference in their engagement was one of the reasons Shen Guichi hated me so much.

I brushed the thin layer of snow from his shoulders. He continued to look directly at me, refusing to lower his head, as if waiting for an answer. After a moment’s thought, I pointed toward my half-sister. I smiled and said, “You probably like someone like her.”

He asked, “Who is that?”

I replied, “My half-sister, Song Ying.” She had a lovely name. In our previous life, he had built the Yingyue Pavilion for her because of it; it had a pond that could reflect a massive, bright moon.

I had to leave them some time together, so I prepared to take my leave. “You don’t need to kneel anymore. As for calling off the marriage, I will take the blame myself with my father, brother, and the clan elders. You don’t have to worry about your reputation being tarnished. I will give orders to the Song Manor; you can continue to stay here in peace. No one will dare neglect you.”

Shen Guichi remained silent for a long time. Just as I was about to leave with my attendants, the snow drifted past like catkins. Our fate in this life would likely end here. The moment I brushed past Shen Guichi, he reached out with great overstepping and grabbed my wrist. As if afraid of dirtying me, he only used a few fingers to hold me in a light grip.

Snow covered the destitute youth. He lowered his eyes, his voice raspy.

“A first-rank official post and ten thousand acres of fertile land… that is what it takes to be worthy of Miss Song, is it not?”

My maid, Xiao Mian, had seen enough. She snatched his hand away from mine and scolded him on my behalf, “My lady is the eldest miss of the Duke’s Mansion! Which of the men who visit our doors isn’t a prince or a young noble? My lady is more than worthy of the moon in the sky!”

Everyone in the Song Family treated me like a precious pearl. Regarding Shen Guichi, who had suddenly shown up seeking help, even if they were polite on the surface, they were ultimately uncomfortable in their hearts. My father saw that he was destined for greatness, but he told me that Shen Guichi was not a good match. He had suffered too much in his youth, and his pride was no lower than mine; if we stayed together, we would likely become a resentful couple. I hadn’t believed him, but his words became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I placed a hand on Xiao Mian’s arm, and she obediently stepped back and fell silent.

I said, “No.”

Shen Guichi dithered, stunned. I continued walking forward.

The snow continued to fall. I hadn’t lied to him. What I needed wasn’t a first-rank official, nor ten thousand acres of land.

I only wanted my beloved to cherish my heart. That was all. In my previous life, he had failed to do even that.