Suona horns wailed, incense smoke curled upward.
The young woman kneeling on the ground slowly opened her eyes, a flicker of bewilderment passing through them.
Hadn’t she died?
“Miss, this servant knows you’re upset that the master has taken a second wife, but your arm can’t twist against the thigh. Even the old madam has agreed, and the ceremony has already been completed up front. Please stop being stubborn—just lower your head to the master, admit your mistake, and leave this ancestral hall!”
“The master still cares for you. If you keep being this obstinate and alienate yourself from him, you’ll only make those mother and daughter pair happy.”
Yun Xuesheng recognized the voice as that of her personal maid, Banxia. She slowly raised her head, her gaze coming to rest on the memorial tablet before her.
“Beloved departed wife, Yun Mother, née He, styled Erxiang, lotus seat in the Western Paradise.”
It was her mother’s memorial tablet.
Yun Xuesheng remembered now. In the year she turned thirteen, barely a year after her mother’s death, her father had married the widow of her second uncle. She had objected, and her father had locked her in the ancestral hall to reflect on her behavior.
That reflection had lasted for days, and she was only released after the new wife’s third-day return visit to her natal home.
So she had been reborn, returned to the year she was thirteen.
Two streams of clear tears spilled from her eyes, and Yun Xuesheng’s heart clenched in pain. The agonizing, despairing memories of her previous life surged up all at once, and the pain bent her over.
“Miss, what’s wrong? Please don’t frighten this servant.”
Yun Xuesheng was in too much pain to speak, able only to shake her head helplessly.
In her previous life, because she had opposed her father marrying her second aunt, she had been punished by kneeling in the ancestral hall. By the time she was released, her second aunt had already become her new mother, and she had also learned that her second uncle, dead for three years, had returned from the grave—only to be a cripple with both legs broken.
Whatever arrangement her father and second uncle had reached, her second aunt had still come over with her cousin Yun Man in tow.
But what she hadn’t expected was that her nightmare was only just beginning.
From the moment Yun Man came to the main branch with her second aunt, her father and brothers gave all the affection that had once belonged to Yun Xuesheng to Yun Man.
They used Yun Man’s youth as an excuse to make her yield to Yun Man at every turn. If she showed the slightest resistance, they accused her of being unworthy of the title of elder sister. They suppressed and belittled her at every opportunity.
She had thought they were merely sympathizing with Yun Man’s plight, and that if she just became a little more understanding, they would dote on her as they once had.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Her forbearance only earned her harsher treatment, until they even gave her betrothed marriage to Yun Man and made her take Yun Man’s place in marrying the ailing crown prince to ward off his illness.
But before the bridal sedan had even reached its destination, the crown prince was dead.
She had thought she’d escaped disaster, never imagining that her father and brothers, to appease the imperial family’s wrath, would simply strangle her and send her into the Eastern Palace to be wed to the crown prince in a ghost marriage.
Inside the ancestral hall, Yun Xuesheng clutched her throat as that suffocating sensation crept back over her like a bone-deep affliction.
Her father and brothers’ words still rang in her ears.
Her eldest brother had said: “In music, chess, calligraphy, painting, and needlework, you’re no match for Manman. All you do all day is fiddle with your useless weeds. Taking you out is an embarrassment. Being able to enter a ghost marriage with the crown prince is your good fortune—you’ll still enjoy the honor of being Crown Princess in the underworld. So go in peace!”
But he had forgotten that it was the sachets and medicinal dishes she had made from those “useless weeds” that had won him favor with his superiors and earned him his promotions and titles.
Back then, he hadn’t found her embarrassing at all.
Then there was her second brother, who had accused her: “You’re thoughtless and carefree, with nothing in your eyes but medical texts. You don’t know how to please Grandmother, and you’re nowhere near as good as Manman at making friends. You’re utterly useless. Taking Manman’s place to marry the crown prince is the only contribution you’ve ever made to this family.”
She might not have been as smooth and silver-tongued as Yun Man, but he had forgotten that his entry into the Qianniu Guards was an opportunity she had earned by treating an honored personage.
Back then, he hadn’t called her useless.
And her third brother had actually accused her of wasting money: “One measly weed of yours costs over a thousand taels of silver. Because of buying your weeds, Manman missed out on the Treasure Pavilion’s newest jewelry, and she got mocked at the banquet because of it. You owe Manman this—you need to repay her.”
But he had forgotten that the pill made from that “weed” had been sold by him at ten times the price, and he had given every single tael of that silver to Yun Man.
Back then, he hadn’t complained about her wasting money.
As for her father—the man who had married his own younger brother’s wife—he looked at her like she was a piece of garbage about to be thrown away.
Cold.
Heartless.
“Miss! Miss! Someone come quick—Miss is dying!”
Banxia’s shrill voice pulled her back from the endless torment, and by the time she came to her senses, the door of the ancestral hall had already been thrown open.
“What’s all this shouting? Today is the master’s happy day. Keep yapping, you little wretch, and don’t blame me if I report you to the old madam and have you sold off.”
The old woman guarding the door was fierce and unreasonable, looking at Yun Xuesheng with contempt and a hint of ill omen.
“Can’t you see the eldest miss is ill? You—”
“Banxia, enough.”
Yun Xuesheng took hold of Banxia’s hand and stood up, looking at the old woman. “I want to go out.”
“To admit my mistake to Father.”
She had been wrong. She had been wrong to trust so completely in the bonds of blood, allowing them to push her into an abyss and cost her her life.
Since heaven had granted her a second chance at life, she would never repeat the mistakes of her previous incarnation.
To hell with blood ties—in this life, no one would ever use family bonds to hold her hostage again.
The sounds of celebration from the front courtyard had already faded, and the flower hall was as silent as a monstrous beast with its jaws wide open.
The moment Yun Xuesheng walked in, her gaze was drawn to the man seated in the chair.
His legs were hidden beneath a blanket, a loose blue brocade robe hanging carelessly from his frame, and his eyes were as calm and unruffled as an ancient well, as if nothing in the world could capture his attention.
It was her second uncle—the man who had been dead for three years and had now returned from the grave.
In her previous life, she had hated this man deeply, believing that if not for his faked death, his wife would never have married her father, and Yun Man would never have become her father’s daughter, stealing away her father and brother.
But now, as Yun Xuesheng looked at this imperial war god—his legs crippled, his wife remarried, his daughter refusing to acknowledge him, his body withered and gaunt, utterly alone and forsaken—a feeling of kinship born of shared suffering welled up in her heart.
She had lost her father and brother; he had lost his wife and daughter.
Inside the room, her father, Yun Ting, was rambling on with explanations. When he finally finished, Old Madame Yun, seated in the place of honor above, delivered the final verdict, at last eliciting a single word from the man across from her: “Agreed.”
And so, this absurd marriage of an elder brother taking his younger brother’s wife could no longer be changed.
Seeing that the man in the wheelchair was about to leave, Yun Xuesheng stepped forward.
“Grandmother, Father’s marriage to Second Aunt was already unacceptable to the world. Now that Second Uncle has returned home, if the main branch offers no gesture of recompense, would it not make outsiders think that Father is bullying Second Uncle? This would harm Father’s reputation. I beg Grandmother to reconsider.”
At the sight of Yun Xuesheng, Yun Ting immediately flew into a rage. “Who let this unfilial girl out? Someone drag her away!”
But Yun Xuesheng’s words carried weight, and it was precisely this concern that had made Old Madame Yun hesitate to approve the marriage all along—until now. At this moment, however, Old Madame Yun waved off the servants who had moved to act and turned her gaze to Yun Xuesheng.
“What do you propose?”
“It’s simple!”
Meeting the eyes of everyone in the room, Yun Xuesheng clenched her fists and declared in a clear voice: “Since Father has taken Second Uncle’s wife and daughter, then let him return a daughter to Second Uncle instead.”
“Your granddaughter requests to be adopted into Second Uncle’s line, to care for him in his old age and see to his funeral rites.”
“I beg Grandmother to grant this.”