In the fifth year of the Ruifeng era, the Eldest Princess of the Great Xia, Song Shiwei, was married off.
The imperial line of Great Xia was thin on descendants. The Eldest Princess, eighteen years of age, had been granted the title Xingxia at birth, meaning the prosperity of Great Xia. This title alone was enough to show the Late Emperor’s deep affection and high regard for her.
And this also destined that this day would be extraordinarily bustling and celebrated nationwide.
“Is he here? Is he here?” Such inquiries would ripple through the crowds packed tightly along both sides of Zhenganyang Gate Avenue to watch the excitement.
Yet someone would always reply impatiently.
“Soon! Soon! What’s the rush?”
Every street and alley, both sides of the roads, and the surrounding shops and palaces were draped in rouge-red silk gauze. The vast capital seemed enveloped in a sea of red. Bands stationed at the four corners of the capital beat gongs and drums that shook the sky, striving to render the Eldest Princess’s grand wedding with festive joy, causing countless young ladies in their boudoirs to shed tears of envy, after all, the man marrying her was the Second Young Master of the Shen residence, the legitimate eldest son, Shen Lan.
Speaking of this Shen Lan, he is a man of peerless talent and jade-like elegance. Although his father only reached the fifth rank as an official, he was naturally blessed with transcendent looks. What’s more, at age eight he could write eloquently and converse effortlessly with the great literary master Xu Xiang, and at fourteen he practiced martial arts, holding his own against the Mighty Great General. He is a rare, versatile talent in both civil and military arts. If allowed to grow, his future achievements will surely far surpass his father’s!
Not far away, a storyteller spoke passionately, accompanied by the roaring gongs and drums.
A few cheers would erupt from the onlookers, but someone continued.
“And then?”
“And then? You must be new here!”
Hearing this, someone replied with disdain, though it did not affect the storyteller’s performance at all.
“Yet just such an outstanding young talent has to marry the Eldest Princess. Marry anyone else, why must it be the Eldest Princess!”
The Eldest Princess of Great Xia! Her very name made anyone who heard it sigh.
“Old Zhang, since you feel so bad for Second Young Master Shen, why don’t you marry her instead? The Shen residence would surely treat you like an ancestor!”
Old Zhang laughed and scolded back.
“Heh! You can speak carelessly, but you can’t say things like that. The Eldest Princess, she is not someone we can enjoy.”
A knowing, masculine laughter rippled through the crowd.
Yet scenes like this were simultaneously playing out in every corner of the imperial capital.
Criticism of the Eldest Princess, mockery of Shen Lan, either way, nobody held out any hope for them!
Ah!
You say the Eldest Princess isn’t good?
How could she not be good! Think about it: the Eldest Princess enjoyed the deep favor of two successive sovereigns of Great Xia, the Late Emperor and the new Emperor. She possessed the beauty of a fish sinking and geese alighting, the countenance of jade-like flowers. Being matched with her should have been a match made in heaven, a union of gold and jade. Given Shen Lan’s status, betrothing her to him was an elevation of his station. To call it a leap to the heavens would be no exaggeration!
Yet, alas, she had a frail constitution!
So frail that even the renowned divine physician had once pronounced that Her Highness the Eldest Princess would not live past her twentieth year, and the grand preceptor had even divined that she was fated to perish at twenty!
If she were merely a maiden of an ordinary family, that would be one thing.
But the Eldest Princess was a member of the imperial clan! When a member of the imperial family passes away, their family members must accompany them in death.
To put it bluntly, isn’t that being buried alive?!
She was the person in the entire capital, nay, the entire Great Xia, whom no one dared to marry!
A woman like that, who would dare to want her?
To marry her was to court death!
She was a total jinx!
Furthermore, perhaps due to her innate frailty, it was beyond doubt that the Eldest Princess had been doted on since childhood. Whether it was the former emperor or the current new emperor, both had guarded her like the apple of their eye.
Now, under the guise of marriage to favor the Shen family, it was likely that Second Young Master Shen would still end up in a matrilocal marriage.
Once he became a matrilocal son-in-law, he could kiss his dreams of high official rank and noble status goodbye!
Everyone understood this clearly in their hearts and simply waited to make a laughingstock of him!
Thinking this, the onlookers along the curb looked at Shen Lan, who sat proudly atop a fine steed, dressed in a crimson groom’s robe, looking dashing and unrestrained, with eyes full of involuntary pity.
To think that Shen Lan was also brilliantly talented, yet he could not escape the watchful eye of the royal family. What a pity, what a pity!
And the Shen Lan sitting high on the steed,
Oh no! To be exact, Shen Yu!
Shen Yu rode the fine steed with eyes bright like stars and thin lips pressed tightly together. Her face still retained a hint of youthful baby fat, yet it was exquisite. The vulgar whispers drifting over from time to time made her frown repeatedly.
The onlookers wore an “I knew it” expression: As expected, Second Young Master Shen is also unwilling!
Young ladies leaned against the railings, covering their faces and weeping: Second Young Master.
In reality, however, Shen Lan, or rather Shen Yu, was simply lost in deep thought.
Shen Yu glanced around her a few times. After yesterday’s deep reflection and settling of her mind, she finally confirmed one fact!
She had transmigrated again!
To be precise, she had returned!
That being said, this was already her second time marrying the Eldest Princess.
Reincarnation truly was a circle!
The first time she married, also her first life, she was merely a daughter of the Shen family cloistered in her boudoir, an unloved legitimate daughter, and the younger sister of the renowned Shen Lan.
Two months ago, a marriage decree was sent from the imperial palace. The object of the marriage was the most noble woman in Great Xia, Eldest Princess Xingxia.
The very next day, Shen Lan fled and went missing. After the Shen family conducted numerous secret searches to no avail, they naturally had no way to defy the Emperor’s summons. Thus,
Perhaps blessed by sharing the same mother, she and Shen Lan had looked almost identical since childhood, and their builds were remarkably similar. If one had to score it, her resemblance to Shen Lan reached ninety-nine percent!
In their panic, she logically underwent two months of intensive training and transformation, turning into Shen Lan.
Recalling the vague warnings she had dimly heard when her eyes were dazed upon transmigrating back yesterday, she sneered.
Heh!
Shen Yu curled her lips in a cold smile, her open brows carrying a hint of sarcasm.
For the righteousness of the family! Go to hell. If the Shen family feared death, did Shen Yu not fear death either? The crime of deceiving the emperor, if discovered, how could her Shen family ever think they would escape it?
Shen Yu scoffed ruthlessly in her heart. In the blink of an eye, she reached the city gate, a good spot.
In her first life, she had seized this exact moment to dash toward the moat outside the city gate and leap right in.
And then,
Shen Yu tightened her grip on the reins and pursed her lips, as if recalling the dreamlike events of a few days ago. Her gaze burned with dark intensity as she stared fixedly in the direction of the moat for a long while with eager longing. Then, as if remembering something, her gaze froze. Finally, she stiffly pulled the reins, guided the horse, turned around, and began circling the city wall.
Forget it!
What use was going there again? Mortal ties remained unsevered; in the end, she had no affinity for ascending the immortal ladder.
Thinking of the reason she had been kicked off the immortal ladder, a trace of bitterness welled up in Shen Yu’s heart.
Mortal ties.
To think that Shen Yu had relied on a stroke of fortune to shed her mortal skin and bones, cultivating for a hundred years with brilliant talent. Honored as the number one monstrosity of all races, she had thought she could ascend to the heavens in a single step, completely free of earthly bonds. Yet she was struck down from the immortal ladder with a single phrase: mortal ties unsevered, resulting in the destruction of her body and the dissipation of her soul!
Recalling the glories of her past, her infinite splendor, Shen Yu’s long-tranquil heart was squeezed and kneaded mercilessly by a giant hand. The sourness was extraordinary, and the bitterness indescribable, ultimately, it was sheer resentment!
How could she be reconciled?!
Shen Yu let out an involuntary, long sigh!
Mortal ties, was it?
Where on earth were her mortal ties?
Amidst her distress, little did she know that this sigh fell into the eyes of others and was engraved in their hearts.
Shen Yu knitted her brows deeply in her mind, pondering whether to take advantage of the city-circling ritual to sort things out properly.
She then composed her expression, looked at the long road ahead, and sighed yet again. Circling the city three times was hardly something this body could endure.
She really didn’t know what Great Xia was thinking! According to the rules, she had to circle the city three times with gongs and drums blaring so the whole city could hear, and then return at dusk to wed the princess.
Her beautiful eyes lowered with helplessness. Relying on her soul, which had likely grown strong through multiple reincarnations, she managed to tentatively connect with the meager spiritual energy of this realm and silently recited the Gangcuo Moluo Incantation in her heart.
She had once picked this up in a secret realm. The author possessed extraordinarily profound medical skills, actually dissecting the human body into words so that one could mobilize the five elements of physical strength while reciting, resonating with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to achieve the effect of clearing the meridians and cleansing the marrow. Just reciting it could strengthen tendons and bones, truly astonishing!
It was originally a rare act of great merit.
It was only when she wanted to spread it that she discovered it only worked on people without spiritual roots. Yet she lived in an unprecedented golden age of cultivation; even the worst practitioners possessed mixed spiritual roots, and those without spiritual roots were vanishingly rare. Thus, she had regretfully let the matter drop.
Fortunately, her current body lacked spiritual roots. A cultivation technique she once had no use for had now conveniently benefited her present self, as if tailored specifically for her.
However, speaking of being tailored,
Shen Yu recalled a delicate figure from the dust of her memory.
Since she had decided to stay and sever her mortal ties, she naturally could not return to the cultivation world for the time being.
And she deduced that her mortal ties should lie either within the Shen family or with the Eldest Princess.
Of course, she couldn’t rule out the possibility that they hadn’t appeared yet, but in most cases, mortal ties arose with people who were already connected to oneself, unless it was a fated partner, otherwise, such situations could basically be discounted.
Aside from the Shen family, the only person connected to her was the Eldest Princess, whom she had half-jilted by fleeing the wedding.
If it were the Shen family, it should be a bond of birth and upbringing; but if it were the Eldest Princess, it ought to be a bond of matrimony. She thought of how in her past life, she had eagerly rushed to break free of destiny, leaving that single woman behind. Although she was an imperial princess, the gossip and slander she had to endure would certainly be no less.
With this thought, her gaze dimmed somewhat.
Psychologically, she was undoubtedly more inclined toward the Eldest Princess, but logically, she felt it was more likely the Shen family, seeing as the Shen family raising her was an indisputable fact, even if life with them hadn’t been good.
As for the Eldest Princess,
The one who should have formed a bond with the Eldest Princess was Shen Lan, not Shen Yu. Yet Her Highness the Eldest Princess’s reputation had indeed been ruined because of her own impulsiveness, that was also a fact!
Sigh!
No matter what, she could no longer return to the Shen family, nor could she have much contact with them anymore, regardless of emotion or her current identity!
And the only person she could rely on now was Her Highness the Eldest Princess.
Her usually calm eyes could not help but ripple.
Perhaps the Gangcuo Moluo Incantation could become her token of allegiance?
After all, whether according to market rumors or imperial attestation, this Eldest Princess’s health was truly poor indeed!
She remembered the pretext for this marriage: on the surface, the imperial family took a fancy to Shen Lan’s upstanding appearance and youthful talent; the Eldest Princess had fallen for him and wished to join hands in perfect harmony. In reality, it was merely an attempt to ward off bad luck by marrying to bring about a positive turn of fortune for the Eldest Princess, purge evil pollutions, and extend the life of the Eldest Princess.
Only,
How should she put it?
Words coming from an unknown source would certainly not be trusted by the high-ranking Eldest Princess. But if she offered them herself, it felt inappropriate, what if they didn’t work? Wouldn’t that count as the crime of deceiving the emperor?
Sigh!
What a headache!
How troublesome!
Shen Yu smacked her lips with a sense of boredom.
Just as her shoulders slumped, she seemed to remember something and quickly straightened them up again, maintaining a rare bit of idol baggage.
She cast a helpless glance at the grand, flag-waving procession behind her, complete with gongs, drums, and soldiers lurking within, whose vague, probing gazes made it seem as though they were monitoring a criminal.
At the same time, she felt increasingly amazed, marveling at her own good luck in her past life. Under such strict surveillance, she had actually managed to carve out a path of free ascension purely by sheer pluck.
Suppressing the emotion in her heart, she maintained a solemn and icy expression on her face.
Scanning the surroundings casually, she saw they hadn’t even reached the halfway point of the first lap. With a few sweeping glances, she took in the general layout of the environment. Actually, there was no real need to do this; it was simply that if she didn’t do something, she would be terribly bored, having long since passed the age where she needed to consciously recite incantations to drive spells.
The incantation circulated through her body on its own. Her physical constitution was improving at a rate visible to the naked eye; her seemingly frail body was gradually imbued with quite robust tendon and bone strength, and she could clearly feel the muscles all over her body growing tighter and firmer.
In just a brief moment, her overall physical fitness underwent a qualitative leap, though this was also aided by the fact that her current physical foundation wasn’t strong, allowing her to reap such clear changes after nourishment. If it were that Eldest Princess, the effect should be even more obvious! In this short amount of time, it might even be enough to elevate her to leap eight feet high!
Amused by her own thought, the corners of her lips curved into an extremely bright smile. The sunlight blazed behind her, and her eyes shimmered brilliantly. Fortunately, she was riding at the very front, so no one else knew.
The May sun baked down fiercely on her back.
Tch! This sun was scorching, stinging fiercely and making one want to wilt.
After walking for a while longer, the first lap was more than half over, and the sun had climbed straight overhead. Shen Yu covertly cast a sidelong glance at a general behind her, then looked with a sudden sense of intuition toward a certain city watchtower on her right-rear, growing thoughtful.
Up on a certain city watchtower
“Your Highness, we should go. If we don’t leave now, we’ll run out of time.”
From the shadows of a side alcove came a guard’s respectful voice.
The woman’s brows drooped slightly, and her fan-like eyelashes fluttered rapidly twice.
“Let’s go, Dongzhu.”
Standing beside the tower window, having just finished peering at the distant, sprawling wedding procession, Song Shiwei bathed in the sunlight filtering through the narrow embrasure. It cast a bright beam across her brows and eyes, making her already sickly cheeks appear even paler. The glaring light masked the calculating depths of her eyes, but when she turned her head, she displayed a just-right cleverness, like a mischievous, cute, and harmless cat.
Her voice carried a rare nobility, yet held a trace of unperceived wilfulness, ringing like jade bells.
“Who knows what is so special about this groom? Seeing him now, he’s just got a good-looking skin.”
With that, she shifted her gaze away from the receding wedding party, wearily raising a hand. The guards in the dark stepped forward to support her as she walked toward the companion ladder leading down the watchtower.
Her other hand held a handkerchief pressed against her lips, and she tilted her head to cough twice. The sickly delicacy made her all the more pitiful!
It was enough to wrench one’s heart.
What was even more astonishing was that, despite it already being the month of May, she was still wearing winter cotton robes!
Down below, the anxiously waiting welcoming party from the Princess’s estate saw the faint silhouette emerging on the ladder. Their hearts relaxed, only to tighten again.
The lead matron snapped back to her senses and reprimanded the surroundings, “What are all of you staring blankly for?! Hurry up and go support Her Highness the Princess! If Her Highness trips or hurts herself anywhere, can any of you bear the responsibility?!”
Hearing this, the guards quickly and orderly lined both sides of the ladder. Song Shiwei watched the slightly restless crowd and found it rather amusing in her heart.
“Mother Yu, you’d better stop scolding them. They didn’t do anything, but they scared me instead!” The Eldest Princess, stepping down gracefully with the gentle support of the others, smiled coquettishly while covering her sleeve.
Her brows curved in a smile, radiating an ineffable, lively beauty. The sickly aura was masked, and those limpid, beautiful eyes made one unable to help wanting to cherish her.
That matron immediately slapped her thighs and chuckled bitterly, “Aigo! My little ancestor! Such a dangerous place like the city wall, what on earth were you going up there for?! If anything had happened to you, what would have become of us!”
With that, she took out a lined robe she had prepared beforehand, draped it over Song Shiwei, and handed her a hand warmer. Evidently, the coughing sounds on the watchtower had not escaped this matron’s ears.
One had to know that the city wall was a military installation, and while the steps weren’t built as narrow as those at the border passes, they were naturally much steeper and crabbier than the ones the Princess walked on daily. Ordinary soldiers often tripped, injured themselves, or sprained their ankles, let alone the Eldest Princess, who had been sickly since childhood!
On normal days, Her Highness was a delicate doll who gasped at every step, so how could she possibly be at ease in such a dangerous place today?!
“Mother Yu, don’t I still have Dongzhu!”
Song Shiwei tightened her grip on the hand warmer and acted coquettishly. The comforting warmth allowed her icy hands to temporarily recover a normal person’s temperature, which pleased her greatly.
Hearing this, Mother Yu finally cast her gaze toward Dongzhu standing behind the Eldest Princess, shooting her a glare so fierce it practically radiated murderous intent. Sensing this murderous intent, Dongzhu guiltily retreated half a step backward, feeling a grievance she had nowhere to voice.
How unjust! It was the Eldest Princess’s command; I didn’t dare not listen!
The matron’s surname was Yu, called Mother Yu, which also meant surplus grain. She had been born into a destitute and bitter life, but fortunately, she was chosen by someone in the then-Prime Minister’s estate to be the wet nurse of the Prime Minister’s young miss, that is, Song Shiwei’s mother, Empress Rongrui, who was now the Empress Dowager.
Song Shiwei had been sickly since birth, and the Empress, taking pity on her, specifically bestowed her own wet nurse, Mother Yu, to serve her closely. And this service had lasted for eighteen years!
Mother Yu had successively served the two most noble women of Great Xia, and her weight within the Eldest Princess’s estate was naturally of incomparable heft. Added to her childhood care, Song Shiwei held an inexpressible intimacy toward her.
“Having Dongzhu isn’t enough! What if something had gone wrong with you? You know His Majesty’s temper.”
Mother Yu lectured earnestly by her side. Song Shiwei pouted and ultimately said nothing.
Because it was true; she understood her younger brother.
She understood how highly her younger brother regarded her health.
“Your Highness, we should head back. We’ve already delayed quite a bit of time.”
Seeing a flash of worry knit between Song Shiwei’s brows, Mother Yu finally couldn’t bear it any longer. Uttering a soft remark, she motioned to support Song Shiwei as she boarded the carriage.
Song Shiwei sat quietly inside the carriage. The interior was inlaid with gold and jade, luxurious and extravagant. The seating couch was made of the finest cloud brocade and golden silk cotton, with a brazier placed right in the middle, radiating steamy heat. If anyone else were here in this May weather, they would surely be roasting hot, but for Song Shiwei, it was just right.
The bustle and liveliness of the street drifted into her ears. The windows were tightly pressed down without leaving a single narrow crack. Song Shiwei’s head bobbed forward slightly, her heart itching as if scratched by a cat’s paw.
“Mother Yu, I feel stuffy. Open a window, won’t you?”
“Alright.”
How could Mother Yu not know what was on her mind? Hesitating for a moment, she ultimately relented, thinking that Her Highness hadn’t been able to come out for a long time. With a sigh, she cracked open a narrow slit.
The slit admitted a refreshing breeze from the outside world, mixed with the aura of mortal life, instantly injecting a few sparks of vitality into the previously sealed and stuffy carriage.
The previous displeasure was seemingly tossed behind her in an instant.
Song Shiwei’s gaze locked intently onto the world outside that slit, her eyes shining brilliantly and carrying a hint of craving. Yet she said nothing, merely staring ardently.
All along the bustling road until they reached the Princess’s estate, Song Shiwei still felt a lingering sense of unfulfillment. Such an experience was a rare treat for her.