Pain.
A relentless buzzing filled her ears, and before her eyes swam a dense mass of black-and-white static. From her constricted throat came the fragile, rattling gasps of a windpipe being crushed. Xia Ji’s hands clawed desperately at the source of her agony—her neck—her slender fingers seizing the coarse hemp rope wrapped around it, pulling with all her might.
“Hah—hah-uh!”
Her mind was a blur of ringing noise. The desperate struggle before death unleashed a surge of strength within her. The moment her fingers found the knot and wrenched it loose, Xia Ji tumbled backward onto a stool, her lower back slamming hard against the edge.
“Ouch!”
Pain. Her vision flickered and darkened, she couldn’t catch her breath, her back throbbed fiercely, and her heart pounded wildly. Xia Ji’s breathing sounded like the ragged wheeze of a broken bellows. It was unknown how long she lay on the floor before her mind finally regained a shred of clarity.
She lay in the afternoon sunlight, dazed as she sat up, and looked out toward the house across from her.
…A place she’d never seen.
Where is this? Why is there a stone well outside, and white walls… a village?
Was she trafficked on her way home from work?
Xia Ji’s thoughts gradually pieced themselves back together, and a belated fear began to creep in.
She remembered being hit by a car on her way home from work. Terrified of being struck again, she’d crawled with all her strength toward the other side of the road.
She’d passed out on the road and been trafficked?
No, my phone—!
Xia Ji turned her head and finally got a clear look at the room she was in.
A maiden’s canopy bed, piled with brocade quilts and pillows, hung with sachets and protective charms. On an antique, precious wooden table sat paper, ink, and an inkstone. Beside it was a wooden wardrobe, and next to that, a vanity with a bronze mirror, adorned with gold and jade ornaments, fragrant balms, and lip rouge—everything one could need.
Xia Ji: ?
She closed her eyes, then opened them again. The scene remained the same, and she was even wearing ancient-style robes.
…Transmigrated?
*
Xia Ji sat on the canopy bed for a long while longer. The light outside faded into the glow of sunset, and she finally recovered her composure.
It seemed she’d transmigrated… Just earlier, an ancient person had passed by—dressed like a maidservant, wasn’t she? But when Xia Ji called out to her, the woman ignored her. Xia Ji had stood at the doorway going “Hey! Hey! Hey!” for ages, not daring to shout “Hello there! Sister!” for fear of being taken for a lunatic.
She’d nearly convinced herself she was a ghost, but her face was warm, her neck ached, and when she looked in the bronze mirror, she could see herself.
Though her attire was utterly unfamiliar, it was still her old face—a fair, oval-shaped face with slightly round, delicate almond eyes. It was the kind of face she’d never liked, one that looked honest and easily pushed around. But here, even her dark circles seemed to have vanished.
Maybe ancient people never got the chance to stay up late.
Xia Ji felt a bit of a breakdown coming on and instinctively reached for her phone. If only Xiaohongshu had a tutorial for this too—but there was no Xiaohongshu here, and no phone either.
Fortunately, she’d read enough novels that she wasn’t overly panicked. Though she didn’t understand why other transmigrators always woke up peacefully, while she’d been strangled awake. Her neck still burned with pain.
Gathering information, Xia Ji couldn’t discern much. She only found a letter from the original body’s owner, addressed to no one in particular. She didn’t feel right reading too much of it, and she couldn’t recognize all the characters anyway. It was a suicide note, written in elegant, delicate handwriting. Many of the characters Xia Ji couldn’t read, but after puzzling over it for a long while, using context clues and matching characters she knew, she figured it out: “Father and Mother, your daughter takes her leave first.”
Such a major event, and yet no one had come to check even after all this time. Even the maidservant ignored her, hurrying off to who knows where.
Xia Ji thought to herself: the original body must have been a concubine’s daughter, no doubt about it. There were plenty of novels like this—she’d read them.
Usually, the concubine-born female lead was unloved and despised at home, then a modern person transmigrates into her, and afterward she marries the emperor, the crown prince, a prince, or a great general, and she’d rise to a position second only to the highest, with more money than she could ever spend. That was always how it went.
This time, Xia Ji figured, she’d gotten lucky too—a reward for the overworked wage slave. No more going to work. Surely a beauty system or a strategy system would soon come to bind with her.
Xia Ji waited, not daring to act on her own, until she heard the faint sound of a woman’s weeping from somewhere far off. She could no longer sit still.
What’s that?
Xia Ji stood up uneasily. Her back still ached from the fall, but watching the sun set outside, she steeled herself and walked out, supporting her throbbing waist.
*
Xia Ji had no sense of direction, but she simply followed the faint sound of crying, and by luck stumbled upon the main residence.
It should be the main residence.
The sky had dimmed somewhat. This antique-style estate was enormous, just like the gardens Xia Ji used to visit—except modern gardens were lifeless, while this place was alive. The entire courtyard was vibrant and fragrant: gray brick and dark tiles, lush flowers and trees, the murmur of a small bridge over flowing water, and new scenery at every step. Xia Ji felt as if she’d fallen into a dream.
The crying came from here too. The sky had grown somewhat overcast, and the sobbing within this ancient courtyard was rather unsettling.
What Xia Ji hadn’t expected was that the main residence was packed with people—unnaturally so.
And they were all crying.
One finished crying, another started. Several men paced back and forth inside the house. Xia Ji, unsure of what was happening, didn’t dare go over.
But she couldn’t avoid it.
“Qiu’er!”
The noblewoman inside, who was crying the most heartbreakingly, spotted her. Xia Ji looked around—there was no one else—so she had no choice but to steel herself and step up the stairs.
“Ah, ah…” she replied awkwardly. Having just hanged herself, her voice was strangely hoarse. She clutched her neck and coughed for a long while at the doorway.
“Qiu’er, where have you been?”
The noblewoman beckoned her over, and Xia Ji had no choice but to go to her side. The noblewoman took her hand—an unfamiliar hand touching another unfamiliar hand in this unfamiliar world. Xia Ji felt uneasy. Around her were several daughters close to her age.
All of them were crying.
“Mother, what are we supposed to do?”
“Daughter truly—I really don’t want to! Daughter is scared! Mother!” The youngest daughter shook her head desperately, collapsing to her knees and wailing as she buried herself in the noblewoman’s arms.
Xia Ji’s head was buzzing.
Something felt… off.
The noblewoman held her hand while stroking the youngest daughter’s dark hair with the other.
“Qiu’er, though I am not your birth mother, I have truly wronged you. These years I’ve neglected your upbringing and never let you live as well as your sisters. And now, we are about to…”
As she spoke, she bent lower and lower, covering her face and sobbing loudly.
“Stop crying, all of you!” a middle-aged man in brocade robes shouted from the side. “The Xia family will die with honor even in death! Since we’ve already pledged ourselves to the Second Prince! If his great cause fails, we can descend to the underworld and continue to serve him willingly! The Second Prince will surely achieve greatness one day!”
Xia Ji: ??
Descend to… what?
What did he just say?
“Right…” The noblewoman gritted her teeth and straightened up. “Children, stop crying. The Xia family shall die to prove our loyalty to the Second Prince!”
Die to prove what?
Xia Ji pulled her hand away from the noblewoman. No one paid her any mind at this point. She hurried over to a young girl crouched on the ground crying—clearly dressed as a maidservant—and shook her shoulders.
“Huh?” The maidservant looked up. The moment she saw Xia Ji, obvious disgust flashed across her face. Xia Ji, having been a corporate drone, was well-versed in micro-expressions—this didn’t escape her notice. “What do you want, miss?”
“What exactly is happening to everyone?” Xia Ji swallowed. “Who’s going to die?”
“What do you mean, miss? Of course we’re all going to die!” The maidservant’s eyes widened at her, tears streaming down, and she spoke in a low but forceful voice. “The Xia family is to be executed—the entire household—tonight!”
Xia Ji: ?
Her head buzzed instantly, the noise overwhelming.
“Executed the entire household… why?”
“Have you lost your mind, miss?” The maidservant seemed to think she was just scared senseless. She laughed coldly and explained, “The Xia family is connected to the Second Prince by marriage. From the main house in the capital to our Jinling estate, the whole family has supported the Second Prince’s cause. Now that his cause has failed, we’re all going to be wiped out tonight!”
“I… I’m going to be wiped out too?”
“What else did you expect? You don’t think being born of a concubine would spare you, do you? I was born of a servant, and even I’m not getting out of this!”
Xia Ji didn’t dare ask any more questions. She stood up in a daze, as dizzy as if she’d been hit over the head with a wooden mallet.
Everything was just as she’d guessed.
She really had transmigrated into an unloved concubine-born daughter, and she was connected to a prince.
Xia Ji: …
Connected by helping him rebel.
No wonder the maidservants who’d passed by her courtyard earlier had been in such a hurry. When she’d called out, they hadn’t answered and only ran faster—they were fleeing for their lives.
“The Xia family would rather die than submit!” A thunderous chant suddenly erupted from inside the house, startling Xia Ji.
“Swear to die in loyalty to the Second Prince!”
“The Xia family would rather die than submit!”
“Swear to die in loyalty to the Second Prince!”
“…”
Xia Ji’s ears were filled with the oath-shouting from the main hall in the distance and her own heavy breathing. Firelight was already beginning to blaze outside, voices clamoring. After running out of the main hall in a blank daze, she had been digging with all her might with both hands at the dog hole she’d discovered in her backyard earlier.
Dig.
Dig!
Dig with your damn hands!
The lazybones who usually couldn’t be bothered to move an inch now had tears of desperation on her face. Her clothes, face, and body were all covered in mud, her hands torn and bleeding, yet she kept digging with everything she had.
Dig! Dig! Dig faster!
“Xia family, open the door! Xia family, face your death!”
“The Xia family would rather die than submit!”
Let whoever wanted to die die! She absolutely could not die!
Thinking of the ancient dramas she’d watched, where gleaming silver blades always sliced so effortlessly across people’s necks, Xia Ji’s scalp crawled with terror, and she clawed at the ground even faster.
From the distance came the sound of the main gate being battered. Seeing that she’d dug just about enough, Xia Ji began squeezing herself through with all her might.
Squeeze!
I’m an earthworm! I’m an earthworm! Crawl!
Her hands burst through first, flailing desperately, and then her whole body followed. Xia Ji didn’t dare waste a single moment. Ignoring the pain in her waist, she scrambled to her feet. The firelight behind her illuminated the scene ahead: a vast stretch of overgrown dirt road, and in the far distance, what appeared to be a river or stream.
Exhausted, her waist aching, her neck killing her, she didn’t dare look back. She could only run forward with all her might, but just a few steps out, she tripped and fell.
“Ouch!”
Xia Ji quickly covered her mouth, not daring to look back at what had tripped her. She gathered her skirts and kept running, but after only a few steps, she fell again.
Xia Ji: …
What the hell!
Who dares to delay this lady’s escape!
Furious and enraged, she kicked out violently, and as she turned her head, she met the gaze of the severed head she had just kicked over.
Xia Ji: …?
“AHHHHH!”
Her scream nearly merged with the continuous screams coming from the Xia estate not far away, and gradually, torchlight began to illuminate in her direction.
“Who’s there!”
Many soldiers came running with torches. In Xia Ji’s eyes, those dark figures were like ghosts demanding her life: “Someone’s over there! Chase them!”
“Hmph!”
Xia Ji clamped her hand tightly over her mouth and ran for dear life.
Run!
Whether it was her imagination or not, she could constantly hear screams behind her. She felt like she had fallen into a terrifying nightmare—the pain in her body, the burning on her neck, the exhaustion in her limbs, the tears on her face, the ground beneath her feet, the wind, the air—everything was telling her with absolute clarity that this was no dream.
This was bloody reality.
If she were caught, she’d be beheaded. It had been so long and no system had come to find her—she might have just been unlucky enough to transmigrate here.
She was just an ordinary person. How could she possibly rewrite this terrifying situation on her own?!
Other than running, she could think of no other way.
Run! Run! Run!
“Hah… hah…!”
Her chest heaved violently. Her long skirt had long since been discarded somewhere along the way—she was now only wearing undergarments. The entire way, she didn’t dare look at the ground, afraid of seeing something she shouldn’t.
It wasn’t until she crossed over a small slope and saw the rushing river before her that she was forced to stop.
It was too dark. Xia Ji couldn’t tell how deep the river was. She was frantic, crying and stomping her feet in place, and there were faint footsteps behind her—she could even hear voices!
“What do I do…”
Xia Ji backed up a few steps and was startled when she turned around.
She had come down too quickly earlier and hadn’t noticed, but now she could see clearly.
Beneath the small slope she had just crossed were countless corpses piled up like a stone wall. She knew they were corpses because she could see the face of one—stiff and lifeless. She covered her mouth tightly to keep from screaming.
“Come out!”
“The fifty-three traitors of the Xia family in Jinling have all been eliminated! Come out, fugitive!”
“Come out and die!”
Xia Ji’s entire body went cold.
She couldn’t die!
In her desperation, torchlight gradually filled the sky, illuminating the girl’s naturally gentle face. Her apricot-shaped eyes still held undried tears. The more desperate she became, the clearer her mind grew.
She couldn’t cross the river.
Right, she couldn’t cross the river. She didn’t know how to swim, and the river was too fast.
From her observations, this had to be a time of chaos—otherwise, why would so many corpses be piled up in such a remote place?
Xia Ji quickly crouched low and ran over, turning over the piled corpses one by one. Every time she flipped one over, she wanted to vomit. And of course, the sky was now dyed red, so she could see everything clearly. These corpses had died in extremely cruel ways—some with split skulls and brains spilling out, some decapitated, some with eyes gouged out, some with intestines and brain matter spilling from their stomachs and heads. Even if she were killed, she wouldn’t dare hide beneath these corpses.
Xia Ji was utterly devastated. As she searched through the bodies, she suppressed her nausea and kept silently apologizing in her heart. She just wanted to find one that was presentable enough not to scare her to death. Time was running out. She went to the other side and had just flipped over a corpse when she was startled.
Scared her half to death.
The corpse before her was facing her direction, eyes wide open.
The moment Xia Ji saw this corpse’s face, her scalp went numb and her mind went completely blank.
It wasn’t that this corpse was terrifying in any way.
Quite the opposite.
This corpse seemed to have no injuries at all.
It was the corpse of a youth, extraordinarily beautiful—beautiful to an unnatural degree. Xia Ji couldn’t even tell the youth’s gender. Under the blazing torchlight, his pale skin was stained with splashes of thick crimson blood. A few strands of shoulder-length black hair hung across his deathly white face. Those extraordinarily beautiful eyes held no light at all, their dark pupils staring vacantly at her, unblinking.
It was like she had uncovered a beautiful doll—slim, pale, so beautiful that seeing it at this moment was more terrifying than seeing a ghost. It sent chills down her spine.
But in an instant, Xia Ji’s thoughts changed.
Poor thing.
They were all poor souls who had died.
“I’m sorry.”
The other corpses were too gruesome in death. Only this one—too beautiful, too intact—was something she could barely bring herself to accept.
Xia Ji was out of time.
She threw herself onto the body of the young man, piling the other overturned corpses on top of herself, pressing down as much as she could. To avoid being discovered, she could only cling ever more tightly to the body of the youth beneath her, burying her entire body within the pile of corpses.