“By oral decree of His Majesty: Zhao Wu’er of the Imperial Tea and Meal Kitchen, Wen Fan, a maid of the Imperial Food Service, Wang Zhongbao of the Wine Cellar… and fifteen others are to be taken to the Shenxing Department for strict interrogation. If any illegalities are found, there is no need to report back to Us; turn them over to the Chongming Hall for disposal.”
“Tell me, who ordered you to put drugs in the Eighth Prince’s food?”
“It was Auntie Fan! Auntie Fan is one of the Empress’s people!”
“The maid Wen Fan has been found guilty of plotting to harm a prince. Grant her the white silk.”
…
Wen Fan jolted awake from her nightmare. Even though she had been living a second life for several days now, she could still feel the suffocation of her previous existence.
The white silk was soft, but once hung over a beam, it was no less deadly than a steel blade. She had been bound hand and foot and hoisted up, while the head eunuch from Consort Shu’s palace covered his nose in disgust.
“Once someone passes, things inevitably get filthy. You lot come back and clean up in a while.”
A minor eunuch standing nearby, wearing a robe with a quail rank patch, said with a flattering smile, “You might not know, but this Auntie Fan is incredibly stubborn. Look, she hasn’t touched a drop of water or a grain of rice for three to five days; she’s quite clean.”
With that, he spat. In this palace, there were far too many wronged souls who didn’t even know how they died. What did it matter if she had received her name from the Empress Dowager? What did it matter if her culinary skills were extraordinary? In the end, she had simply stood in someone else’s way.
Wen Fan was not yet dead. The white silk dug deep into her neck. The sensation of death caused the word “innocent” to stick in her throat.
She heard the head eunuch instruct the minor one: “Are the flower jams and various fruit wines Auntie Fan made by hand still there? Her Ladyship was just sighing about the waste. It doesn’t matter if the person dies; what matters is that the Emperor likes those things. Go keep an eye on the juniors and move everything to Her Ladyship’s palace…”
The minor eunuch bowed and scraped. “That goes without saying. Auntie Fan also had some unfinished sauces. My master is already testing them one by one… Oh, why has Auntie Fan gone silent?”
Wen Fan could feel herself gradually growing cold, her limbs ceasing their struggle.
At this moment, all her resentment transformed into bone-deep hatred. But that hatred turned into a thin mist the moment she heard the eunuchs’ words.
If the white silk around her neck hadn’t been tightening, she almost would have let out a cold laugh.
Did they really think her things were that easy to take?
Whether it was the flower jams, the fruit wines, or the various sauce recipes she had researched herself—if the preservation or usage methods were incorrect, the items would easily take on a scent of decay and rot. If someone were careless enough to ingest them, the best-case scenario was vomiting and diarrhea; the worst was coughing up blood incessantly.
The feeling of suffocation surged like a tide. Wen Fan’s vision went black. But death was so long—and in that long darkness, various scenes from her past surfaced.
“My child, it’s not that Mother doesn’t love you, but there truly is no other way. If we don’t sell you, how will our family survive this winter?”
“This little girl is clever. Three strings of copper coins—I’ll consider it a favor to you.”
“Dead girl! It is your blessing to enter the palace in place of my son! Go quickly, and stop making a scene.”
…
Her body went through fits of cold and heat until finally, everything returned to silence.
People came and went. In the end, she didn’t know who had collected her remains. Incense, candles, and paper ash filled the air, followed by a mound of yellow earth. Wen Fan was reborn.
However, she was no longer the twenty-six-year-old “Auntie Fan” of the Great Xia Dynasty, but a seventeen-year-old girl who was currently a student.
Wen Fan sat on the edge of the bed. The horizon was already turning the color of a fish’s belly. Through the white gauze curtains, the light illuminated this modest room.
After several days of being reborn in this shell, Wen Fan already knew what all the objects in the room were called.
For example, that transparent, smooth material—harder than the glass sent as tribute from foreign lands to the Emperor’s palace—was called tempered glass.
The device that could boil water simply by plugging a black three-pronged plug into the wall was called a kettle.
And then there was that magical small box that could talk to people thousands of miles away just by pressing numbers—it was called a cell phone.
Wen Fan poured herself a glass of water and remained silent for a moment.
It had been several days since she woke up, yet she still couldn’t escape the nightmare.
The suffocation of being tightly bound by white silk wrapped around her again and again. Upon waking, she always needed to take deep breaths to regain the sense of reality that she was alive in this world.
Who exactly had harmed her?
Wen Fan wasn’t sure. The truth was obscured, and thinking about it gave her a splitting headache.
Since it hurt to think about, she wouldn’t.
Wen Fan gave a self-mocking smile. After waking up, she had clumsily tried to search for anything regarding the Great Xia Dynasty on that black box called a cell phone. But after a careful search, she discovered that in the long river of history, the Great Xia period had never actually existed.
Even the Emperor had been ousted from power a hundred years ago.
Nowadays, although there was still a gap between the rich and the poor, this era forbade the buying and selling of human beings. Even commoners could enjoy various conveniences.
Under these convenient circumstances, however, a book had appeared in Wen Fan’s mind.
It was quite miraculous; the book seemed to have appeared out of thin air. It took Wen Fan three days to digest the contents.
The book told a story of the love, hatred, and entanglements of a man and a woman. At first, she found it interesting, but gradually it became tedious to her. It was much like those scripts written by poor, failed scholars—full of incomprehensible stories of talented scholars and beautiful ladies.
The “Wen Fan” with the same name as her had become a clownish figure in the story.
The more Wen Fan read, the more she frowned.
The “Wen Fan” in the book was clearly the “her” of the present. This girl was an orphan who grew up in an orphanage until she was five or six, at which point she was adopted by her current parents.
Although the parents were in financial distress, they had created a reasonably good environment for her.
“Wen Fan” had entered a private high school and was in the same class as the male and female leads. Naturally, she fell in love with the boy and began to gravitate toward him uncontrollably.
As for the male lead, because he was always quarreling with the female lead, he accepted “Wen Fan’s” kindness to stir the female lead’s heart, wavering between the two girls.
Perhaps love makes one feel inferior, or perhaps “Wen Fan,” coming from an orphanage, lacked a sense of security. Over time, her behavior became increasingly outrageous.
She stopped studying hard and instead spent all day obsessed with the male lead, eventually neglecting her education.
To buy a birthday gift for the male lead, she emptied all her New Year’s money and even stole money from her parents to buy a pair of supposedly “limited edition” shoes for him.
To outshine the female lead, she lied and claimed she was the eldest daughter of the XX Group, putting on airs wherever she went. Little did she know that within the male and female leads’ social circle, her true identity was no secret at all.
Finally, the male lead’s friends made a bet, saying that if the male lead sent her a message asking her to elope, she would definitely go.
—The original “Wen Fan” did indeed go.
But the male lead didn’t care about any of her actions.
“Wen Fan” waited at the train station all night, while the male lead was busy comforting the female lead, who had finally shown signs of jealousy.
No one cared about this girl’s burning love. Ultimately, she returned home with a high fever.
Wen Fan had transmigrated at that point and finished reading the story of the first half of “Wen Fan’s” life with a frown.
In the second half of the book, “Wen Fan” became even more delusional. The male lead’s hot-and-cold attitude drove her mad, and she made even more mistakes. Eventually, she served as the bridge to clear up all the misunderstandings between the male and female leads, only to jump from a high building herself…
Wen Fan let out a long sigh.
Admittedly, the original host wasn’t clever enough to see through the malice hidden behind those so-called “youthful feelings.”
But the protagonists of this story weren’t necessarily noble either.
The male lead and his group of “foxy friends” repeatedly played the original host like a fool, and the male lead used “Wen Fan” as a tool to provoke the female lead.
If there was fault, everyone was at fault. Why should only the original host have to pay the price?
Wen Fan pulled back the curtains. A poster of a celebrity the original host once liked was still hanging on the wall. Wen Fan tidied up the room; she didn’t touch the original host’s things, but placed a glass of fresh water on the desk with an unknown wildflower she had picked from outside.
No matter what, since she had taken over this identity, she would naturally live well on the other’s behalf.
Wen Fan tied up her hair and looked into the mirror, feeling unnatural.
Since transmigrating, she had discovered that she and the original host looked almost exactly the same. Perhaps the only difference was…
Wen Fan frowned as she looked at the golden-yellow hair of the girl in the mirror.
In order to fit into the male lead’s small clique, the original host had actually dyed her hair golden-yellow with a streak of blue.
In Wen Fan’s eyes, only foreign tribes would have such a hair color.
Fortunately, it was currently summer vacation, and there was still more than a month before school started. Otherwise, she would definitely have gone to dye her hair back to black immediately!
In her thin memories, she clearly remembered that the school rules included a clause stating that students were not allowed to dye their hair.
What Wen Fan understood least was this aspect of the original host.
In such a convenient world, she was actually willing to give up the opportunity to receive an education just for a man?
Wen Fan shook her head. For a woman to be able to study was something she hadn’t even dared to dream of before.
And in this era, women could not only study but also become officials (take the civil service exam), do business, and conduct scientific research…
Just thinking about it made Wen Fan’s heart race with excitement.
The door creaked open. Back in the deep palace, Wen Fan had developed the habit of rising early.
Although she was early, the Wen parents were even earlier.
Wen Fan looked at the breakfast on the table, still retaining some warmth: a perfectly fried golden egg, a glass bottle of milk, and two slices of bread. There was also a note on the table.
The handwriting of her adoptive mother, Xia Yingzhi, was scrawled: [Your father and I went to get vegetables.]
Her adoptive father, Wen Tao, had mediocre culinary skills. The couple maintained this small shop, but business wasn’t very good. Especially during the summer vacation, they had lost their main customer base—the students—making their income even tighter.
Wen Fan had been sick for the past two days, and the shop had been closed for two days as well. Living on their savings, how could the couple not be anxious?
To save on expenses, the two had rushed to the vegetable market early.
Wen Fan put the note away and poked her head out to look downstairs; her parents’ tricycle hadn’t returned yet. After thinking for a moment, she went into the kitchen.
Although the breakfast prepared by the Wen parents was good—a single bottle of milk cost seven or eight yuan—Wen Fan really couldn’t get used to drinking raw milk. Even in the palace, raw milk was mostly used for making pastries; rarely did anyone drink it directly.
Taking out the few remaining vegetables from the refrigerator, Wen Fan reached for the leftover rice from yesterday.
She first broke up the overnight rice to ensure the moisture content was low enough for frying. She put half a spoonful of lard into the pan, added the separated rice, and fried it quickly over high heat. For the seasonings on the counter, Wen Fan simply took a sniff and then began to add them with bold, sweeping strokes. She fried the rice until it was dry and fragrant, added a small handful of chopped green vegetables, tossed it evenly, and took it out of the pan.
The golden fried egg was placed on top of the rice. With this simple fried rice, Wen Fan finally had a bit of an appetite.
Just as she was about to start eating, she suddenly heard a knock at the door.
Wen Fan instinctively felt it wasn’t the Wen parents. The person seemed very familiar with the place; the knocks came one after another, calling out the names of the Wen parents.
“…Coming.”
Wen Fan opened the door. A woman with slanted eyes was standing outside. Seeing Wen Fan open the door, she said crossly, “You child are really inconsiderate. I’ve been knocking for so long and you only just came to open up. Where are your parents? I’m telling you, your family’s rent is several days overdue. If you don’t pay in the next two days, I’m going to reclaim the property.”
It turned out to be the landlady. Wen Fan lowered her eyebrows slightly. “Auntie, I didn’t hear you just now.”
The woman rolled her eyes. When her gaze landed on Wen Fan’s golden, frizzy hair, her distaste grew by another three degrees.
“You don’t even pick up the phone. Your parents aren’t thinking of skipping out on the debt, are they?”
Skipping out? Wen Fan knew her parents weren’t that kind of people. It was likely that expenses had been too high recently and the two had been busy taking care of her while she was sick, so they simply forgot.
Thus, she said obediently, “Auntie, my parents are out. Do you want to come in and wait?”
Yang Hong was about to say something when a gust of wind blew from somewhere, bringing a mouth-watering aroma with it.
“…What is that smell?”
Wen Fan lowered her eyes. “It’s my breakfast. Auntie, would you like a bowl?”
Before Yang Hong could refuse, Wen Fan turned and walked into the kitchen to serve the food.
Yang Hong had originally come to demand the rent, but after the young girl spoke, the “gluttonous worms” in her stomach started acting up.
She thought she shouldn’t go in to eat this bowl of rice, yet her feet moved of their own accord.
Wen Fan had fried a large pot and invited the woman inside, serving her a full bowl of fried rice.
Yang Hong felt a bit uneasy. Although she was fierce when demanding rent, she had never eaten a tenant’s food before. Suddenly entering someone else’s house and being hosted by a little girl who looked as timid as a quail made Yang Hong even more restless.
“I should wait until your parents get back before I…”
Before she could even stand up, Wen Fan walked over carrying a bowl of fried rice.
The simple fried rice made Yang Hong a bit disappointed. She had originally thought that for rice to smell this good, if it wasn’t fried with dried scallops and large shrimp, it would at least likely have shredded pork and eggs. Who knew it would be such a simple, almost bland-looking bowl of rice?
Then again, where would this Wen couple get the money to eat well? She had even heard they had borrowed money from relatives for the house they were living in now.
Since it wasn’t expensive, Yang Hong didn’t decline. She said crossly to Wen Fan, “Tell your parents, at the latest five… one week. If they can’t pay by then, I really have to take the house back.”
Yang Hong wasn’t afraid of changing tenants. Business at the school gates came and went quickly; it was common for people to change every six months or a year. The Wen couple’s small shop had mediocre business, and she had long anticipated that they wouldn’t be able to keep it up sooner or later.
Yang Hong irritably put a mouthful of fried rice into her mouth, somewhat regretting that she had come so early.
Since she had accepted a favor from this little girl, it wouldn’t be right to kick them out immediately.
As the plain-looking fried rice entered her mouth, Yang Hong’s eyes instantly widened.
“This… this was fried by your dad?”
Yang Hong stuffed two large mouthfuls in succession. The oily, moist fried rice paired with the crisp bok choy was all just right. Even the tiny bit of pepper didn’t seem spicy; instead, it blended in so well that it made one feel fried rice was meant to taste exactly like this! Any “delicacies from the land and sea” fried rice she had eaten before paled in comparison to this simple bowl of vegetable fried rice!
Yang Hong opened her eyes in disbelief.
“What did your dad put in this?”
Author’s Note:
The story has begun! The story has begun! Everyone is welcome to follow along.