Winter, the tenth year of the Natural Disaster.
The Snow Forest outside the moat of Nu City in Rongguo.
Wen Xueling ran barefoot through the snow. Even though her legs were so frozen they had lost all sensation, she didn’t dare stop for a second.
Behind her were soldiers and horses in relentless pursuit, and she was the only prey today.
This nightmare had begun seven years ago.
That year, her mother died from the winter cold. Wen Xueling traveled north to seek her father, only to discover he had long since remarried in Jingcheng.
He even had another daughter, only a year younger than herself.
Her four biological brothers, born of the same mother, also protected those people as their own family, showing more closeness to their stepmother than they ever had to their birth mother.
Feeling the injustice for her mother, Wen Xueling accused her scumbag father, only to be stopped by her four brothers. They criticized her for being meddlesome, believing it was common for a man to have many wives and concubines—besides, their father had only married one other woman.
In Rongguo, there were clear laws: any woman a man married besides his primary wife was a concubine.
But that woman clearly occupied the position of the primary wife!
Her four brothers considered her to be making a scene without reason and placed her under house arrest in the Prime Minister’s Mansion.
After a month in Jingcheng, no one knew the Prime Minister had another daughter.
Later, Wen Xueling found an opportunity to escape, but she was attacked on the way. When she woke up, a strange man was lying beside her. Her stepmother led a group of people into the room, framing her for seducing her daughter’s fiancé.
No one believed her explanation.
Even her four biological brothers demanded she kneel and admit her fault.
She would rather die than comply, while her half-sister cried, threatening to jump into a pond.
The matter reached the Emperor, and she was banished to Nu City to serve as the lowest-ranking Bed-warming Servant for the three most notorious City Lords in the world.
She had endured seven years of suffering.
The only thing that kept her alive was her mother.
If she died like this, she would be failing her mother’s soul in heaven.
But… she couldn’t hold on much longer.
Her legs hurt terribly, her feet were numb, and her white clothes were already stained red with blood, unable to properly cover her skeletal body.
“A great reward for anyone who catches the escaped slave!”
“Dead or alive!”
A man’s voice, both extremely familiar and yet strange, came from behind. Before she had time to think, she curled her body and hid, darting about in a panic.
In her desperate flight, Wen Xueling stopped in terror. Before her was a deep pit filled with a mountain of white bones. There was no way forward and no way back.
Was this her destiny in this life?
But she was unwilling!
She hadn’t made those people pay the price yet. The villains were still alive, so why should she die?
Wen Xueling tightened her grip on the firearm in her hand. That person had said that if she threw it, it would blow up everyone within ten yards.
In an instant, her gaze became determined.
Even if the chance of survival was slim, she had to try!
She hid behind a tree, and just as she was about to stake everything on one throw, she met a pair of cold, ruthless, and familiar eyes.
He was drawing his bow, aiming at her, his eyes devoid of any warmth.
Wen Xueling’s motion to throw the firearm suddenly froze.
In that moment of daze, a long arrow whistled through the air and pierced her body. The force was so great that she staggered back, half her body hanging over the deep pit.
She looked down blankly at the familiar insignia on the arrow’s fletching.
This was the arrow she had once spent months grinding by lamplight, repeatedly refining and personally designing for her eldest brother.
In battle, one arrow was enough to kill; now, it was buried deep in her heart.
Her eyes felt as if they were being pricked by ten thousand needles. Wen Xueling looked up. The man was smiling, responding to the congratulations from those around him.
“Congratulations, General Wen, on successfully shooting the escaped slave!”
“This fox fur prize… does the General plan to give it to his sister? I hear the General’s sister is of frail health; fox fur is the best for keeping warm.”
“Naturally. Every good thing in this world must be given to my Jin’an,” the man’s voice rang with joy.
All the sounds in the world abruptly fell silent at that moment.
Wen Jin’an, her half-sister, and also one of the chief culprits who had trapped her in this predicament.
The cold wind blew the long hair away from her face, revealing her terrifying features and the slave marks on her cheeks. She looked as haggard as a ghost, no longer possessing the world-toppling beauty of her youth.
Past events replayed before her eyes.
Wen Xueling smiled bitterly at herself. Yes, her father and her four brothers had long ago become Wen Jin’an’s father and brothers.
And her life wasn’t even worth a piece of fox fur.
The wind rose, and she fell.
Wen Xueling closed her eyes. If she had a chance to start over, she would definitely make these people pay back in blood.
“Ling’er, wake up. Mother is here.”
Covered in cold sweat, Wen Xueling’s eyes snapped open. she sat up with a start and met a pair of worried eyes.
She murmured, “Mother…”
Had she reached the underworld so quickly?
Mu Qingyu held her tight and soothed her. “Don’t be afraid, it was just a nightmare.”
Wen Xueling was in a daze, tears falling unconsciously.
No, it wasn’t a dream. Those were seven years that actually happened.
She threw herself into her mother’s arms, crying like a helpless child who couldn’t find her way home.
From childhood to adulthood, she had never cried so bitterly in front of anyone. Her tears soaked the clothes before her.
Wait!
Wen Xueling’s body froze. Her mother’s embrace was warm.
Once she realized this, she hurriedly grabbed Mu Qingyu’s hand. It was warm!
The nerves in her brain were taut as her trembling hands touched her own face. It was smooth, without the uneven scars from whippings, and certainly without the “Vile Slave” slave marks branded onto her cheeks.
She carefully moved her legs; there was no bone-deep aching that had followed her day and night after her broken bones had been reset.
Wen Xueling immediately realized an impossible fact that had nonetheless occurred.
She… had been reborn.
Reborn before the Natural Disaster, while her mother was still alive!
She quickly snapped out of her shock, laughing through her tears. This was wonderful—they were both still alive, and there was still time for everything.
She didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes. She decided to tell her mother about the scumbag father’s remarriage ahead of time.
Whether it was divorcing him or two women serving one husband, she would respect her mother’s choice.
But she would never again acknowledge that scumbag as her father.
“Mother, Ling’er has something important to tell you. Just now, I had a dream…”
She slowly recounted what she had seen in her past life.
Mu Qingyu’s face was both shocked and pale. She suppressed her emotions and asked, “Ling’er, what you say… is it true?”
Recalling how the scumbag father doted on the stepmother, Wen Xueling couldn’t bear to keep her mother in the dark and nodded heavily.
“Yes!”
“The daughter he has with that woman is only eight months younger than me.”
The color instantly drained from Mu Qingyu’s face.
An extremely powerful voice in her heart told her: This wasn’t a dream; it was all true.
“Mother believes you!”
Unable to bring herself to tell her doting mother about the events in Nu City, Wen Xueling only said she had been punished with hard labor for seven years and eventually died of grief.
Mu Qingyu’s heart felt as if it had been gouged out, turning completely cold toward her wretched husband.
“And your four brothers? Did they protect you?”
Her four brothers…
The eldest brother who shot an arrow through her heart; the second brother who gave her bone-softening powder; the third brother who held her head down to make her kowtow and apologize to her half-sister; the fourth brother who protected their stepmother.
A physician can hardly heal themselves. Although her mother was skilled in medicine, her body was extremely frail. She likely wouldn’t be able to bear such news.
Wen Xueling’s eyes darkened as she said softly, “They… did not appear in the dream.”
After speaking, Wen Xueling suddenly remembered that the night of the great blizzard would arrive in three months.
Since the heavens had allowed her to start over, in this life, she would reclaim everything that belonged to her and her mother, even if she had to walk through fire and brimstone.
She held her mother’s hand and said without delay, “Mother, tomorrow morning, we are going to Jingcheng!”