It was a stormy night. Rain drummed steadily against the broad banana leaves in the courtyard as fierce winds swept through the estate.
Shen Yunshuang lay upon a cloud-soft pillow, her delicate brows tightly knit as faint murmurs escaped her lips.
She was dreaming again.
Dreaming of her previous life.
Back then, she had not been Shen Yunshuang.
She had been Lin Yaoniang, a maidservant in the household of Su Wanrou.
Su Wanrou was the legitimate eldest daughter of the Assistant Minister of Rites. At the age of seventeen, she married into the Marquis Jingyuan’s household in a wedding that had become the talk of the capital.
The Pei family of Marquis Jingyuan had originally consisted of three branches, though they had long since established separate households. The eldest branch inherited the marquisate, and the man Su Wanrou married was none other than Pei Jingnian, the legitimate eldest son of that branch.
Unlike the idle young nobles who relied solely on the glory of their ancestors, Pei Jingnian was not only strikingly handsome and refined but also exceptionally talented. At eighteen, he earned the prestigious title of Third Scholar in the imperial examinations and now served in the Ministry of Personnel.
Though only a sixth-rank official, his responsibilities included evaluating officials, appointments, promotions, and selections—placing him at the very heart of the empire’s bureaucracy.
At only twenty-two years old, his future seemed limitless.
After marrying into the marquis’s residence, Su Wanrou quickly won everyone’s favor. Graceful and gentle by nature, she managed the household impeccably and earned the deep affection of her mother-in-law, Madam Wang.
However, two years passed without Su Wanrou becoming pregnant.
Madam Wang could no longer smile.
How could she have imagined that her daughter-in-law had fallen into an icy lake as a child, permanently damaging her health and leaving her with little hope of conceiving?
Yet when the marriage had been arranged, Lady Su—the Assistant Minister’s wife—had concealed that fact entirely.
The revelation struck Madam Wang like a bolt from the blue.
But the marriage had already been made. They couldn’t very well divorce her now. The Marquis Jingyuan’s household could never endure such public disgrace.
Since the wife couldn’t be dismissed, Madam Wang instead ordered that the two bedchamber attendants stop taking their contraceptive herbal medicine, hoping one of them might bear an heir.
Half a year later, there was still no good news.
When physicians examined them again, the diagnosis was devastating.
Years of consuming overly potent contraceptive decoctions had permanently damaged both women’s bodies, leaving them unable to conceive as well.
Su Wanrou had always been praised throughout the capital as a generous and virtuous wife.
Who would have imagined that she had deliberately instructed the servants to use especially powerful contraceptive herbs for the bedchamber attendants?
She had intended to cut off her husband’s bloodline entirely.
After this incident, Madam Wang’s attitude toward her changed drastically.
She lost her mother-in-law’s favor, and when Pei Jingnian learned the truth, even the way he looked at her was no longer the same.
Panicked, Su Wanrou found herself facing yet another threat.
Around that time, her husband’s cousin came to seek refuge at the estate. The young woman was breathtakingly beautiful, and Madam Wang doted on her greatly.
Feeling her position endangered, Su Wanrou decided to demonstrate her virtue.
To reassure her mother-in-law, she personally selected Lin Yaoniang—a pretty maid—to enter the household as a concubine and bear children for the family.
Lin Yaoniang possessed delicate features and a gentle, harmless disposition.
She was timid by nature.
Had it not been for her gravely ill mother, who depended on prohibitively expensive medicine to stay alive, she would never have willingly entered the marquis’s household as a concubine.
Perhaps because of her timid personality, Pei Jingnian never favored her much.
Yet her womb proved fortunate.
Before long, she conceived.
The entire Pei family rejoiced.
Madam Wang, whose health had been failing from anxiety over the lack of an heir, recovered by more than half almost overnight.
Su Wanrou appeared equally delighted.
She treated Lin Yaoniang with extraordinary kindness, even arranging a private kitchen specifically for her and sending an endless stream of nourishing tonics to support the pregnancy.
When Lin Yaoniang suffered severe morning sickness, Su Wanrou thoughtfully summoned a physician to prescribe herbs that strengthened the spleen and settled the stomach.
With medicine and supplements taken daily, the baby’s condition indeed became increasingly stable.
Seeing how attentive Su Wanrou was to the unborn child, Madam Wang gradually softened toward her once more.
As the woman carrying the long-awaited heir of the Pei family, Lin Yaoniang’s life within the residence became remarkably comfortable.
Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that after ten months of pregnancy, disaster would strike during childbirth.
The baby was simply too large.
No matter how desperately she struggled, she could not deliver him.
She suffered agony beyond words.
Blood soaked the bedding beneath her.
Compared to a mere maidservant like her, the unborn child in her womb was infinitely more precious.
So when the choice came—
Save the child, or save the mother—
Neither Madam Wang nor Su Wanrou hesitated.
They chose the child.
Lin Yaoniang died.
She died in unimaginable pain, never even catching a glimpse of the baby she had sacrificed her life to bring into the world.
Her fair, slender wrist fell limply over the bedside.
She had strained so hard during labor that several fingernails had broken.
Around her right wrist rested a plain silver bracelet.
It had been specially commissioned by her mother before she entered the marquis’s residence, delicately engraved with blooming crabapple flowers.
Now, several drops of blood stained those carved petals.
The pain finally disappeared.
But the resentment in her heart remained.
Instead of passing into reincarnation as the storybooks claimed, her soul lingered in the mortal world.
In the end, it attached itself to that very silver bracelet.
Thus she witnessed everything.
She saw her newborn son’s tiny fair face.
She saw the joyful smiles spreading across Madam Wang’s and Su Wanrou’s faces.
She saw the flicker of pity that crossed Pei Jingnian’s face when he returned home and learned of her death—
Only for that trace of compassion to vanish almost immediately.
She saw countless things.
And with every passing day, her resentment deepened.
She couldn’t bear to leave her child.
Nor could she bear to leave her mother.
The silver bracelet was never buried with her.
It wasn’t valuable enough to attract attention, yet heavy enough to fetch a decent price, so one of the maids serving her secretly pocketed it.
And so Lin Yaoniang remained in the marquis’s residence for many more years.
If given the choice, she would have gladly entered reincarnation at once.
Then she would never have known that after her death, her mother’s illness worsened from grief until she too passed away.
Nor would she have discovered that the expensive medicines Su Wanrou had promised to continue sending to the Lin family stopped arriving almost immediately after her death.
Lin Yaoniang hated her with every fiber of her being.
But what came afterward shattered her soul completely.
Her son, Zhan’er, died at the age of five after nothing more than a common cold.
How absurd.
The Pei family’s long-awaited eldest grandson, a healthy, lively boy who had grown up strong and robust—
Yet he died the year after his legal mother’s own son was born.
How could Lin Yaoniang not guess the reason?
Even the servants throughout the residence whispered about it.
Unable to bear the blow of Zhan’er’s death, Madam Wang took to her sickbed and passed away within a year.
Pei Jingnian thoroughly investigated everyone who had attended his son during his illness.
He found nothing.
It all appeared to be a series of unfortunate oversights.
A maid had carelessly left a window open.
The wet nurse had noticed Zhan’er’s fever but carelessly gave him only a bowl of ginger soup instead of calling for a physician.
A chain of negligence…
That was all it took to claim his son’s life.
Yet Pei Jingnian knew better.
Behind those so-called “mistakes” lay Su Wanrou’s growing neglect of Zhan’er after giving birth to her legitimate son, along with the servants’ habit of currying favor with the new heir.
Consumed by rage, he either had the servants around his eldest son beaten to death or sold off.
But he had no evidence to convict Su Wanrou herself.
Besides, their younger son had only just celebrated his first birthday.
Day after day, Su Wanrou held the child in her arms, weeping before him and pleading her innocence.
Looking at his one-year-old son, Pei Jingnian ultimately couldn’t bring himself to act against her.
He merely took the child away to raise personally…
And from that day on, his heart grew completely cold toward Su Wanrou.
But for Lin Yaoniang—
It was nowhere near enough.
Her heart had already been shattered into countless pieces.
Unable to live.
Unable to die.
That torment drove her to the brink of madness.
She longed to hack Su Wanrou to pieces with her own hands.
Yet as nothing more than a powerless soul bound to a silver bracelet…
She could do absolutely nothing.