The roaring fire burned through the wooden beams, and rolling smoke, moving even faster than the flames, invaded her mouth and nose, ruthlessly cutting off her breath.
Soon after, scorching tongues of fire engulfed her flesh, reducing her to a handful of ashes.
Shortly thereafter, icy lake water submerged her. She still could not breathe, floating and sinking within the lake.
The alternating extremes of freezing cold and searing heat. Was this the punishment prepared by the underworld for someone as wicked as her?
Lu Huiyi suddenly opened her eyes, clutching her chest as she gasped desperately for air.
She stared blankly at the rosewood carved-silk glass screen opposite the carved canopy bed.
Had someone saved her?
Yet she did not feel cold.
Or could it be that being burned by the great fire had somehow cured her illness?
Where was this, and why was everything so familiar?
She sat up. No, something was wrong.
By the dim, flickering firelight, Lu Huiyi lowered her gaze to look at her soft, tender hands. These were not her hands.
Ever since her family’s fortunes declined after her fifteenth year, her hands had never again been worthy of such whiteness and youthfulness.
“My lady is finally awake! A few squabbles here and there would be one thing, but the Fourteenth Young Miss actually pushed you into the water. The lake water in this autumn chill is freezing; it scared this maid to death!”
This is Chuntao?
Chuntao lifted the bed curtains, and Lu Huiyi saw that the sky outside was as dark as ink, though she could not tell what hour of the night it was.
Lu Huiyi stared blankly at Chuntao. Wasn’t she later found by her family and given away as a secondary wife to a butcher?
Did she leave that den of demons all by herself?
No, why did Chuntao look so young? Lu Huiyi still remembered the last time she saw Chuntao, when she came to bid her farewell. By then, Chuntao was twenty-six years old, having experienced so much that her youthful innocence had long been washed away by the passage of time.
“My lady, what is wrong with you? Could you still be feeling unwell?”
Chuntao muttered to herself while reaching out to feel Lu Huiyi’s forehead.
“Qingzhu! The lady is awake! Quickly bring the medicine, and I will go invite the estate physician to examine her again.”
“Alright! Chuntao, slow down, don’t panic.”
Qingzhu?
For a fleeting moment, Lu Huiyi felt as though her ears were failing her.
By her side, the maid who had accompanied her for thirteen years and whom she trusted the most was named Qingzhu. She was the very person who carried her endless regrets and resentment.
In the thirty-sixth year of Jianping, she accidentally fell victim to the Prince of Xing’s consort’s schemes and suffered a miscarriage. Afterwards, she caught a cold during her month of confinement and could no longer bear children, her body permanently ruined as a result.
The following spring, amid the beautiful scenery, Qingzhu accidentally discovered that it was the Consort who had poisoned her.
Qingzhu had entered the estate at the age of nine and was one year older than Lu Huiyi. While they did not share the hypocrisy of calling themselves sisters, their bond was nevertheless deeply profound.
Moreover, Qingzhu and Chuntao had accompanied her for so many years, from the decline of her family and the desolate loneliness of losing her mother in her youth, all the way to attaching herself to an imperial prince. The deep bonds forged through those years could not be fully expressed in words.
Qingzhu died that spring, crushed into nothing more than a bit of fertilizer beneath the peonies of the Prince of Xing’s estate.
Following that, although Lu Huiyi used harsh methods to force the Consort of Xing to personally punish the servants who caused Qingzhu’s death, thus avenging Qingzhu, she knew that the true mastermind was the Consort herself. She harbored this resentment, allowing the hatred to fester, yet she never showed the slightest hint of it on the surface.
She was able to force the Consort to execute her own trusted aides because she offered strategies to the Prince of Xing; because, having lost her fertility, she had no future in the Prince of Xing’s estate; and because her targets from beginning to end were merely those few lowly servants, rather than the Consort or the Prince himself.
What did a few servants matter? If putting them to death could appease a concubine and secure the loyalty of a strategist, what harm was there in the dignified Prince of Xing waving his hand to take a few lives?
It was also because of the incident involving Qingzhu that Lu Huiyi began pondering Chuntao’s future.
Qingzhu had a steady and composed temperament, while Chuntao was lively and unrestrained. With a personality like Chuntao’s, Lu Huiyi knew she could not protect her within the Prince of Xing’s estate. Therefore, when the Tao family came looking, Lu Huiyi gave Chuntao a large sum of silver and sent her home.
Yet she had forgotten that in such a chaotic world, where Chen, Liang, and Yue carved the realm into three, being an ordinary person was even worse than fighting for survival in the political battlefield of Suzhou.
Wasn’t it because she herself realized that leaving Suzhou meant certain death that she had fled back from the countryside of Tancheng to Suzhou?
Why should Chuntao have believed that leaving would bring her a good destination just because she was sent away?
In countless midnight dreams, she had always regretted this decision.
Chuntao was married off by the Tao family far away to the state of Liang, to a widower who had beaten several previous wives to death. By day he wielded a knife as a butcher, and by night he swung his fists as a widower.
The states of Liang and Yue were separated by thousands of miles, with the state of Chen sandwiched between them. Among the three states, the fires of war blazed continuously and conflicts intertwined endlessly.
How laughable it was that she, Lu Huiyi, could stir up endless storms in the state of Yue, yet her reach could not extend to the state of Liang to rescue that pitiful Madame Tao.
At this thought, Lu Huiyi’s tears fell inexplicably.
Perhaps this was the final dream before her death, that she had left the Prince of Xing’s estate, reverted to her childhood appearance, and returned to the happiest place in her brief twenty-eight years of life: the large courtyard in Suzhou before the Lu family was ruined. Only here could she release her pent-up emotions instead of suppressing them deep in her heart until death.
Weeping was, after all, a luxury on many occasions.
This estate, this courtyard, she had lived here until she was fifteen. Before leaving, she had harbored endless resentment toward the Lu family that bore and raised her.
After being forced to move out and enduring all sorts of hardships, the grievance-filled days of her childhood in her memory unexpectedly turned overly beautiful, becoming something she could yearn for but never touch.
“The young miss has no major issues; she has simply caught a cold. First, take a few doses of medicine to dispel the chill. Ever since autumn began, the weather has grown increasingly brisk. The Twelfth Young Miss must take care of her health and avoid letting any chronic ailments take root.”
The estate physician hired by the Lu household to examine the mistresses and young ladies was a female physician surnamed Wang. Come to think of it, she had not seen her in thirteen years.
“My lady, what is the matter with you?”
Seeing Lu Huiyi shed tears, Qingzhu hurriedly took the medicine bowl from her hands and reached for a handkerchief to wipe away her tears.
She remembered now. It was the Mid-Autumn Festival in the thirtieth year of Jianping when she quarreled with her half-sister, the Fourteenth Young Miss Luyi, who then pushed her into the lake.
Why did she have to return precisely to this moment?
Perhaps because this would be her final moment of peace?
Her grandfather’s seventieth birthday was right around the corner, and his retirement from office was imminent. Following closely after that would be an endless stream of bad news.
Lu Huiyi stopped thinking about these things, shook her head, and softly said, “It’s just that this medicine is too bitter.”
Before she could finish speaking, tears welled up, falling in large, continuous, and beaded clusters.
Qingzhu and Chuntao exchanged glances, knowing that their young miss must have suffered a great grievance. Previously, relying on the favor of her biological mother, Minor Concubine Yuan, and the high regard of her father, the Fourteenth Young Miss had constantly picked faults with the young miss. As the younger sister, she showed no respect to her elder sister, yet the one who always ended up punished was invariably their own young miss.
If not for the fact that the young miss had fallen into the water this time, remained unconscious for a full three days, and caused such a huge uproar right before the auspicious Mid-Autumn Festival all the way up to the Old Madam, the matter probably would have been brushed aside lightly, accompanied by a scolding for the young miss for lacking sense.
On that day, the usually tyrannical Fourteenth Young Miss had been sent to kneel in the ancestral hall for self-reflection. Qingzhu and Chuntao had been so overjoyed they wanted to applaud, but unfortunately, the young miss had drowned and lost consciousness, missing such a wonderful spectacle.
Physician Wang had walked the inner courtyards of the Lu family for years and knew more about the affairs between these two young misses of the fourth branch than anyone else. However, this was the master’s family business, and as a hired physician who pitied the Twelfth Young Miss, she could not utter a single word of comment.
After giving a few instructions, Physician Wang prepared to take her leave, but Lu Huiyi stopped her.
“Thank you, Physician Wang. These past few days, Qingzhu and Chuntao must have constantly troubled you.” Lu Huiyi was still not entirely clear-headed and spoke instinctively.
Lu Huiyi then turned to Qingzhu: “Qingzhu, fetch my makeup case.”
Qingzhu froze in place. Her young miss was usually very quiet, lacking in eloquence and not particularly skilled in managing subordinates. Why today did she suddenly seem somewhat different?
She still wore the exact same appearance, yet somehow, everything about her felt entirely changed.
Seeing that Qingzhu was still sitting on the low stool in a daze, Chuntao quietly exerted force with her foot and kicked the stool Qingzhu was sitting on.
“Ah,” Qingzhu acknowledged, then scrambled hurriedly to retrieve the makeup case.
Lu Huiyi took out a gold phoenix hairpin inlaid with filigree and red rubies and pressed it into Physician Wang’s hands.
“Physician Wang, my health is inconvenient right now, so I will not escort you out.”
Physician Wang accepted the phoenix hairpin and exited with profuse expressions of gratitude.
Chuntao stepped forward to see the guest out. Qingzhu, upon seeing the phoenix hairpin given away, could no longer restrain herself. Her eyes widened as she thought to herself that the young miss was still the same young miss; she must have learned from someone how to reward servants without knowing the proper measure.
The young miss was not favored by her biological father, the Fourth Master, and her biological mother, Madame Zhang, only cared about chanting Buddhist scriptures. How could she possibly have many decent pieces of jewelry? Although this phoenix hairpin was somewhat crude in craftsmanship, at least it could still be used to put up a front when going out.
To give it away just like that made Qingzhu feel as though her heart was bleeding.
A single glance at Qingzhu was enough for Lu Huiyi to know what she was thinking; the heartbreak was written all over her face.
“It is merely an ordinary gold hairpin; why must you put on such a distressed look?”
“Ordinary?! My lady, look at yourself. Is there anything else of value left in this makeup box? You gave away such a fine treasure. What will you do when you go out in the future and have no jewelry?”
Lu Huiyi naturally knew how straitened her circumstances were at fourteen.
“Fear not. I lack proper jewelry, but the one losing face won’t be just your young miss alone.”
Weary, Lu Huiyi curled back under the bedcovers and drifted off to sleep once more.
She wondered what the underworld looked like after death. With the ending of this dream, her present life was probably finished.
Opening her eyes once more, it was the fourth day after the Mid-Autumn Festival in the thirtieth year of Jianping.
Why was she still inside this dream?!
Was this truly just a grand dream?
Her body feeling somewhat better, Lu Huiyi sat by the window and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
Could it be, surely not, that she had returned to the age of fourteen?!
Good heavens! Her parting words before death, saying she wanted no next life, were mere nonsense!
She did not want to walk through this kind of life all over again; she did not want to taste the sourness and bitterness of the mortal world a second time.
Very well, she had actually let that mystic who always engaged in witchcraft turn out to be right.
She still remembered the mystic saying carelessly: “You are truly a strange person. You have no next life, but you do have a chance to turn back time and return to the past. Next time, remember to come look for me.”
“When you say ‘next time,’ which time do you mean?”
“Naturally, it means that one day, you will suddenly discover that time has reversed, and everything has turned back into the appearance of what you experienced in your memories.”
Lu Huiyi had never taken those words seriously, especially since that person had also claimed she lacked affinity with her close kin and was fated to clash with her parents, bringing about the death of both parents from the moment of birth.
How laughable. Her mother had lived until the thirty-first year of Jianping, and her father lived even longer than she did.
In a daze, she touched her cheek, marveling at how real the sensation was. Between that raging fire and the icy lake water, which world was the real one?
However, if she had genuinely been granted another lifetime, she would meticulously plan her path. That kind of future must never be experienced again.