Lin Yuhe was jostled awake by the distant crowing of a rooster. She opened her eyes slowly, finding herself lying in a surprisingly soft bed. It looked nothing like the cold, terrifying underworld of local legend; instead, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the west room of her elder brother’s house.
Just then, the door creaked open.
A young woman wearing a light-colored, short-sleeved jacket stepped inside, carefully balancing a bowl of dark, pungent medicinal brew. She hesitated, her steps slow and tentative as she approached the bedside.
Lady Meng looks remarkably like my sister-in-law, Yuhe thought to herself. Though I don’t see the Bridge of Helplessness anywhere. I suppose wandering for so many years as a lost soul means the underworld was renovated while I was gone.
The young woman, Madam Wu, offered the bowl with a nervous, timid expression.
Yuhe took it without hesitation. Having finally accepted her fate to enter the cycle of reincarnation—and knowing Xie Shuhuai had long since married another—she had nothing left in the mortal realm to cling to. Bringing the steaming liquid to her lips, she leaned in to drink.
Suddenly, Madam Wu reached out and pressed down on the rim of the bowl. “Little sister, have you truly thought this through? Once this bowl goes down, the child in your belly will be gone.” Her voice trembled slightly. “This is your first pregnancy. It will wreak havoc on your body.”
Yuhe mumbled absently, “Meng Po’s soup wreaks havoc on the body too, but I’ve been a lonely ghost for so long that I have no body left to harm.”
Madam Wu’s face turned stark white with dread. “Little sister, what wild nonsense are you babbling? This is an abortive brew! You bought it yourself just yesterday!”
Yuhe froze, staring up in utter bewilderment. A sudden, sharp agony pierced her chest. Her hand gave way, and the bowl plummeted to the floor, shattering into a spray of dark liquid and earthenware.
Madam Wu, who had always been a bit fearful of her sister-in-law, shrank back into the corner, not daring to step any closer.
Hearing the crash, a sturdy figure burst through the doorway. He immediately barked at his wife, “I told you to let it cool before bringing it to her! You must have burned her!”
Yuhe stared at the man. It was her brother, robust and full of life—just as he had been before his fatal illness.
Heart hammering, she scrambled out of bed and rushed to the wooden washbasin, staring down at her reflection in the water. There were no hideous fangs or ghostly pallor; it was her own youthful face staring back at her.
“Brother,” she asked, her voice shaking violently. “Where are we? What year of the reign is it?”
Lin Yuping blinked, caught off guard. “This is our back courtyard,” he answered slowly. “It is the twenty-third year of Zhaode… the second day of the fifth lunar month.”
Silence fell. It took a long moment for the truth to sink in: she had returned to the past, precisely one month after signing the divorce papers with Xie Shuhuai.
Her gaze drifted downward, her hand coming to rest gently on her lower abdomen. A spark of pure joy ignited in her chest. Thank heavens, she whispered to herself. Everything can still be fixed.
Without wasting a second, she slipped into her embroidered shoes, grabbed her short coat from the bed, and draped it over her shoulders as she bolted for the door.
Yuping snapped out of his daze and rushed to block her path. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to find Xie Shuhuai!” she cried, her voice desperate. “I regret it all. I want to live a proper life with him!”
Yuping gripped her shoulders, panic rising in his chest. “Hehe, what has gotten into you? Don’t frighten me like this! Have you forgotten? You and Xie Shuhuai are already divorced, and you just got engaged to the young master of the Min family! Today is Xie Shuhuai’s wedding day with the Li family’s daughter!”
Madam Wu chimed in timidly from behind, “That’s right… just yesterday, you said you didn’t care at all.”
With every word, the wild joy in Yuhe’s heart withered away, leaving her mind a hollow, echoing void.
“The Li girl you speak of…” Yuhe stammered, her voice barely a whisper. “Is she the daughter of Shopkeeper Li from the garment shop?”
“The very same,” her brother confirmed.
As the memories flooded back, Yuhe’s legs gave out, and she sank heavily onto the edge of the bed, crushed by defeat. Even with a second chance at life, the possibility of mending things with Xie Shuhuai was already shattered. She was too late.
A bitter wave of self-hatred washed over her. How could she have been so foolish, so blind as to listen to malicious gossip? The moment Shuhuai failed the imperial examinations, she had abandoned him, demanding a divorce—only to turn around and throw herself into an engagement with that vile monster, Min Zheyuan.
She hated herself for failing to cherish the man who had truly cared for her, realizing his worth only after he was gone. Remembering everything Shuhuai had ever done for her, a tearing pain racked her chest. Tears spilled over, trailing down her cheeks like snapped strings of pearls.
Frantic with grief, she began beating her own chest, sobbing uncontrollably. “Husband… it was all my fault. I was wrong… I was so wrong!”
Terrified by her sudden breakdown, Yuping pinned her hands to her sides and whirled around to yell at his wife, “Hurry, go get Great-Aunt! Hehe has been possessed!”
Before Madam Wu could even set foot outside the courtyard, Yuhe rushed past her, her figure vanishing in the blink of an eye.
After her spell of despondency, she simply could not bring herself to yield Xie Shuhuai to another woman. Besides, she still had a fighting chance—the child growing inside her belly.
As her spirits rallied, her mind grew remarkably clear.
She recalled that in her past life, Li Yunluo had only managed to marry Xie Shuhuai years later, after divorcing her own former husband. Why has it happened so much earlier this time? Could she have been reborn, just as I was?
Perhaps Li Yunluo was trying to avoid repeating her past fate and had maneuvered to marry Xie Shuhuai ahead of time.
At the thought of this possibility, alarm bells rang loudly in Yuhe’s mind, and she quickened her pace, a plan already taking shape. She couldn’t simply intercept Xie Shuhuai outright; doing so would only make him despise her even more.
Behind her, Lin Yuping was pursuing her, completely out of breath.
Dawn had barely broken, so even if Xie Shuhuai were on his way to fetch the bride, he wouldn’t have reached the county seat yet. Hongye Village was not far from Xuyang County; as long as she blocked the only path leading out of the village, she was bound to intercept him.
Yuhe and Shuhuai had known each other since childhood, as her mother, Lady Fang, and Shuhuai’s mother, Lady Cui, were maternal cousins. When the Xie family fell on hard times, it was only through Lady Fang’s support that they were able to gain a foothold in Hongye Village.
Regrettably, Lady Fang had succumbed to illness the year after Yuhe married Shuhuai. Had her mother still been alive, she never would have allowed her daughter to commit such reckless, foolish acts.
When Shuhuai passed the provincial examinations at sixteen, he married fourteen-year-old Yuhe. But after his family met with tragedy, his disposition grew increasingly cold and withdrawn. Yuhe had never cared for his distant demeanor, and had it not been for a sixty-year-old local squire eyeing her as a second wife, she wouldn’t have agreed to marry Shuhuai even if her mother forced her to. Her reluctance only grew when Shuhuai fell into obscurity, left with nothing to his name.
Yuhe’s father served as the village head for both Hongye and Qingshuiwan. Though she couldn’t compare to the daughters of wealthy families, she had grown up well-fed, well-clothed, and pampered like a precious treasure by Lady Fang. She had always felt that marrying Shuhuai was beneath her.
After their wedding, Shuhuai and her mother-in-law, Lady Cui, had indulged her small tantrums, which only fed her willful and lazy nature.
In the third lunar month of this year, after Shuhuai failed the imperial examinations, Yuhe gave in to her aunt’s instigations. Ignoring the desperate pleas of both Shuhuai and Lady Cui, she insisted on a divorce, ready to abandon even the two-month-old child in her womb.
Introduced by her aunt, Master Min, a merchant from the county seat, took a liking to her. Though Min Zheyuan couldn’t match Shuhuai’s striking looks, he possessed a gentle demeanor, hailed from a respectable family, and did not mind that Yuhe had been married before.
Little did she know, Min Zheyuan was nothing more than a hypocritical fraud. He had kept a songstress on the side, who had already borne him a two- or three-year-old child. Marrying Yuhe was merely a ploy to give his illegitimate son a legitimate status and bring his mistress into the household.
Tears of bitter regret streamed endlessly down Yuhe’s face as she hurried along.
She had struck herself so hard earlier that clear red palm prints were visible on her delicate white skin, drawing curious stares and hushed whispers from passersby. Paying them no mind, she stood at the crossroads, craning her neck in anticipation.
Yuping, who had finally caught up, watched her for a while and realized his sister wasn’t possessed at all—she was simply consumed by remorse. Fearing she would cause a scene, he kept pleading with her to go home. Yet Yuhe remained motionless, anchored to the spot like a meditating monk.
It was not until the faint, distant trill of wedding suona horns echoed through the air that a mix of nervousness and joy flashed in her eyes.
A moment later, a tall, slender figure dressed in vibrant red robes emerged into view.
It was Xie Shuhuai, the very man she had been desperately waiting for.