“Move!”
Bang!
Shen Sangyu shoved a child who had come to visit the exhibition out of the way just in time, only to be struck head-on by the enormous display cabinet as it came crashing down.
It hurt. So badly.
Amid the overwhelming pain, Shen Sangyu felt something fall beside her hand. Acting on instinct, she grabbed it and clenched it tightly in her palm.
The next second, everything went black…
She seemed to have fallen into an incredibly long, endless dream.
In that dream, there was her father, her mother, and her older brother…
…
“Sangsang, I’ve left breakfast in the steamer. Remember to eat it!”
A soft female voice came from outside the door.
Mom?
Shen Sangyu couldn’t even remember how long it had been since her mother had appeared in her dreams.
“Don’t wake her. It’s rare for her to have a day off, so let her sleep. Senior year is stressful enough.”
A familiar middle-aged man’s voice drifted into Shen Sangyu’s ears.
There was a rustling of movement outside the door, occasionally accompanied by the gentle complaints of another middle-aged woman.
“How can she skip breakfast? Sangsang is at such a crucial stage right now. Her health comes first. Nothing is more important than that…”
Senior year?
Senior year!
Shen Sangyu’s eyes flew open.
The familiar crystal chandelier hung above her. The floral curtains were drawn almost shut, leaving only a narrow gap through which a sliver of light spilled in from outside.
She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed barefoot.
The moment her feet touched the cold floor, Shen Sangyu finally realized what was happening.
This wasn’t a dream!
Wait!
Ignoring the bitter chill of midwinter, Shen Sangyu ran barefoot into the bathroom.
When she saw the familiar yet strangely unfamiliar face in the mirror, she pinched herself hard.
“Ow!”
It really hurt!
Only then did reality truly sink in.
She was back!
She had returned to five years ago, when she was seventeen.
Nothing had happened yet.
Her face,
her family,
no, everything she had,
was still hers.
Through the mirror, Shen Sangyu’s gaze fell to her fair, slender neck.
A jade lotus pendant hung there. It had been part of her mother’s dowry.
After adopting Shen Sangyu, her mother had given the pendant to her.
Her hands had not yet been weathered by the hardships of her previous life. They were still soft and delicate as she tightly clasped the lotus-shaped pendant, her thoughts sinking into memories…
Shen Sangyu had known since childhood that she was adopted.
Her parents and older brother had brought her home from an orphanage.
Her parents had never hidden the truth from her. They had even supported her if she wanted to search for her biological parents.
Her adoptive father and mother were both natives of Haishi.
Over the years, they had managed to save some money and opened a high-end private restaurant in the city.
There was also an old house in downtown Haishi that had belonged to Shen’s father’s parents.
A few years ago, they had used the compensation from the redevelopment to move into a four-bedroom, two-living-room apartment.
Her older brother, Shen Jingnian, had graduated from Haida University with a law degree and successfully stayed in Haishi, where he joined the city’s most prestigious law firm.
As for Shen Sangyu herself, she had been as pretty as a doll from a traditional New Year painting since she was little.
She didn’t grow up surrounded by designer brands, but everything she had was given to her with love.
And Shen Sangyu had always made her family proud.
From childhood onward, she had been known as both the top student and the school beauty, eventually making her way into Haishi’s top high school, Experimental No. 1 High School.
If her parents hadn’t hoped to find her biological parents once she came of age, perhaps none of what happened later would ever have happened.
Her adoptive father, Shen Qian, and her mother, Zhou Hui, died shortly before Shen Sangyu’s college entrance examination.
Her older brother, Shen Jingnian, who had always been capable and disciplined, was accused of colluding with a rival firm and leaking confidential information about the law firm’s clients. His law license was revoked.
Even Shen Sangyu, who had always ranked first in her grade, inexplicably failed her college entrance examination.
But the strangest thing of all was her face.
It became increasingly blurred.
Her presence among other people grew weaker and weaker, as though she were gradually fading from the world.
And the person responsible for all of it was none other than the Meng family of the capital, her biological parents!
The Meng family might not have been one of the capital’s old-established clans, but they had ridden the wave of reform and developed at astonishing speed.
The Yunqing Group, founded by the Meng couple, had become one of the capital’s rising technology giants in recent years.
In her previous life, Shen Sangyu never even got the chance to meet those legendary biological parents.
She died at twenty-two when a sudden fire broke out at the museum.
All she ever received from the Meng family were the hostility, mockery, and abuse of the Meng siblings.
At the time, she and her older brother were working several jobs without rest, desperately trying to repay the enormous debts left behind by the Shen family.
That was when Meng Chengxi appeared before Shen Sangyu.
She was dressed in the latest fashion, walking in high heels, wearing glittering gold and jade.
Her voice was filled with undisguised amusement and malicious delight.
And she had the face Shen Sangyu knew better than anyone.
Because it was her face.
“Shocked? I’m finally you now!”
Meng Chengxi seemed to have come solely to enjoy Shen Sangyu’s misery.
Suppressing the turmoil in her heart, Shen Sangyu asked calmly,
“Just for my face? You were behind what happened to the Shen family too.”
“The Shen family? Please. They’re beneath my notice.”
Meng Chengxi lifted her chin arrogantly, a viciousness completely at odds with that beautiful face flashing through her eyes.
“But since you’re so pathetic, I’ll let you die knowing the truth.”
“You were looking for your biological parents, weren’t you? Now that I’m you, they’re naturally my biological parents too! Hahaha…”
“Oh, and I should thank you for your jade pendant.”
Without waiting for Shen Sangyu to process her words, Meng Chengxi tossed out that final sentence and walked away with an air of arrogance.
In her hand was none other than Shen Sangyu’s lotus jade pendant!
Why?
Shen Sangyu had pawned that pendant when her adoptive parents died.
“Become me?”
So that was why her face had gradually blurred, and why her presence had become weaker and weaker.
Later, Meng Chengxi had even taken her place at university.
Shen Sangyu replayed Meng Chengxi’s words over and over in her mind.
Then, all of a sudden, she remembered a rumor she had once heard.
There was a powerful business magnate in the capital.
The only son of the third branch of the Fu family.
From the moment he was born, a highly respected monk had read his fortune and declared that he possessed an extraordinarily noble destiny.
Yet at some point, everything suddenly took a turn for the worse.
Rumors began circulating that this heaven-blessed heir was actually a man destined to bring calamity to everyone around him.
When Shen Sangyu was twenty-one, the magnate died an unnatural death…
Afterward, the rumors spread beyond the capital.
Even in Haishi, far away in the south, people were saying that the untimely death of the only son of the Fu family’s third branch had happened because someone had altered his fate.
Only then did Shen Sangyu understand.
Even though Meng Chengxi wanted her dead as quickly as possible, she had still managed to live until she was twenty-two.
Because Meng Chengxi needed to borrow her life.
Yes.
Borrow her life!
To borrow someone’s life, the person whose fate was being borrowed had to remain alive until the process was complete, surviving until every last bit of their value had been drained away.
Now that she understood everything, regret filled Shen Sangyu’s delicate, fair face.
Her dark brown eyes were brimming with hatred and remorse.
“Meng Chengxi. Meng family. This time, I absolutely will not let you get what you want.”
She would never make the same mistakes again.
Shen Sangyu looked at the exquisite little face reflected in the mirror.
Tears rolled down her radiant cheeks one after another.
She lowered her head, and one of those tears landed on the lotus jade pendant clenched in her hand.
Instantly, her palm became scorching hot.
Shen Sangyu instinctively opened her hand, but instead of hearing the sound of the jade pendant shattering, she found nothing there.
“It’s gone?”
The jade pendant that Meng Chengxi had gone to such lengths to obtain in her previous life had disappeared!
Then she felt a faint pain beneath her collarbone.
It felt like a needle pricking her skin.
Shen Sangyu pulled down the collar of her pajamas.
A tiny red mole had appeared beneath her collarbone.
Against her snow-white, delicate skin, the red mark looked like a plum blossom blooming in the snow, strikingly beautiful and alluring.
“I can’t rub it off?”
Shen Sangyu stared at it in confusion.
She rubbed it hard with her finger until the surrounding skin turned red, but the mark remained exactly where it was.
Shen Sangyu helplessly raised her eyes.
How did Meng Chengxi’s golden finger turn into nothing more than a mole when it came to her?!
“Oh my God!”
Shen Sangyu cried out in shock.
A gigantic object suddenly floating in midair had appeared right in front of her, startling her badly!