【Yin Lan, I have a friend who’s taken a liking to your face. Since I’m broke after the divorce, you might consider being with him.】
【After all… what man wouldn’t want to try dragging the once lofty young miss down from her pedestal?】
【I’ve sent you the villa address. Think it over and head there early tonight. Don’t keep my friend waiting.】
Xie Zhiqiu’s disgusting messages came one after another. Yin Lan curled up on the bed in her rented room, clutching her phone tightly, trembling with rage as overwhelming hatred nearly consumed her.
Suppressed sobs escaped her lips one after another, tears falling unbidden.
She was wrong. She had been terribly, terribly wrong! The entire Yin family had been destroyed because of her!
Father, your daughter is coming to atone for her sins… The pill bottle fell, and the world plunged into darkness.
When she opened her eyes again, Yin Lan met a pair of familiar, aged eyes.
By the bed, the butler stood with a perfectly measured bow—neither obsequious nor lacking in reverence, his respect etched into his very bones.
In his hands, he held a gilded tray, neatly arranged with seven embossed name cards. Each was opened to the first page, revealing photographs and family introductions, awaiting the selection of the Yin family’s young miss as if she were “ordering from a menu.”
“Young Miss, the master has said that you must choose a marriage candidate by tonight.”
“The seven gentlemen are already waiting in the side hall. Would you like to review the name cards first, or meet them directly?”
Yin Lan remained motionless, her slender, pale fingers sinking into the silk bedding, their tips icy cold.
Hadn’t she died? Why was she here?
Could it be that her foolishness in her past life had been too much for even the heavens to bear, granting her a chance to start over?
Sunlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating every inch of extravagance in Yin Lan’s room with stark clarity.
The crystal chandelier airlifted from Venice on the ceiling, the rows of haute couture gowns in the walk-in closet, the set of pigeon-blood ruby jewelry on the dressing table that her father had bid for at Sotheby’s when she turned eighteen.
She had seen these things countless times in her past life, but now, as she looked at them again, a wave of bittersweet warmth surged in her eyes.
Yes, she had returned—to a time before everything had collapsed.
Memories of her past life poured over her like a basin of ice-cold water.
Back then, among the seven candidates, she had chosen Xie Zhiqiu, the second son of the Xie family, because his smile was gentle and refined, and he knew how to say all the right things.
She had mistaken that for love.
The Yin family had given the Xie family a commercial shipping route, priority development rights for three real estate projects, and countless resources and connections.
With this, the Xie family soared to become a rising power in Jiangcheng, and Xie Zhiqiu transformed from an overlooked second son into the de facto head of the Xie family.
And guess what happened?
On a rainy night in the third year of their marriage, Yin Lan discovered a share transfer agreement in Xie Zhiqiu’s study.
Her signature was neatly forged, transferring thirty-seven percent of Yin Corporation’s shares to the Xie family.
When she confronted him, Xie Zhiqiu couldn’t even be bothered to keep up the pretense.
“Yin Lan, you’re too domineering. What man could stand that? All these years by your side, haven’t I been like a dog you kept?”
Only later did she realize that what he had wanted from the very beginning was the Yin family—never her.
Her father was so enraged that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Yin Corporation was devoured by the Xie family in collaboration with others. The once-influential Yin family, like a building with its foundation pulled out, crumbled overnight.
And Yin Lan, once the revered young miss of the Yin family, became the laughingstock of high society.
She died in the winter of her thirty-second year, not in any dramatic fashion, but by swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills.
In her final moments of consciousness, she heard the sound of rain outside the window and the looping promotional broadcast from the convenience store downstairs.
No one came to save her.
No, actually, someone did.
Yin Lan’s soul drifted for a long time. Many people attended her funeral, most of them just there to watch the spectacle.
Only one person placed a bouquet of white lisianthus before her memorial and stood there for a long time.
Floating in mid-air, Yin Lan looked at the figure in the black overcoat and recognized him as Zhou Guchuan.
The name she hadn’t even glanced at among the seven suitor profiles—the son of the most unremarkable nouveau riche among all the candidates, the option she had decisively crossed out in her previous life.
She heard him murmur something, but by then, she could no longer make out any words.
Later, she learned that after the Yin family’s downfall, Zhou Guchuan was the only one who secretly intervened to preserve the core assets of the Yin Group.
He even purchased the Yin family’s ancestral home. He didn’t sell it, nor did he renovate it—he simply left it untouched, locked away.
But these were things she would never have known in her previous life.
The butler’s tray was still held before her, the seven suitor profiles laid out in a row. Xie Zhiqiu’s photo was in the center, smiling with gentle propriety, like a bottle of poison.
Yin Lan raised her hand, her fingers gliding past Xie Zhiqiu’s profile without the slightest pause.
The butler’s eyebrows twitched slightly. The Yin and Xie families had always been on good terms, and everyone had assumed the young mistress would choose the Xie family’s second son—even the master had thought so.
Why did it seem now that the young mistress had no intention of choosing Xie Zhiqiu?
Yin Lan’s fingers stopped at the profile in the farthest corner.
The man in the photo wore a dark gray shirt, buttoned all the way to the top, the collar pressed so neatly it bordered on rigid.
He wasn’t smiling; his expression held a quiet, almost indifferent calm, like a cup of lukewarm plain water placed beside a row of colorful cocktails—utterly unremarkable.
“This one.”
Yin Lan pulled out the profile, her fingertip lightly tapping the photo.
Upon seeing her choice, a crack finally appeared in the butler’s usually unflappable expression.
“Young Mistress, this is the Zhou family’s son.”
The butler chose his words carefully. “The Zhou family started in building materials, with their roots in Qu City. They only expanded their business to Jiang City last year. The patriarch… made his fortune renting out scaffolding.”
That was putting it politely. In simpler terms: nouveau riche, no foundation, not fit for high society.
“I know.”
Yin Lan held the profile in her hand. “Him.”
In the end, the butler said nothing more.
He had served the Yin family for thirty years, and the most important lesson he had learned was this: once the young mistress made a decision, no one could change it.
Yin Lan pushed back the covers and got out of bed, her bare feet sinking into the carpet. Near the window, fallen petals littered the edge of the rug.
The Yin family garden was planted with vast stretches of jacaranda trees, now in full bloom. Purple petals were carried by the wind.
In her previous life, after Xie Zhiqiu took her away, the Xie family had all these jacarandas uprooted under the pretext of redesigning the landscape, replacing them with ginkgo trees that Xie Zhiqiu favored.
This time, Xie Zhiqiu, you won’t lay a finger on my jacarandas!
In the side hall of the Yin residence, the seven suitors were seated.
Xie Zhiqiu sat on the central sofa, relaxed and at ease, holding a cup of the Yin family’s special Da Hong Pao tea, a confident smile playing on his lips.
He had deliberately worn a custom-made navy blue suit today, with limited-edition cufflinks and shoes polished to a mirror shine.
In Xie Zhiqiu’s perception, today’s suitor selection was merely a formality. Yin Lan’s fondness for him was obvious—at last month’s chamber of commerce gala, she had smiled at him three times.
Sitting next to Xie Zhiqiu was Lu Huai, the only son of the Lu Group, idly scrolling through his phone.
Further down was Zhao Mingyuan, the third son of a shipping dynasty, his tie loosely knotted, legs crossed as he yawned.
The others were scattered around the room, each maintaining the decorum expected of scions from prominent families.
Only one person sat in the corner.
Zhou Guchuan wore a white shirt without a tie, his sleeves rolled up once to reveal a cleanly defined forearm.
The black tea in front of him remained untouched, and he sat so quietly he almost seemed to blend into the shadow of the walnut screen behind him.
No one spoke to him, nor did he initiate conversation.
Xie Zhiqiu occasionally glanced his way, his gaze carrying undisguised disdain.
The son of an upstart—who knew how he had managed to sneak onto this list.