“Concubine Jiang, time for your medicine.”
At the Pei family’s manor, the maid Hongxiu spoke these words while pouring the scalding herbal concoction directly into Jiang Yao’s mouth.
Jiang Yao’s tongue had long been cut out, leaving her unable to speak or resist the dark liquid flowing down her throat.
Seeing her tortured, almost inhuman appearance, and thinking of her master waiting outside for a report, Hongxiu’s attitude grew even more vicious: “The contraceptive brew tastes wonderful, doesn’t it? Only someone of your status, Concubine Jiang, gets to drink this.”
“You shameless whore! When you married the brilliant and noble lord, it wasn’t enough for you? You actually committed adultery with a stable hand at the Duke Dingguo’s residence! How disgraceful! The lord only demoted you from wife to concubine and feeds you a bowl of contraceptive brew daily—that’s already going easy on you! After sending you to this manor, you slut still managed to seduce the Regent Prince. Fortunately, that Regent Prince is a madman, and who knows where he’s run off to these days—no one to protect you now. If you ask me, a whore like you should be drowned in a pond and done with!”
The door creaked open.
Jiang Yao looked up in her wretched state and saw Shen Yuanwu, the woman who had stolen her position as Commandery Princess, entering.
Today was Shen Yuanwu’s ceremony for receiving her first-rank Imperial Mandate. Dressed in full ceremonial robes and adorned with hairpins and jewels, she appeared supremely noble. She waved at the maid, “Hongxiu, you may leave now.”
Hongxiu bowed and retreated with the empty medicine bowl.
Jiang Yao stared fixedly at Shen Yuanwu, screaming incoherently at her through gritted teeth.
She was originally the biological daughter of the Guardian Princess. She and Shen Yuanwu had been switched at birth, leaving Jiang Yao to grow up as a merchant’s daughter before marrying the newly top-ranked scholar Pei Muzheng.
Less than a year after marrying Pei Muzheng, her reputation was utterly destroyed.
During a banquet at the Duke Dingguo’s residence, Hongxiu—Shen Yuanwu’s maid—had tricked her into going to a side courtyard, where she was forced to drink a bowl of medicinal soup that rendered her unconscious. She awoke to find the duke’s stable hand tearing at her clothes. Weak and struggling helplessly, she was discovered in this compromising position.
Afterward, Pei Muzheng demoted her from wife to concubine. A year later, he married Shen Yuanwu.
“Jiang Yao.” Shen Yuanwu chuckled lightly.
“You always thought Hongxiu was the one who drugged you, so you assumed I was behind it—that I wanted to ruin your reputation and orchestrated everything to marry Brother Pei? What if I told you that Pei Lang himself ordered me to do it? The one he has always loved is me. It was your Jiang family who humiliated him with money when he was down and forced him to marry you. He detests you.”
Jiang Yao stared blankly, as if unable to believe it.
She had been the one who supported Pei Muzheng, enabling him to become the top scholar and allowing the Pei family to live well. How could he hate her?
Footsteps sounded outside, and soon Pei Muzheng, draped in a heavy cloak, entered. He gently held Shen Yuanwu by the waist.
“Madam, I have some words for her. Please wait for me in the carriage.”
Shen Yuanwu softly agreed and turned to leave.
Jiang Yao gazed at the man before her, her clear eyes filled with confusion.
Pei Muzheng looked into those clear eyes, feeling as if all his despicable and sinister thoughts were laid bare.
He walked up to Jiang Yao, pinched her chin, and murmured,
“Jiang Yao, these eyes of yours are truly detestable.”
He abruptly thrust two fingers into Jiang Yao’s eye sockets and gouged out her eyeballs.
A heart-wrenching scream echoed through the room.
He stroked Jiang Yao’s hollowed eyes. “Now I have become the Chief Grand Secretary. Do you still remember how you humiliated me and the Pei family with your silver? I might have let you continue living, but you actually had the audacity to seduce the Regent Prince at the estate. Since you have no shame, I’ll help you peel it off…”
A blade tip traced along the skin of her forehead, warm blood trickling down her cheeks.
Pain, such excruciating pain!
How she hated!
She hated her own blindness in misjudging people, hated falling for this treacherous, ungrateful villain!
Overwhelming hatred, a haze of blood.
If there were an afterlife, she would make Pei Muzheng, Shen Yuanwu, and all the Pei family pay with their lives—for her and for the Jiang family!
She would make every one of them die horribly!!
“Ah, no!!”
Jiang Yao’s eyes snapped open as she woke, gasping for breath.
She had dreamed again—of having her tongue cut out, her eyes gouged, and her skin flayed in her previous life.
She had indeed been reborn, but not in the Great Ning Dynasty.
Instead, she became an ordinary person without spiritual roots in a world of immortal cultivation, yet rose to fame as a mortal medical cultivator.
She often dreamed of her past life, and it had become her nightmare.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” A voice she still recognized even after a century echoed in her ears. “You have no choice. This is a good thing prepared for you by the Commandery Princess.”
The words struck Jiang Yao like thunder. She whipped her head around and saw Hongxiu!
Jiang Yao looked around in disbelief—the familiar room, the familiar face. Had she returned to the moment at the Duke of Dingguo’s banquet when Hongxiu forced her to drink that bowl of aphrodisiac?
Jiang Yao was still reeling from her rebirth.
Seeing Hongxiu suddenly lunge forward, reaching to choke her neck.
Jiang Yao sneered, moving faster than Hongxiu. She swiftly pinned Hongxiu’s neck, numbing her body and rendering her immobile, then forced the entire bowl of dark, murky medicine down Hongxiu’s throat before striking the back of her neck with a knife.
After knocking her out, Jiang Yao dragged her to the couch and tossed her onto it.
Did they really think she was still that weak, sheltered young woman they could manipulate at will—the one whose tongue they cut out, whose eyes they gouged, whose skin they flayed?
Noises came from outside the door—it was the horse slave from her previous life…
A short while later, Jiang Yao left the side courtyard and hurried toward a nearby bamboo grove.
In the grove stood a small house. Jiang Yao pulled open the window and climbed inside.
She scanned the room and saw a tall man reclining lazily on a daybed across from her.
The man’s eyes were closed, his chin resting on his palm as he leaned on the couch.
His hand was broad, his fingers long and slender. His face was pale, his brows furrowed.
He was exceptionally handsome—his hairline sharp as if cut by a blade, his eyebrows dark and elegant like ink paintings, with a gentle yet striking beauty.
This was the future Regent Prince who would dominate the court, now the Prince of Ning, titled after the dynasty’s name.
But he suffered from chronic headaches. For now, it was still bearable, but in a few years, the pain would drive him mad, unrecognizable to anyone, even his own family.
He had been sent to an estate that happened to be next to the Pei family’s property.
After Pei Muzheng demoted her from wife to concubine, she was locked away in a side courtyard of the Pei residence for the first few years. In the last three years, they abandoned her at the estate to fend for herself, with Hongxiu overseeing her.
Back then, Jiang Yao pitied him and sometimes shared meals she prepared with him.
That was how they became acquainted. Strangely, while he would attack anyone else who approached, he never laid a hand on her.
There was even one time when he saw Hongxiu forcing medicine down her throat, and he nearly beat Hongxiu to death.
After that, every time he saw Hongxiu, he would beat her again.
He even worried that she might be bullied, so he stayed at her manor estate all the time.
Hongxiu no longer dared to force her to take medicine, nor did she dare to appear at the manor estate again.
Those three years were the most comfortable she had lived in all her later years.
But later, Pei Muzheng took advantage of his absence for a few days, came to the manor, gouged out her eyes, flayed her skin, and tortured her to death in excruciating pain.
After her death, she never knew what became of him.
In her previous life, he protected her for three years; in this life, she would protect him.
Even though his temperament remained as unpredictable as ever, aloof and indifferent to women, she had her ways…
“Ah!”
Jiang Yao suddenly cried out, pretending to have been startled by someone in the room.
The sound naturally caught the attention of His Highness Prince Ning, who was reclining by the couch.
Prince Ning opened his eyes and saw a delicate, beautiful woman curled up beneath the window.
His eyes were filled with frost, as if he were also enduring some other agony.
“How dare you!”
Jiang Yao seemed frightened by his icy tone, shrinking back slightly, but then suddenly her expression turned resolute. Lifting the hem of her skirt, she rushed forward and knelt before Prince Ning.
She then slightly raised her head, her fair, tofu-like face flushed with red, a few strands of hair clinging to her feverish cheeks damp with sweat.
“Your Highness, I beg you to save me.”