Rebirth.
The summer heat was scorching, making everyone restless.
By the Moon Gate Window, an old nanny in a brown robe was relentlessly lecturing the young lady before her.
“Third Miss, how many times have I told you? You must remember your current status. It’s not yet time to rest, so why have you loosened your silk shawl and slumped your waist? And your sitting posture—your bearing was never good to begin with. If you don’t maintain it properly and aren’t careful, what will happen if someone catches you? The eldest miss would never behave this way.”
“You must understand, the Yan Family’s gates are high and their courtyards deep, with rules so strict that not a single misstep is allowed…”
This nanny, surnamed Wu, was Madam Pu’s trusted confidante. Known for her strict enforcement of rules and rigid manner, she acted as Madam Pu’s eyes, tolerating not the slightest deviation from those under her.
Pu Wange—no, it should be Pu Jinyu—sat silently, enduring her scolding.
In the past, she would have responded with a word or two, but now she remained silent. Even with makeup applied, one could faintly see the sickly pallor of her face.
Her personal maid, Jingchun, noticing that Pu Jinyu seemed unwell, quickly stepped forward to explain on her behalf. She said it wasn’t that Pu Jinyu was deliberately lazy, but the weather was too hot, and her skin couldn’t bear it.
Before long, prickly heat sores had broken out on her back, so she had taken off her silk shawl and slumped her waist while no one was around, discussing whether to apply medicine.
Jingchun had originally been the personal maid of Pu Jinyu’s elder sister, Pu Wange, and held some status within the Pu Family. Thus, when she spoke, Nanny Wu gave her some face.
But to assert authority and offer a warning, the old nanny turned and added, “As the young lady’s personal maid, why didn’t you remind her?”
“If anything goes wrong and word gets out, we’ll all be dead!” Nanny Wu’s voice was low, her expression grim.
“Yes, yes… You’re absolutely right. We’ll be sure to remind her next time,” Jingchun hurriedly nodded in agreement. “And we’ll keep a close eye on Third… the eldest miss.”
Nearly slipping up, Jingchun quickly corrected herself.
Nanny Wu frowned upon hearing this, repeatedly reminding her to be careful.
After lecturing for a long time, Nanny Wu finally stopped, thirsty. She drank a cup of tea poured by Jingchun and then left.
“Young miss, are you all right?”
Seeing that the lady’s complexion didn’t look good and that she hadn’t made a sound for so long, Jingchun grew worried.
“If you’re unwell, shall I fetch a physician for you?” Though somewhat risky, it was better than waiting until it became serious.
Pu Jinyu seemed lost in thought, neither hearing her words nor responding. Her face grew paler, and she clenched her hands tightly, lost in unknown thoughts.
Jingchun waited a while but received no reply. Frowning deeply, she immediately sent a young maid to fetch a physician.
As the young maid passed through the beaded curtain, the jade beads clinked crisply, their shimmering reflections flickering in the light. The silent lady, her eyelashes fluttering at the play of light and shadow, finally seemed to awaken from a dream. At last, she spoke, “No… there’s no need to fetch a physician.”
Hearing this, the young maid halted her steps and looked back. Jingchun approached worriedly, pouring a cup of tea as she asked, “Young miss, are you truly all right?”
These past two days, Jingcheng had been unbearably hot. Although ice blocks and wind wheels had been placed indoors, Pu Jinyu’s skin was particularly sensitive.
No matter how fine the fabric of the clothes, it was of little use. Not only could it not withstand wind and sun, but when the weather grew a bit warmer, it would trap heat and cause prickly heat sores. Her skin was fair and delicate, and when covered with these sores, it looked especially shocking.
Jingchun had applied some ointments for her, but they were largely ineffective.
Precisely because Pu Jinyu’s complexion was too pale—somewhat different from Pu Wange’s—to avoid revealing any flaws, she had to apply powder every day to cover up, ensuring no mistakes were made.
The powder was applied over and over, causing her prickly heat sores to heal and flare up repeatedly, never fully cured. In previous years, they would only ease when autumn arrived and the weather cooled. But now it was just the beginning of summer, and this season was still long.
“Shall I bring you a bowl of iced snowball dessert?”
Seeing her complexion was too poor, Jingchun tried to coax her. This was something Pu Jinyu liked to eat. In the past, when she was upset, Jingchun would secretly bring her a small bowl.
“You may leave as well.” Pu Jinyu did not answer whether she wanted to eat or not, lifting her eyes to look at her. “…I want to be alone.”
When Jingchun met her gaze, she felt something was different.
As for what was different, she couldn’t quite say.
In the past, Pu Jinyu had been scolded by Nanny Wu before, but she was rarely this silent. Especially her eyes—they could almost be described as lifeless, like a stagnant pond, utterly without ripples.
Jingchun still wanted to speak words of comfort, but Pu Jinyu had already closed her eyes.
Seeing this, she could only leave. “I’ll be right outside. If you need anything, just call for me.”
Pu Jinyu did not respond.
Jingchun had no choice but to lead the little maids out of the inner chamber, their footsteps gradually fading away.
After everyone had left, Pu Jinyu’s hands resting on her knees slowly clenched until they trembled. She lowered her head, opened her eyes, and stared blankly at her palms and the backs of her hands. The calluses from holding a brush were not as many, and there were no old scars from candle burns at the base of her thumb.
Then she turned her body to look toward the dressing table. The young woman in the bronze mirror, though appearing dignified and elegant, upon closer inspection, still revealed a hint of youthful innocence in her brows and eyes. This was not her at twenty-nine.
Not to mention anything else, just looking at her flat abdomen now—she was not pregnant.
Only now, as she touched her belly and then her face in the mirror, did she barely regain some sense of reality. It seemed she had truly died and… been reborn.
Yes, after dying in childbirth, she had actually come back to life. Opening her eyes, she found herself back in the summer afternoon of the third year after her substitute marriage.
On this day, she had merely loosened her silk shawl and relaxed her waist after lunch, intending to stretch and laze about a little, when she was spotted by the old nanny sent by her stepmother.
The old nanny immediately dismissed everyone around and lectured her sternly, scolding her repeatedly, saying that even after three years she still hadn’t shed her rustic habits and truly lacked manners. The spittle from her mouth almost sprayed onto her face.
She was supposed to be dead, so how had she come back to life?
Could it all have been an illusion? No, it wasn’t an illusion. In her previous life, she had lived in constant fear and anxiety, enduring hardships for so long. If it were just a dream or an illusion, it would have been too easy. She could never forget it.
That was more than a decade later. She was almost thirty but never crossed the threshold of thirty.
Perhaps it was because of the excessive toil over those nearly twenty years. Though she was pregnant, she did not give birth safely. Soon after feeling the fetal movements, she suffered heart failure, fainted, and ultimately died along with the unborn child.
After her death, her soul did not disperse. Drifting about, she unexpectedly learned many things.
Her legitimate elder sister was actually not dead! She had not succumbed to a severe illness and died young. Instead, she had faked her death to escape and follow her lover. Among the mourners at her own memorial hall, she saw her disguised legitimate elder sister, alive and well, hidden within the crowd, watching her spirit tablet from the perspective of an onlooker.
Yet this was not the most crucial part. What was most laughable should be her own mother.
The mother she trusted and cherished the most had been deceiving her all along.
It turned out that her mother had never been coerced at all from the beginning to the end. The legitimate wife had not threatened her life, forcing her to send her daughter as a substitute for the marriage.
Instead, her mother, for the sake of her own splendid future, when the marriage between the Yan and Pu families was approaching and the legitimate elder sister suddenly fell seriously ill, wanted to seize the opportunity to advance her position. In order to secure a place within the Pu Family, she took the initiative to advise the legitimate wife.
She said that she actually had another daughter raised in a rural estate, whose appearance resembled that of the legitimate elder sister, with similar stature and age. Perhaps she could be brought back, undergo a complete transformation, study the legitimate elder sister’s words and actions, and carry out a grand deception—first marry in her place, and once the legitimate elder sister recovered from her illness, the two could be swapped back.
She was able to understand all of this thanks to the fact that, after her death, she simply could not rest easy about her mother. Worried about her difficult life in the Pu Family, she drifted over to see her one last time.
At that time, her mother was kneeling by the edge of the bed, crying. She wept so bitterly that her hair was disheveled, her makeup smeared by tears—it could truly be described as heart-wrenching.
It looked as though she was in immense pain, but in reality, those tears were not genuinely shed out of heartache for her, this daughter.
Because as her mother cried, she kept saying how could she be so short-lived, so useless, unable to carry a pregnancy to term, and why did she have to die at this very moment? Couldn’t she have died earlier or later, after giving birth to a child?
Now that she was dead, what was she supposed to do? In the deep courtyards of the Pu Family, she was already aging and losing her beauty. How could she survive without any support?
Her mother continuously cursed her, calling her a money-losing burden—not only was she born a useless girl, tormenting her for half a lifetime, but in the end, she was so short-lived and failed to fulfill her duty as a person.
Upon suddenly hearing these words, her mind buzzed with shock. Stunned and hovering in mid-air, at a loss, she looked at the tears streaming down her mother’s face, hardly able to believe that these were her true inner thoughts?
If she hadn’t personally heard her mother utter those words, no matter who told her that her mother had said such things, she would never have believed it.
Listening to her own mother’s continuous wails of sorrow, watching the tears fall like rain, within those glistening tears, Pu Jinyu vaguely recalled the past. It was truly a very, very long time ago—so long that it felt like an old dream.
Back then, she had not yet become the puppet named Pu Wange. She was still called Pu Jinyu, with a name uniquely her own.
Looking back on her life—born as the daughter of a concubine, forced from birth to disguise herself as a boy to please her biological father. Unfortunately, falsehood could not become truth. As she grew older, her identity could no longer be hidden, and her mother, without hesitation, schemed to send her away to a remote and dilapidated place.
At that time, gazing into her mother’s tearful, blurred eyes, the young her did not understand the meaning of abandonment. Unable to see through the ruthless determination hidden behind her mother’s unwavering resolve, she actually believed those eyes were filled with heartache and concern for her.
Heartache that she had to disguise her gender from such a young age, concern that as she grew older, she couldn’t continue like this forever.
So she had no choice but to send her to the countryside. It turned out, it was all a lie. Her mother saw her as nothing but a burden.
If not for that incident involving her legitimate elder sister, she would likely have been abandoned in the countryside for the rest of her life, instead of once again becoming a useful and convenient tool.
Jinyu, Jinyu—what her mother wanted was another piece of genuine “gold and jade” in the form of a son, not this fake “Jinyu” that she was.
Countless times, her mother had used and discarded her, this daughter, to secure her own position and enjoy her wealth and glory, yet even in death, she gained nothing from it.
Looking back on the first half of her life, Pu Jinyu found it truly laughable.
Pitifully, it was only upon her death that she suddenly realized everything clearly, but it was of no use anymore.
In the thirteenth year of Yangyou, she ultimately succumbed to heart failure and died in childbirth at the age of twenty-nine.
Buried under the name of her legitimate elder sister, Pu Wange, she spent her entire life, body and soul, trapped within the Yan Family’s deep, bone-devouring mansion.
Thinking her soul would dissipate and she would die with resentment, she never expected to be reborn in such a bizarre manner.
Just moments ago, when she opened her eyes, she felt only overwhelming noise. Lifting her gaze, she saw a gaping, blood-red mouth opening and closing repeatedly. Upon closer inspection, it was the old face of Mother Wu.
As her consciousness gradually returned, those incessant words grew clearer in her ears.
Listening with a pounding heart, she clenched her fingers resting on her knees, digging them into her palms. Waves of pain surged up, as if telling her it was real, it was vivid.
Now, lifting her eyes to look through the Moon Gate Window, she saw the red bricks and blue tiles of the Yan Family, and the Soft Smoke Gauze Canopy in the inner chamber.
Recalling all that had happened and been experienced in her previous life, she couldn’t help but curl her lips into a cold smile.
Slowly lowering her eyelashes, she revealed an appearance of docility and pity, concealing the turbulent emotions surging within.