Jiang Zhuo realized very early that she was not the protagonist of this world—Shen Guanzhi was.
When had it begun?
Jiang Zhuo thought in a daze.
It must have been many times.
The first time was when she smiled while listening to Shen Guanzhi talk about how she cleverly outmaneuvered those concubines and half-sisters at home.
The second time was when Jiang Zhuo, whose family had just been raided and stripped of everything, stood blankly in the rear courtyard watching Shen Guanzhi marry her former fiancé in a grand procession.
The third time was now, as the dying Jiang Zhuo lay on her sickbed and listened to the servant women by the door gossip about tomorrow’s enthronement of the new emperor—and how the newly appointed empress would be the eldest daughter of the Shen family.
“Cough, cough, cough!”
Jiang Zhuo couldn’t stop another round of coughing.
Her withered fingers clenched and relaxed around the old yellowed handkerchief, now stained again with blood—bright as azalea blossoms.
“…A wretched consumptive, always ruining the mood.”
The servant woman at the door pinched her nose in disdain, cast Jiang Zhuo a disgusted glance, then closed the door and continued chatting with the laborer outside.
“They say that Empress Shen really was quite something back then…”
Outside, a light rain pattered through the night. It had already been raining for more than three months.
Once known alongside Shen Guanzhi as one of the two great beauties of the capital, Jiang Zhuo had long become gaunt beyond recognition. A hideous crusted scar marred her once exquisite features, making her appearance even more shocking.
Sichuan was a land of heavy rains. Ever since arriving at the Xie residence, Jiang Zhuo had hardly seen the sun. Now, sick with a lingering illness and confined to this mold-scented servant’s room, the oppressive dampness was nearly unbearable.
She longed so much to bask in sunlight.
She suddenly remembered that spring outing after her coming-of-age ceremony at fifteen.
The warm sunshine of the capital glowed on the newly fashioned hairpins and dresses of the young noble ladies.
“Hey, hey, did you hear? At the Qionghua Banquet in a few days, the Empress Dowager plans to help Prince Jing choose a consort.”
“Hmph, what’s so good about Prince Jing? Lord Linghou is much more dashing!”
“Oh, please. That marquis you’re obsessed with already has so many little concubines his rooms can barely hold them. If you really married him, your father would be furious enough to die!”
“Shh! After your coming-of-age, you’re an adult now—don’t talk like a child with no filter.”
“We’re all sisters here! What’s wrong with joking? By the way, do you know whether that newly ranked top scholar has a wife yet?”
“What use is a sour, penniless scholar? A military man is far more dependable.”
Beside her, Shen Guanzhi gave a light laugh and tugged Jiang Zhuo’s sleeve. “Ah Zhuo, do you have someone you like?”
Jiang Zhuo’s father, ranking as the Deputy Minister of State Affairs, was practically equal to the Vice Chancellor. With only one daughter—Jiang Zhuo—whose beauty was exceptional, she was considered the foremost among the noble ladies of the time.
“Of course. If I marry, I’ll marry only the finest man in the entire capital.”
Jiang Zhuo lifted her chin with pride, shallow dimples blooming on her pink cheeks. The gold hairpin in her coiffure made her dark hair shine even more.
Prince Jing was the first prince to be enfeoffed with a title, and many families in the capital believed the emperor intended to make him crown prince.
If she was to choose the best, naturally she aimed for the position of Princess Jing.
And Jiang Zhuo followed through.
At the Qionghua Banquet, she won first place with a pipa performance, and the emperor himself granted her marriage to Prince Jing. She basked in unparalleled glory.
But not long after that, her father Jiang Dun was implicated in a factional purge and their entire family was exiled.
Though Jiang Zhuo was taken to Prince Jing’s manor that very night and thus escaped immediate disaster, the marriage was never mentioned again.
A former noble lady became a lowly concubine overnight, forced to watch her former friend Shen Guanzhi marry into the princely manor with ten miles of red dowry procession.
Prince Jing Zhao Mingjing, lofty and powerful; Marquis of Wuwei Ling Heng, whose influence was overwhelming; Su Yanqing, the top scholar ranked first in all three examinations; and Xie Guanlan, the imposing commander of the capital’s imperial guards.
Jiang Zhuo, daughter of a disgraced official, possessing nothing but beauty, became something shamefully passed around among these powerful men like an object unfit for daylight.
Those mocking gazes, scornful remarks, harsh reprimands, painful lashings…
The crushing weight of the past nearly made Jiang Zhuo unable to open her eyes.
In the darkness, she could hear only her own rough breathing—until the final metallic taste of blood rose up her throat, and even that sound faded.
Silence swallowed everything.
When dawn broke, Jiang Zhuo opened her eyes—only to find her body feeling strangely light. Her dying self still lay on the bed, but no longer breathing.
“What an ill-omened wretch. Sick for so many days, and of all times, she dies today.”
The old servant who came to feed her medicine in the morning discovered her death and felt deeply irritated.
“She really had no fortune. I heard her father was once an official. If he hadn’t committed a crime… Today the new emperor ascends the throne. With the general amnesty, if she had just survived a little longer, the family might’ve been reunited.”
A servant who came to help prepare the corpse sighed softly.
“Bah! What young lady of an official’s family? She was born with luck but no blessing. It’s just as well—General Xie never liked her. No need to waste a coffin. Just find a place to bury her.”
Grumbling nonstop, the old servant wrapped Jiang Zhuo’s body in a straw mat.
The flustered servants stuffed the wrapped body into a hemp sack, dragged it to the back mountain, and buried it hurriedly with a handful of earth.
As a wandering spirit, Jiang Zhuo stood dazed by the bed, watching others bury her. It felt strangely surreal.
A general amnesty was meaningless.
Jiang Zhuo gave a bitter smile. On the road to exile, her father had been killed by bandits.
She herself had still been in Prince Jing’s manor at the time. To keep her emotions steady, he hid the news. By the time she learned of it, her father had already been dead for more than half a year.
No grave, no coffin, no rites, no chance for rebirth.
Her soul simply drifted around Sichuan—sometimes swinging on tree branches, sometimes blowing cold drafts behind servant women who gossiped about her, sometimes moving pebbles so the guards who once beat her would fall flat on their faces.
Being a ghost wasn’t so bad.
She thought calmly. When she’d been alive, she feared beatings, scolding, pain, filth, hardship, cold—everything. In death, she feared nothing.
Like her fourth husband, Xie Guanlan, the feared “General Yama,” notorious for killing without blinking. He always wore a dark, gloomy expression.
In life she had been terrified of him, avoiding him even while walking under the eaves. But now she could boldly blow apart the fresh pages he had written, scattering them everywhere.
Yet no one remembered the lowly concubine who had died of illness.
When the first snow fell in Sichuan, a noble young man draped in a dark fox-fur cloak came to the back mountain of the Xie estate. He ordered the mountain dug up, collected her decayed remains into a fragrant rosewood box, rebuilt a grave atop the mountain, and erected an unmarked tombstone. Before leaving, he even burned paper money for her.
What a kind man!
Moved to tears after months of pestering Xie Guanlan in dreams and begging him in vain to burn her some funerary paper, Jiang Zhuo finally encountered a good-hearted person. She immediately prepared to reincarnate and greet her new life.