“By imperial decree of the Son of Heaven: Shen Lingyun, Marquis of Yongning, colluded with Zhang Yanzhi, Vice Minister of Revenue, to privately mint currency, pass off inferior goods as superior ones, and embezzle for personal gain…”
The shrill, cutting voice of the eunuch rang through the vast marquis residence. With the cry of “Confiscate property and exterminate the clan,” firelight erupted, accompanied by wailing, screams, and shouts.
The officials sent to carry out the confiscation were like hyenas that had scented fresh meat. Their eyes brimmed with greed and excitement as they burned, looted, and slaughtered within this century-old noble household. In the spacious and once-beautiful courtyards, bodies—young and old alike—littered the ground, while the carefully tended flower gardens were trampled beyond recognition.
At the innermost part of the Shen residence stood the ancestral hall. The Marquis of Yongning and several household retainers guarded the entrance with blades in hand. Beneath the statue of the Buddha, the marquis’s wife—her eyes swollen red and her face haggard—stuffed her two daughters into a hidden passage and gave them a hard shove, crying out through tears:
“Go! Follow this secret passage out! Your maternal grandfather has sent people waiting outside. Leave the capital city and live on—never, ever come back!”
The doors of the ancestral hall were violently rammed open. The marquis’s wife, almost mad with desperation, pushed them farther inside and yanked the small door shut, terror-stricken as she guarded that tiny refuge. Her gentle, beautiful face was streaked with tears of utter despair.
The last thing Shen Wangshu saw was the marquis’s wife’s slender, trembling back, and the Marquis of Yongning leading a handful of retainers in a futile last stand—only to be pierced through the heart by a sword.
Her legitimate elder sister grabbed her and ran for their lives. All sounds gradually faded away, leaving only the violent, twisting pain in Shen Wangshu’s chest to remind her she was still alive.
“Nian-nian, Nian-nian?”
Her elder sister turned back and saw her deathly pale face slick with cold sweat. Tears instantly spilled from her beautiful eyes as she kept stroking her younger sister’s icy cheeks, saying, “Hold on a little longer… just a little longer. The exit is right ahead.”
When the marquis’s wife had been pregnant with Shen Wangshu, she had suffered a serious illness, leaving Shen Wangshu weak even in the womb. At birth, she had nearly died. Ever since, she had been plagued by constant illnesses, and whenever her emotions flared, she would suffer from angina. In severe cases, she would be unable to breathe, even fainting to the point of death.
Without a word, Shen Wangshu clenched her lips and forced herself to keep running after her sister. When she finally saw the light outside and that inconspicuous carriage, she lost all strength and collapsed into unconsciousness.
Several household guards in night clothes immediately leapt down from the carriage, helping Shen Xihe load the young miss inside. Then, with one final torch, they burned the only remaining exit.
Inside the carriage, Shen Xihe finally noticed that her sister’s lips were bitten bloody and her face was ashen. Shen Wangshu had been pampered since childhood; her family had never allowed her to suffer even the slightest hardship. Yet just now, she had endured such agony without uttering a single sound.
The tears on both their faces had dried again and again. Shen Xihe weakly cradled her sister’s body, her mind in complete turmoil.
……
It was early summer. Lush greenery flourished outside, and the large peach tree beyond the window blocked most of the sunlight, sparing the person beneath the gauzy bed curtains from the worst of the summer heat.
On the rosewood luohan bed carved with mythical beasts by the window, a beauty lay sleeping restlessly, clad only in a thin goose-yellow top. Damp hair clung to her temples with fragrant sweat, and her fair, delicate arms looked even paler against the crabapple-red quilt embroidered with mandarin ducks.
Shen Wangshu suddenly opened her eyes, gasping as she clutched her chest—there was still a dull ache there. In her dreams, blazing fire surged toward her, as though it would burn everything to ashes.
When she had first transmigrated, she had arrived just in time to witness the original body’s household being confiscated. Inside the Xiahou family’s carriage, the former owner of this frail body had completely died—and then Shen Wangshu arrived.
“Coronary atherosclerotic heart disease…”
She murmured while pressing her chest. “The key is no heavy labor and no emotional agitation. The original owner died from emotional overload…”
Shen Wangshu was a newly graduated doctoral student of traditional Chinese medicine from the twenty-first century. Her transmigration had come about by sheer coincidence—she had stayed up late reading a novel, and when she woke up, she was already in the Xiahou residence.
When she first arrived, she was muddle-headed and confused. The original soul had not yet fully dissipated, and coupled with her illness, Shen Wangshu was rarely fully conscious. It took nearly a month before she finished absorbing the original memories and understanding her surroundings, finally grasping her current situation.
She had transmigrated into the novel she had been binge-reading late into the night, Destined Phoenix Daughter—specifically, into the female protagonist’s younger sister: Shen Wangshu.
When she read it, she had barely noticed this cannon-fodder character who appeared only a handful of times. Now that she thought about it, even the name was identical—if not her, then who?
In the original story, Shen Wangshu did not die quite as early as she had now, but she did not live long either. Not long after marrying the older general named Chen Ting, she withered away in melancholy within the Duke’s residence.
“Miss, are you awake?”
The gentle call of the maid Taohong came from outside. Moments later, the curtain was lifted, and a round-faced young girl leaned in. Seeing the beauty sitting blankly on the bed, she smiled. As she drew up the gauze curtains, she spoke cheerfully:
“The eldest miss asked me to check on you, afraid you might oversleep. I didn’t expect you to wake up on your own.”
Shen Wangshu yawned, rubbed her long lashes damp with tears of fatigue, and nodded listlessly.
During her first month after transmigrating, whether because her soul was unstable or for some other reason, she first fell gravely ill with a fever so severe that she nearly thought she would die on the spot. After more than half a month of torment, she finally woke—only to become drowsy and plagued by dreams, sleeping poorly. Each time she closed her eyes, she would see the scene of the Yongning Marquis residence being confiscated.
The marquis’s wife’s parental home was in Moyun City, over a thousand li from the capital. After the sisters fled overnight, they were not pursued over vast distances, and the old patriarch decided to keep his two granddaughters.
From that day on, the famed Shen sisters, once unrivaled beauties of the capital, vanished without a trace. Meanwhile, the Xiahou residence in Moyun City gained two young lady relatives.
Nearly three months had passed since the confiscation. Enduring day after day of nightmares, the already frail Shen Wangshu grew thinner rapidly. Though not reduced to skin and bones, the baby fat on her face had completely faded, making her eyes appear larger and her chin more pointed.
She had been well cared for in the past. At seventeen, she was in the prime of youth. Even when ill, she was a fragile beauty like a willow in the wind—delicate and pitiable. When her moist black eyes looked over quietly, she appeared docile and sweet, making others want nothing more than to offer her their hearts.
Taohong had originally been a minor maid in the Xiahou household and was assigned by the matriarch to serve this young lady from the capital. She had been nervous for days, fully prepared—yet aside from the first night, when the young lady jolted awake from a nightmare and cried in her arms for a while, she never once lost her temper. In daily life, she spoke softly and gently, without the slightest irritability.
Taohong still vividly remembered the pitiful sight of that delicate beauty sobbing quietly in her arms that night, and her heart could not help but brim with tenderness.
She helped Shen Wangshu dress in an aquamarine gauze skirt embroidered at the hem with lifelike green lotus blossoms. It set off her figure so light and misty that she seemed ready to ride the wind away at any moment.
“The eldest miss asked you to come to the west room for tea and pastries,” Taohong said. “She said the weather’s getting hot, so you’re allowed a little mung bean ice.”
Mung bean ice had once been Shen Wangshu’s favorite summer treat. Her elder sister doted on her, remembering every preference in the smallest details. Though touched, Shen Wangshu also knew that beyond afternoon tea, Shen Xihe was likely troubled by something else and wanted her to come over to discuss it.