[Reborn + revenge on villains + political intrigue + mutual salvation]
As crimson blood spread across the bed curtains, Wen Wan clutched the bloodstained marriage divination papers and finally saw the blade of ice in Shen Yichen's eyes.
At eighteen, during that grand occasion in Jiangnan, the richest man's daughter married a poor scholar who had passed the highest imperial exam.
The world saw only ten miles of bridal finery, never the poisoned wine hidden in a splendid case.
Over the next ten years, her father and brothers died sudden deaths, and the family's immense fortune became Chancellor Shen's ladder to power.
In the end, this caged bird was torn apart and used as medicine.
When she opened her eyes again, jade-hall spring blossoms were falling softly onto the embroidered robe worn by the man who had come to propose.
"Since you offer the top exam honors as your betrothal gift, Shen," Wen Wan said, crushing the albizia blossoms soaked in poison from her previous life, "why not add the three letters and six rites, and ask for half of my Wen family's salt-trading permits?"
Reborn, she used blood for ink and wielded the game pieces as blades.
The jackals that had gnawed at the Wen family's flesh and blood would soon discover that the ladder to success, built of white bones, ended at the edge of a bottomless abyss.
Until the night of the palace banquet, when Shen Yichen, who was supposed to be drunk, seized her hand as she tried to send a message through a secret passage. "Madam, do you know that every piece you destroyed was once an escape route I prepared for you?"
Wen Wan brushed the blood-red jade pendant hidden in her sleeve and remembered the man who had rushed back from the northern frontier to her mourning hall in her previous life, holding her cold hand as hot tears fell.
I really like Wenwan