They all said that I spent thirty coins and two lives to pave the way for my father. In the first year of Qi Yuan, when the red flood surged into the sky, my life should have come to an abrupt end due to a transaction on the Broken Soul Bridge. But I'm not dead. A fire in Linjiang Pavilion burned out my way of survival and a mystery. No one knew how a twelve-year-old girl could sweep away everything from that man-eating attic, leaving only a charred corpse and ashes on the ground. The bandits in Hengya Mountain called me the "Little Military Advisor", and the officers and soldiers in Weizhou regarded me as the "Living King of Hell". I give them food, and I also send them on their way; I give some people a way of life, and I cut off the future of many more. The dignitaries of the Three Kingdoms are playing games in my hands, and they will not know until they die that they are just a pawn. But there are always discerning people. The young man in purple clothes who was robbed of the roast chicken by me at the dog cave later became my only national scholar. He always wanted to ask me a question: "Azhao, was it you who survived the bridge, or was it you who borrowed your body to come back for revenge... From that red flood?" I never answered. It was not until the Enke Palace Examination that my biological father, who was proud of his youth, raised his head under the dragon chair, and his face turned pale for an instant, as if he had seen a ghost who should have been buried deep in the torrent. He screamed: "You! Haven't you already--" I looked down at him, as if I were looking down at the rolling torrent under the bridge. "Mr. Liu," I interrupted him lightly, "guess, why did I come back?" And the real answer was hidden in the last smile my mother showed to me when she jumped down.
