Nine Lives, Ashes at the End

He betrayed her for nine lifetimes. In the tenth, she broke his heart. In their tenth life, Lu Que bought Ling Zhao with a contract, treating her with cold indifference as though she were invisible. Then, as he lay near death after a car accident, the memories of all nine past lives came crashing back! He had been the emperor who ordered her death, the immortal who destroyed her cultivation, the scholar who betrayed her and married another... For nine lives, he had pushed her into despair, always claiming he had no choice. After awakening to the truth, Lu Que went mad with remorse. He abandoned everything, fell to his knees to beg forgiveness, recreated their keepsake, and gave away his entire fortune. But Ling Zhao calmly showed him the nine scars over her heart. “I don’t hate you anymore, but my love has burned away.” She casually donated the keepsake he had spent a fortune to obtain. When he was critically ill, she sent him a bouquet of carnations anonymously. Their language was “forgetfulness.” In the end, she vanished completely, leaving behind only a novel, Nine Lives, Ashes of Farewell, which exposed all his sins across their nine lives. It turned out the cruelest revenge was to ignore him completely. With ten lifetimes of not loving him, she reduced his nine lifetimes of devotion to ashes. Lu Que built countless schools and hospitals, but he could never again bring light to the eyes he had once extinguished with his own hands. The flames of his redemption burned out, scorching his own soul. “This time, I’ll be the one trapped in the cycle of reincarnation forever.”