Reborn: Fate Bound to Pingping

As Lu Zhenhua lay dying, it was not the faces of his nine concubines that flashed before his eyes, but the figure beneath the crabapple tree, dressed in a coarse cloth qipao. Pingping, the only woman he had ever loved, had withered away in despair because he had been powerless to save her all those years ago.

When he opened his eyes again, snow was falling everywhere. He had returned to the villa on the general’s estate, thirty years in the past. Pingping, in her moon-white qipao, still wore the same bright smile, a pearl hairpin swaying at her temple. And he was still a military academy student, his edges not yet worn down by reality.

The regrets of his past life were branded into his bones. He had watched helplessly as she was promised to a Mongolian prince, and watched her give her life to uphold her vow to marry no one but him. Then he had spent half a lifetime grasping for power, marrying woman after woman who resembled her, only to be left with an even deeper emptiness.

This time, he gripped the warm hand warmer tightly, its heat in his palm rousing every buried frustration. Facing General Fu’s contempt and the prince’s designs on her, he would no longer be the impulsive young man he once was. He would use everything he had learned at the military academy to carve out a safe haven for her amid the chaos. He would rewrite the blood-soaked ending beneath the crabapple tree, so that his vow, “I will marry no one but you in this life,” would finally become a promise fulfilled, with them growing old hand in hand.

No matter how fiercely the snow fell, it could not stop him from making a new beginning. No amount of power could bring back a heart once lost. In this life, Lu Zhenhua had only one thought: protect Pingping and never let her down.