She had died once.
The day the barbarians breached the city, she was trampled beneath their horses' hooves. As she lay dying, she heard the soldiers say, “People from the Central Plains are as stupid as pigs. They won't even take the strategy to defeat us when it's handed to them.”
When she opened her eyes again, she was back on the day she turned fifteen and came of age.
A fortune-teller pointed at her and cursed her as a “born calamity.” Her fiancé broke off their engagement that very night, while her stepmother smiled and said, “Go mourn your mother at the family shrine.”
She smiled.
In her previous life, she had knelt and accepted her fate. She was confined to the family shrine for ten years, then died at the hands of the barbarians.
In this life
She made the fortune-teller kneel and call her Ancestress.
She made the useless man who broke off their engagement lead her horse.
She made the emperor himself pour her a cup of wine in tribute.
She walked out of the family shrine and made the court officials kneel before her.
Everyone said she was a born calamity, doomed to bring ruin to her father, mother, husband, and children.
Only later did they realize
She wasn't a curse.
She was their Ancestress.
