In her previous life, Shen Qingci was the most celebrated legitimate daughter of a noble family in the capital. Gentle and devoted, she gave her whole heart to marry the top-scoring scholar, Lu Chenyi.
Yet her husband joined forces with her treacherous stepsister, who hid behind a virtuous facade, and framed her for adultery. They gouged out her bones, cut out her tongue, tortured her to death, and dumped her in a mass grave, leaving no trace of her remains.
Reborn in one stroke, she became A Yuan, a lowborn daughter of the marquis’s household, poisoned into silence and abandoned in an icy lake.
Unable to speak and adrift like a fallen leaf, she nevertheless concealed a ruthless soul tempered in ice.
Skilled in medicine and poison, and with a keen understanding of fate, she hid her strengths and chose to play the pig to eat the tiger. Using Pei Yan, the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s “Living Yama,” as her blade, she plotted one step at a time to make her enemies pay in blood.
Her stepmother poisoned her birth mother? She would send her to her death, head and body parted.
Her stepsister feigned kindness and stole her beloved? She would ruin her reputation, then leave her struck by lightning in the rain, begging for death.
Her scumbag husband murdered his wife for advancement? She would destroy his career and cut off his foundations, then watch him descend into madness with regret and kneel, begging her to take him back.
She met his gaze coldly, a smile playing at her lips. “My dear Lu, when you killed me, did you ever imagine this day would come?”
The day her voice healed, she spoke hoarsely, every word striking at the heart, and sent the scumbag to his death.
From then on, the gentle Shen Qingci was no more. Only A Yuan remained, reborn from the ashes, protecting the vulnerable, crushing her enemies, and standing beside those who understood and cherished her as she became her own light.
Torture her body and break her heart? No. She would make everyone pay for every grievance, without the slightest mercy!
