She sinned in her previous life and transmigrated in this one.
She had always taken that as her guiding principle in life.
But fate loved to play tricks, and she transmigrated into a fetus.
From childhood, she was like a candle guttering in the wind, liable to die at any moment.
At long last, she reached the age of sixteen, and marriage was put on the agenda.
In this world of parental commands and matchmakers’ words, scoundrel men were as common as fish crossing a river, and selling one’s wife for advancement was nothing unusual.
To secure a peaceful life for herself, she simply pretended to be sick and bedridden.
She even wore the face of a corpse and could cough up blood on cue.
The matchmakers who came to propose marriage were so frightened that they fled for their lives.
Unfortunately, she never got to enjoy a carefree life of growing old alone. Instead, her old-fashioned, stubborn father threatened to kill himself unless she married.
Two coffins were laid side by side in the manor, and her father declared he would join her in the afterlife.
With no choice, she set out in search of a suitable husband.
After looking high and low, she settled on a widower with a child in tow.
He wasn’t very old.
But in an era when the average person lived only into their thirties, she figured he’d kick the bucket soon enough.
Besides, he already had a son.
That way, she wouldn’t have to give birth herself, and someone would still be there to care for her in old age and bury her when she died.
The widower was fabulously wealthy and influential.
She figured she could lie flat in a rich household instead. What could be better?
Watching his frail new stepmother tremble with every step as if she might faint at any moment, the widower’s son sneered inwardly: This woman will be dead in a few days, even if I don’t lift a finger.
And so the grand performance of scheming in the household began.
