At the pond in the Anyang Marquis's manor, my stepmother had people hold my head down and forced me to admit to having an affair with a guard.
“If you don't confess, we'll drown you in the pond.”
I gritted my teeth, but a cold voice suddenly rang in my ears:
“Intense humiliation detected. Emotional Qi Collection System activated. Collect others' resentment, hatred, love, and admiration to exchange for beauty, fortune, and political cunning.”
Before the voice had even faded, an imperial decree arrived, betrothing me to Prince Su, Ji Xuan, the madman who had sacrificed three of his concubines alive.
My stepmother laughed wildly. I laughed too.
Because the System had notified me that Prince Su's “murderous intent” toward me had hit the ceiling. After I exchanged it, my “allure” would be maxed out.
On our wedding night, he gripped my throat and asked, “Aren't you afraid?”
I rose on tiptoe and kissed his Adam's apple. “I'm afraid you don't know what real madness looks like.”
Later, I used time reversal to rewrite my doomed fate, again and again:
The first time, I made the half-sister who framed me spill her blood on the sacrificial turtle shell;
The second time, I made the Crown Prince announce in front of everyone that he would marry no one but Shen Heng Zhi;
The third time, the youngest shaman of Daliang knelt and called me “the daughter sent down by the gods.”
But every time I reversed time, I lost a year of my life. In my nightmares, someone whispered, “Those who steal divine authority will ultimately be sacrificed to the gods.”
Until that night, when Prince Su pinned me against a stone pillar in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, his eyes bloodshot.
“Who are you, really? Why is it that every time you die and come back to life, you make me... willing to defy Heaven for you?”
