The Long Road to Winning Her Back: The Chief Councilor's Son Begs for Forgiveness

When I was seven, my aunt poisoned my mother.

At fifteen, she gave me two choices: marry a cripple who had beaten two wives to death, or go to a Taoist temple to tend the lamps and wait to die.

I chose the temple. It wasn't because I feared death. I just wanted to see my mother's grave one more time before I died.

The temple was home to Shen Qingci, the prime minister's son, who was cultivating the Dao. He thought I was filthy and said my "turbid energy disturbed his cultivation."

When he was ambushed, I took a sword for him. He watched over me for three days and nights, and I thought he didn't hate me as much as before.

But the moment he turned around, he cursed me in front of everyone, saying I was "as vile as your aunt."

On a rainy night, he was gravely wounded and fell off a cliff. I saved his life with my body heat. When he woke, he didn't remember saying, "Don't go," and punished me by making me kneel all night before the temple's ancestral master.

My knees were ruined, and so was my heart.

I ran away. By then, I was already carrying his child.

My aunt's people pushed me off a cliff.

I survived, but I lost my voice and became lame. The baby survived too. I named my son Nian Gui.

Whose return did I long for? His.

But I never expected him to give away all his fortune, divorce his new wife, and kneel before me, saying, "I don't want my Daoist heart anymore. I only want you."

I wiped the water stains from the table, leaving not a single word behind.

I didn't drive him away, but I wouldn't forgive him easily, either.

What's more, my son still doesn't know that the man kneeling in the rain is his father.

He wants to atone, so I'll give him a chance.

But he doesn't know that my heart died that night in the Taoist temple.

Unless... he can make someone who cannot speak find her voice again.