In my past life, I was the vicious princess consort everyone in the capital despised.
For the man I loved, the emperor, I married his imperial uncle, Xiao Jinyuan, a man with power over the court who loved me with all his heart.
He was the late emperor’s younger brother, a young god of war, and the thorn in the emperor’s side that he feared most.
At the emperor’s first complaint that he had been wronged, I squandered every bit of Xiao Jinyuan’s affection, opposed him at every turn, and handed the knife to my enemy, helping him plunge it into Xiao Jinyuan’s heart.
My family framed him and the emperor schemed against him. I was kept in the dark, mistaking his deep devotion for a ravenous beast.
Exiled three thousand li away, with the bitter wind cutting through me, I obeyed the emperor’s orders and thought of new ways every day to take Xiao Jinyuan’s life.
Only at the end, when he was covered in wounds and gaunt as a skeleton, did he look at me with shattered eyes and ask softly, “Shen Zhiwei, do you really want me dead that badly? Then I’ll give you what you want, all right?”
When the poisoned wine passed his lips and he closed his eyes, I finally panicked.
But it was too late.
After he died, I lost my only protection. The emperor discarded me once I had served my purpose, and I was tortured to death at the mass grave.
As my soul drifted through the world, I saw it all with my own eyes:
My white-lotus stepsister wore my wedding dress, sat high in the position of Noble Consort, and chatted and laughed with the emperor as they mocked me for being utterly foolish, a pawn in their hands my entire life.
I also overheard my birth father speaking with my stepmother and learned that my mother had not died in childbirth at all. They had poisoned her together, then he married my stepmother a month later, all to seize my mother’s generous dowry and her family’s power.
Blood debts, a life devoted to the wrong man, the agony of having my heart torn out swept through my soul.
I knelt and begged Heaven through my tears and blood to let me live again.
When I opened my eyes, I was back on the eve of our exile.
The cruelest part was that I had not returned to before it all began. Every wound I had dealt him
