It hurt.
The back of my head felt like someone had cracked it open with a brick. I opened my eyes groggily to a ceiling beam thick with cobwebs, and the air was heavy with a damp, musty smell.
I was wearing coarse clothes that chafed my neck.
Wait.
Why did this place look so familiar?
I sat up abruptly and knocked my head against the low bed frame, making me grimace in pain.
The Cold Palace.
I was reborn, reborn as Pei Yuan, the deposed empress in the Cold Palace.
A flood of memories that weren't mine poured into my mind. Three days ago, the original owner had talked back to Emperor Shen Yuan in public and been slapped into this place. She had lost her position as empress, and not even a single palace maid had been left to serve her.
I took a deep breath and slowly absorbed the memories.
In my previous life, I had been a princess of the former dynasty. On the night Shen Yuan's father led his troops into the imperial palace, I watched my father and mother fall in a pool of blood. Of the 372 people in my family, I was the only one left.
They thought I was dead and threw me into a mass grave.
