In the third year of Yong'an under the Great Xia, I was the last surviving member of the Shen family. An imperial decree assigned me to marry Prince Regent Xie Wuwang. Everyone said the orphaned Shen Qianxue had entered the God of Slaughter’s manor and wouldn’t survive three months.
In my previous life, I drank the medicine Xie Wuwang brought me. Months later, I was sent to an enemy camp in Northern Qin. When I died, no one even came to claim my body. He outlived me by half a year, then met his end with a cup of poisoned wine. We had both spent our lives blind.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the third day after our wedding. The bowl of medicine was still steaming, and Xie Wuwang’s wrist was just turning to tip it toward me. I snatched up the osmanthus cake beside me and threw it at him. The medicine splashed all over him, and shards of porcelain scattered across the floor. I thought he would fly into a rage, but he only watched me, slowly tightening his fingers around his sleeve. In that moment, I knew he had come back, too.
He said, “If you’d been this clearheaded in your last life, you wouldn’t have let people lead you around by the nose for half your life.” I said, “If Your Highness hadn’t been blind in your last life, you wouldn’t have been deceived and still laid the path for your enemies.”
This game had been played for thirty years. Murong Zhao was a pawn raised with dream-inducing incense. Lin Qingyuan was a lackey whose family’s lives were held hostage. Prince Rui had hidden himself for thirty years, living his life as the “White Crane.” We had our own gifts, “Awakening” and “Qi-Sensing Art.” Each of us kept a trump card we refused to reveal, yet whenever a blade came down, we would instinctively lean half an inch toward the other.
In this life, it was our turn to move the pieces.
