The Empress’s Shadow Guard Turns the Heavens Upside Down

The story by a novice author has completely gone off the rails: the male lead is devoted one day and cold the next, while the heroine has been reborn three times and died three times. Even the Department of Time and Space Review couldn't stand it, so they waved a hand and sent the plot back for a complete rewrite. Shen Jiujiu returned to the beginning with memories of three lifetimes. She was still the unmarried legitimate daughter of the Shen family, and he was still the leader of the secret guards assigned to protect her by the late emperor. But in this life, he treated her with nothing but the propriety of a master and servant. He never once overstepped, and he didn't remember all those secret nights they'd shared. She remembered how he died in her arms, the smile at the corner of his lips, and his eyes that never closed even in death. Now, with his memories completely blank, she had to make her way into his heart all over again. The System said that once the target's affection reached its maximum, she would live; if she failed, she would be erased. But he looked at her with respectful distance. When he knocked, he stood three paces back. When he answered, he lowered his eyes instead of looking at her. Even when she deliberately stumbled, he only reached out to steady her from an arm's length away, then quickly let go. Shen Jiujiu swallowed the bone-deep longing she had carried from her past life and smiled at him. "Wu Xuan, why are you standing so far away? It's not like I'm going to eat you." He looked up. At last, her reflection appeared in those ink-dark eyes. Faint and fleeting, like the first crack in spring ice. In this life, she would stop at nothing to make him remember her, down to his very bones.