The Blade Fell Not on a Snowy Night, and Blossoms Bloomed from My Brush at the Spring Examination

The first thing he did when he woke was reach for his crotch.

Still there. The blade in the eunuch office had never come down. Instead, it had cut him through time and space. In his previous life, he had been the second son of a merchant family for seventeen years, and died beneath a red-hot blade. When he opened his eyes again, he was Shen Yan, a poor scholar who had frozen to death in a dilapidated thatched hut on a snowy night.

In this life, someone brought him medicine. A woman with graying hair and a patched cotton jacket, the skin on the back of her hand split open. She clasped his hand and breathed warm air over it, her eyes swollen and red, yet smiling at him.

No one had ever loved him like that in his previous life. So this time, he would live well.

The imperial examinations came once every three years. Poor scholars in white robes stood alone, with a road ahead as dangerous as a mountain of knives and as narrow as a single-plank bridge. But he had already died once. There was nothing left to fear. This time, he would write with that brush for both his lives, and make it bloom.