When Yan Chaoyun was seven, she saved a young woman from the Yan family from drowning.
Because she was poor, she secretly hid the jade pendant the girl was wearing.
Later, the girl from the Yan family left, and the entire village was massacred overnight.
Chaoyun was playing and hid in a cowshed, surviving by chance. She saw it all with her own eyes.
"Those people came for you. You got my family killed, then ran away yourself."
After the court settled down, the Yan family searched for their missing daughter, and portraits of her jade pendant were circulated everywhere.
"Since you got my family killed, I'll enjoy your riches in your place!"
-
Years later, Yan Chaoyun's fiance told her that the real Yan family daughter hadn't died.
"Yun'er, as long as we consummate our marriage at the Old Madam's birthday banquet, the Yan family won't cast you aside, and our engagement will still stand."
She believed him.
The moment she brought a cup of wine to her older brother, painful memories came flooding back.
In those memories, she had consummated her marriage with her brother, and they had been discovered. To save face, the Old Madam had exposed the fact that she wasn't the Yan family's daughter and ended her life with a cup of poison.
Terrified, Yan Chaoyun tried to knock the cup away.
"What's in the wine?" her brother asked, his face dark.
Yan Chaoyun didn't dare say.
He simply forced her to drink it.
"Did your fiance tell you to drug me?"
"Do you love him so much that you'd ruin yourself for him?"
Yan Chaoyun was confused and dazed... She couldn't make out what he was saying...
Her body's reaction told her that what she'd seen in her memories was real.
To survive, she could only lie to him: "I... put it in your drink..."
-
But lies always come to light eventually.
Yan Chaoyun's face turned ashen. "Kill me."
The man lifted a hand and tipped up her chin. "Kill you? Xiaoyun, I couldn't bear to."
