Synopsis
[Misaligned Rebirth | Love and Hate | Court Intrigue | Mystery]
"What if your first life was my second?"
In her past life, Xie Lingyi was born into the Xie clan of Kuaiji.
Her father served in the Hanlin Academy, rising to the post of Academician Reader. The family moved north and settled in the capital, becoming a respected family of civil officials.
Her elder sister, Xie Lingshu, was renowned for her talent throughout the capital and greatly favored by the crown prince. Relatives in the clan often compared the sisters, and all the praise went to the elder one.
Living in her sister's shadow for so long, Xie Lingyi began to yearn for a higher social standing.
In the nineteenth year of Chonghe, the empress petitioned to reopen the Imperial Clan Academy and select eligible young women from the capital to enter the palace as companions to the princess. The Xie family submitted only Xie Lingshu's name.
At the time, Xie Lingyi chased fame and fortune, fawned on the powerful, and regarded her sister as an enemy. She even saw her parents, who stood by her sister, as outsiders.
So she secretly made plans, entered the palace under her sister's name, and met the third prince there.
To climb the social ladder, Xie Lingyi willingly became the third prince's weapon in his struggle for the throne. She recruited officials from humble backgrounds, fabricated charges against court officials, and even submitted evidence that sent members of her own family who favored the crown prince to prison.
In the twenty-first year of Chonghe, the emperor fell gravely ill and issued an edict naming the crown prince as his successor.
On the eve of the crown prince's coronation, weapons clashed and fighting broke out along the long road outside the palace. The third prince and Xie Lingyi stood in the main hall, believing their great plan was about to succeed and that a high position awaited them.
But the third prince suddenly tied her to a gilded frame and made her watch as her relatives were toyed with and shot to death.
Only after the guards brought her elder sister into the hall did the man before her reveal the truth: the promise that he would make her empress had always been a lie. The long-standing rift between her and her family had been carefully engineered by him, step by step.
He forced Xie Lingyi to choose: drink the poisoned wine herself, and her sister would be spared for now; cling to life, and she would have to watch her sister die before her eyes.
Faced with the truth, the obsession with power that had driven her through the first half of her life collapsed. Bone-deep regret swept over Xie Lingyi.
Knowing she had committed grave sins and deserved to die, her heart deadened, she resolved to drink the poison and atone.
At the last possible moment, the doors of the hall burst open.
The man who should have died because of Xie Lingyi appeared unharmed. He fought his way into the hall, drenched in blood, and killed the traitorous third prince at the cost of his life.
With the man dead and the rebellion crushed, he dragged himself, wounded all over, to the foot of the gilded frame, thinking only of saving Xie Lingyi, who was at death's door.
But Xie Lingyi's heart was already dead, and she refused the young man's attempt to save her.
Watching the woman resolutely meet her death above him, the young man finally let his sword fall and knelt at the foot of the steps. He lifted his eyes and gazed fixedly at her pale, fading figure, then silently caught a tear of blood as it fell from her eye and landed at the corner of his right eye.
When Xie Lingyi opened her eyes again in this life, she saw the Xie family's carriage stopped outside the palace gates. Time had returned to the day she entered the palace as a companion to the princess.
She could not undo the crime of entering under a false name, but in this dreamlike second chance, she wanted to rewrite the fate that had brought the Xie family to ruin because of her.
In her past life, the Xie family had been unjustly imprisoned because she submitted evidence of a corrupt official's privately kept draft. This time, she was determined to expose the person behind it all and atone for her past-life sin.
From then on, she was cautious and made plans at every turn, seeking to kill her enemy and clear the innocent.
And when she saw that person again, from outside the events of the past, Xie Lingyi clearly noticed a faint red mole newly appearing at the corner of his right eye, exactly where the drop of blood had fallen from her eye in her previous life.
Xie Lingyi: "Could it be that you were reborn too?"
(The blurb was screenshotted on 2026.07.02. Anyone who steals it will be found.)
Theme: The rivers and mountains turn anew, but old acquaintances become strangers
