(Around 200,000 characters)
Du Niansi was born into a family of scholars. Graceful and virtuous, she married Sheng Zaiyan, a man of equal standing, at sixteen.
When their love was at its height, Sheng Zaiyan would swear, "With Sisi as my wife in this life, I could die without regret."
But fate is unpredictable. Just five years into their marriage, Du Niansi fell gravely ill, and her health steadily declined. As she lay dying, what worried her most was her husband.
She said, "If you meet a girl you like in the future, then marry her."
Sheng Zaiyan held her hand, tears glistening in his eyes. "There will only ever be you in this life. I will never marry anyone else."
Du Niansi closed her eyes, moved. But she never made it to the underworld. Instead, she became a ghost and witnessed the decades that followed her death.
Sheng Zaiyan eventually became a grand secretary, wielding power over the imperial court, and growing even more handsome and aloof.
He also married a young woman from the He family, thirteen years his junior.
On their wedding night, Sheng Zaiyan promised, "One heart, one partner, for a lifetime."
The older husband and younger wife were deeply in love, and had exceptionally clever twins. Their story became the talk of the capital, and they had long since forgotten Du Niansi.
After Du Niansi was reborn in the past, she thought it over. She didn't resent Sheng Zaiyan. Remarrying was only human, after all, and she could understand.
But when the young Sheng Zaiyan's ears turned red, and he asked her nervously and hopefully, "Sisi, when you come of age, I'll have my parents ask your family for your hand. What do you say?"
Du Niansi instead looked toward the eldest son of the Xuan family, who had also died young in her previous life, and smiled as she shook her head.
"No."
She understood the man he had been in her previous life, and hoped he would understand who she was in this life.
[Reading Guide]:
1. Both leads are reborn, with the heroine reborn first. After putting the young male lead through heartbreak, the older man is reborn and pursues his wife in a second-chance romance. He grows increasingly shameless, and the story includes coercive possession.
2. The second male lead becomes the romantic lead. In their previous lives, he and the heroine both died young, but in this life they are both good people and remain a loving couple until old age.
[The blurb has been screenshotted]
Theme: Even the deepest devotion cannot withstand the changing human heart.
