Until We Meet Again

1.

The day Li Linsheng died in a terrible accident,

she was the one who wielded the knife,

and dissected his body.

As a coroner, he was the first corpse Shan Yuer examined. He was the person she loved most.

For ten years after his death, she pressed on alone, determined to clear his name. She became the only female official in the kingdom, until one day, after trouble broke out at the Qing Si Bureau, she was attacked by a villain and fell into the water, reborn at the time when the two of them first met.

Crossing time and death, she arrived one year before he died.

2.

What Shan Yuer didn't know, however,

was that Li Linsheng had already died ten days before she woke.

He died in a raging fire, beneath the deep sea, and in a pool of blood. In their very first bargain, he cut out his own heart and struck a deal with the Gu Master Yan Feiyi to obtain a healthy body, even if it meant living as a corpse.

The Gu Master said he would preserve the last words you said to him, and that he would live by them for the rest of his life, never defying them.

They were the last words he said to himself before he died:

"You must always remember that you love her."

"And finally..."

"Don't let her fall in love with you again."

3.

"He needs your love to survive, but if you love him, you'll hasten his death."

Reborn one year in the past, Shan Yuer never understood why he was always avoiding his feelings for her. She did everything in her power, at any cost, to save him from his death, only for him to push her away again and again.

Trapped in the Grand Commandant's residence,

she loses heart and spitefully accepts Huangfu Hong's marriage proposal, planning to slip away when she gets the chance.

At the blood-soaked wedding, amid a dazzling display of finery, everyone watches in horror as the frail young man in white kills the groom in his scarlet wedding robes with a sword, then walks toward her, sword in hand, one step at a time.

"Didn't you say we couldn't be together?"

"I did."

"Then why have you come here today? What do you want?"

Standing below the guests' seats, he faces her with his sword on his back and says, "I've come to be your groom."

1. Reborn from the start, the story opens at its final chapter.

2. The story is told in reverse. After the heroine changes the ending, the story works backward to show how that affects its beginning: a pseudo-infinite-loop rebirth story.

3. A redemption story about rebirth. The male lead is beautiful, strong, and tragic, frail, obsessive, quietly unhinged, and seriously self-destructive. Without the heroine, he really will die.

[First published on August 22, 2023. On March 15, 2025, Arbor Day, the entire 200,000-character old draft was scrapped and rewritten.]

[Next historical romance: Her Delusions]

Theme: Goodness should not be repaid with betrayal, and evil should not be indulged.