Has the Heir Apparent Been Cremated Yet?

++++Jiang Yao was the adopted daughter of a treacherous minister. Lovely and graceful, she had no shortage of well-born, respectable young men from the capital seeking her hand.

But her adoptive father, eager to curry favor with the powerful, forced her into a scheme to spend a scandalous night with Gu Yuan, heir to the Duke of Dingguo and a man who wielded power at court.

To save her birth mother and younger sister, she swallowed her humiliation and agreed.

This secret scheme led to Jiang Yao marrying into the Duke of Dingguo's household as Gu Yuan's wife.

Knowing her own methods had been despicable and that she had wronged Gu Yuan, Jiang Yao always remembered her place. In the Duke of Dingguo's sprawling household, she dared not make a single misstep.

She was always obedient when attending to him and never once resisted.

Six years passed in uneasy peace, yet she never conceived. When she finally consulted a doctor, she learned that the restorative tonics she had been drinking all these years were actually contraceptives, prepared at Gu Yuan's behest.

After making a few inquiries, she discovered that her mother-in-law had recently brought a niece from her own family into the estate and was planning to marry her to Gu Yuan as his secondary wife.

Jiang Yao was already frail. The news made her cough up blood, and from then on she was bedridden and near death. Before long, she drew her last breath.

When she opened her eyes again, she had returned to the year she was about to turn fifteen.

She saw her father putting on a fierce front as he threatened her birth mother and younger sister's lives to force her to drug Gu Yuan. She pretended to obediently agree, then turned around and told Gu Yuan everything.

In this life, she would not marry Gu Yuan again.

She would use the power in his hands to bring down the entire Jiang household and find a way forward for herself and those she cared about.

At some point, Gu Yuan, the aloof and dignified heir of the Duke of Dingguo, began attending banquets with unusual frequency.

At each one, he would ask the page at his side, "Has the Fifth Miss Jiang from the Jiang household arrived?"

One day, Jiang Yao asked to see him. Gu Yuan hurriedly invited her inside.

He had expected the young woman from his previous life to nervously offer him spiked wine. Instead, he heard her say, "My adoptive father intends to drug you and frame you. If you do not object, I am willing to serve you."

But reborn into this life, Gu Yuan had no interest in using that scoundrel from the Jiang family as leverage. What he wanted was Jiang Yao.

Theme: Even in adversity, be brave and strong, and face a brighter future.