The restorer Gu Lu received an ancient painting said to have belonged to an empress of a former dynasty. Ever since the painting came into her possession, strange people and strange things began appearing around her. Then one day, a woman with a mysterious, alluring air arrived at her restoration studio, introducing herself as Tan Zhimiao and claiming to be the painting's owner.
The empress had no regrets in her life, only one thing she regretted.
She regretted never telling her Egret, while she was still alive, how much she loved her and how much she cared for her. She had poured her heart and soul into getting a chance to start over. In this world, her little Egret could be with her openly and proudly. They would surely be happy.
One day, Tan Zhimiao returned home and found that Gu Lu had vanished without a trace.
At the place where they had last met in their previous life, Tan Zhimiao found Gu Lu. Reborn in a second life, she finally heard what was in Gu Lu's heart.
Gu Lu told her: "Your Majesty, Miss Tan, you are no longer an empress. At last, I can tell you that my love for you disappeared long, long ago. At the end of that Gu Lu's life, all she wanted was to escape from your side forever."
*
[Obedient and compliant, accepting whatever comes. Those in power want those beneath them to embody these eight words, to deceive themselves into seeing oppression as love and being treated as worthless as fairness toward others.]
Gu Lu wrote this in her new book: [A classic example is the death of the imperial consort Gu Lu in the seventeenth year of Honghua, under the Wei Empire. In modern society, however, this event has been fictionalized as a tale of an imperial consort and an empress deeply in love, with the consort dying to save the empress. One can only call this a grotesque reinterpretation of the era.]
When the new book came out, everyone joked that it was Gu Lu writing a story about Gu Lu. Only Tan Zhimiao, clutching the weighty pages, broke down sobbing in her office.
With every day she spent without Gu Lu, she lost a little more of herself. Endless memories and a long, long life had become Tan Zhimiao's nightmare.
She had lost the one she loved. Lost the one she loved. She really had been abandoned by her beloved.
Reclusive, decisive restorer & obsessive, reborn CEO
In their previous life: A desperate imperial consort disguised as a man & an empress suffering from an incurable need to have everything
Theme: Those who hold power are responsible for it.
