Chapter 2

The twenty-second of the third month, snow swirling thick.

Wild mountains, a savage wilderness, dense frost clustering in patches.

As if someone were whispering at her ear—Luo Jiao couldn’t make it out; she only felt a jolt, and was abruptly jolted awake by the cold.

A heavy red bridal veil pressed down on her, smothering her breath. As the sedan jolted along, the cascading ornaments on her dress rustled and clinked.

The bearers must have missed their footing, for the entire sedan lurched headlong into the snow.

Inside the bridal sedan, Luo Jiao tumbled flat. “Ow!”

—And was given a great fright by the voice that came out of this body.

Like someone who hadn’t tasted water in ages, the voice was hoarse through and through.

…Wait?

Luo Jiao bolted upright, yanked off the red bridal veil, and looked at her own hands.

These were absolutely not her hands.

Luo Jiao had trained in the sword year-round; her fingertips were calloused thick. Her hands were not particularly powerful, but they were certainly nothing like this sickly pair now—skin and bone, pale and limp; no calluses, but fine cracks laced the nail beds. Like the hands of someone who’d done far too much sweeping and scrubbing.

She sized up “her” own frame, took up the vanity case beneath the stool, and fished out a piece of bronze mirror.

In the mirror was a delicate, pretty face, about thirteen or fourteen years old.

She did not know this person. And Luo Jiao had died years ago.

Luo Jiao wrinkled her nose at the bronze mirror: Could it be… my soul borrowed this corpse?

No one answered.

She set the mirror down. She didn’t know where she was, much less what year it was; she only felt as if she’d slept for a very, very long time—so long that her thoughts were muddled and her head sluggish.

The sedan was cramped, its bedding shabby. Luo Jiao looked at the vanity case at her feet and frowned, almost imperceptibly.

Pretty bracelets lay neatly arranged inside. The materials weren’t precious, the craftsmanship not refined, but they were well kept—clearly treated with care.

She tried to find a clue among them, without success.

Luo Jiao simply sat up straight.

She turned to look at the wedding robes on her body and sighed inwardly: Aren’t you a little young to be getting married?

Before the unspoken complaint could even settle, a fierce pain shot up from her feet into her body.

Gritting her teeth against it, she pushed aside the scarlet skirt—and saw a pair of red embroidered shoes soaked through with blood.

Hunching over, half-bent, she worked at the shoes and socks. The embroidered shoes were hard as ice shards; Luo Jiao couldn’t pull them off, and from the gaps in the socks, fresh blood was still welling freely.

Luo Jiao’s expression darkened.

It struck her suddenly—this girl may have been literally pained to death.

Wild mountains, tangles of wind and snow. The flowing blood was draining away her body’s warmth; simply staying conscious took every ounce of strength.

A living life had been snuffed out without a sound, and this wronged spirit of hers had slipped into the gap.

Luo Jiao sighed and sat back in her place.

The sedan still jolted forward.

Heavy snow outside the window. The procession headed into deep mountains, a stretch of blinding white, pale and dreadful—and the bridal sedan inching through it all was red enough to look like a smear of congealed blood.

Luo Jiao tore some strips of cloth from her sash and wrapped them around her feet, stripped off the heavy ornaments, and lifted the beaded curtain.

Three or four burly men ringed the sedan; beyond them, she could see nothing.

When this “bride” poked her head out of the sedan, the men paid her no mind at all. Their eyes were vacant; their cloth-wrapped feet trudged through the snow, crunching, one step deep, one step shallow, slush splashing on the blood-red sedan and leaving dark red stains.

In the distance stretched only wild mountains and snowy wastes. Not a single household anywhere.

Luo Jiao couldn’t help but wonder: Who was ‘she’? And who was she being married off to?

She had just opened her mouth to ask when her lips parted—and her body instinctively began to resist.

The instinct of the body’s owner.

Luo Jiao bit her lower lip hard. These men, with their deathly air, did not look like they were carrying a bridal sedan.

They looked more like they were carrying a coffin.

She retreated into the sedan. Warming her hands on her own, she drew a jade-green phoenix hairpin from the vanity case. The hairpin wasn’t fine work, and the material wasn’t sturdy, but at least the tip was sharp—she wouldn’t be entirely defenseless.

Two characters were engraved on the hairpin’s tail: Liangdi.

Luo Jiao stared at the two characters, weighed the pin this way and that, then tucked it into her sleeve.

This body’s strength was nothing like her old self—thin arms and legs, a thin pale face, weariness in the eyes. Just standing there, head drooping, gaze lowered, the whole person was one wheezing lament: a young lady in the flower of her youth who has never once eaten her fill.

Luo Jiao gathered herself and let out a long sigh.

Back in the day—before the Daoist of Sanqing had scooped her up the mountain to train with a sword—she had fought stray dogs for scraps in the marketplace, and had looked much the same: gaunt as a skeleton.

Luo Jiao shook her head, raised that piece of bronze mirror again, and gazed at herself in it. “Your name is Liangdi?”

No one answered.

She tried again. “They say the soul lingers seven days after death. What I’m saying now—I suspect you can hear it. Since you found me… is there some unfulfilled wish of yours?”

As before, the question sank into a deep pool like a stone, unanswered.

But suddenly—

Luo Jiao heard a burst of frantic screaming, right inside her Sea of Consciousness.

Very faint. Very weak.

Luo Jiao closed her eyes and concentrated, summoning every ounce of strength.

In the Sea of Consciousness, the fragmented sound gradually grew clear.

The voice said—

‘Run!‘

At the foot of Mount Zou’ao stood a small manor.

A red embroidered ball hung at the gate—the first few were exquisitely made, the later ones increasingly sloppy. Drifting snow veiled the cluster of red leaves trimmed into the character for ‘double happiness’ in the courtyard, lending the whole estate a faint air of sorrow.

“Mother—”

Down the corridor, a fat figure came bounding. He was young, dressed in wedding robes, big-headed and big-eared, his features far from handsome, drool even hanging at the corner of his mouth.

But the beautiful woman lounging on the beauty-couch at the corridor’s end, a gleaming Gold Buyao in her hair, didn’t mind in the least. She smilingly pulled him into her arms. “Slow down, don’t fall.”

Then she lifted a handkerchief to wipe his mouth.

The young boy slurred, “Mother, where’s the new mother?”

The beauty blinked. “What new mother?”

The boy giggled. “The bride is the new mother, and Mother is the old mother… I want the new mother, the new mother…”

“What kind of talk is that!” The woman’s mouth drooped, but she only feigned anger. “Ah Bao, don’t tell me you’ll turn ungrateful too—get a new mother, forget the old one?”

That ‘Ah Bao’ seemed not to hear her at all, just mumbling his ‘new mother’ on and on.

At the mouth of the corridor, an old momo in rough cloth came hobbling over and curtsied to the woman.

Taking the hint, the woman patted Ah Bao’s head and coaxed him smiling. “Ah Bao, go get ready now. That bride you keep babbling about is at the front gate.”

Ah Bao whooped and bolted out of sight.

The old momo stepped forward and greeted the woman. “Madam Zou.”

The woman patted the corner of the couch beside her. “Sit, Nanny Zhao.”

Nanny Zhao hesitated several times, but did not sit. Head lowered, she asked, “Madam Zou… will that Miss Xu truly arrive at the manor today?”

Madam Zou smiled. “Of course.”

Nanny Zhao said, “But when I went to arrange the match half a month ago, I felt the girl wasn’t entirely willing. She’s a clever little thing, quick-witted too—she’ll find some way to bolt on the road.”

Madam Zou’s lips curved. “No need to fear. I gave orders before this: if she tries to run, use all necessary force, and don’t spare anyone’s face.”

She paused, brow furrowing slightly, a thread of cruelty rising in her eyes. “Why else… last time she tried to flee, I soaked her feet in snow water. Both her feet are half-ruined—where would she even run to?”

Nanny Zhao’s brow knitted tight.

But before she could speak, Madam Zou pressed on. “Hmph. That Xu Liangdi is nothing but a fisher girl, lowborn by nature. If my son hadn’t fallen into a lake in the dead of winter as a child and burned his brain feverish, how would this fisher girl ever have the chance to climb so high? Her family’s boy is ill-fated too—coughing from infancy. If the Zou Family hadn’t given them a bit of silver, that boy would have coughed himself to death long ago! And now that we’ve asked for their daughter’s hand, they drag their feet and whine—utterly heartless!”

Nanny Zhao stood frozen beside her, momentarily speechless.

Xu Liangdi, Xu Liangdi—one look at the name and you knew how desperately the Xu Family had longed for a son. A pity that the son they’d summoned was a sickly thing, surviving day to day on medicine fetched by his elder sister and parents.

But the Xu Family had never had any real wealth. They kept using the pot with the hole in it, wearing the coarse clothes with the patches. Medicine was a money pit too, and they had soon burned through their last copper coin.

The Zou Family had seized precisely on that opening, moving in to claim the family’s daughter as a bride for their idiot son.

At the time, Madam Zou’s words had scarcely fallen before the Xus agreed without a second thought. In the Xu Family’s eyes, this Xu Liangdi was probably nothing more than a tool for summoning a son—and now that the boy was gravely ill, the ‘tool’ ought to be squeezed for all it was worth.

And so Xu Liangdi, in the very flower of her youth, was sold by her own kin to the only ‘great household’ for miles around.

At the thought, Nanny Zhao shook her head, her voice low and hoarse—to herself, perhaps, or to no one. “Yes… to be born in this age, to be born a woman—that is already the greatest misfortune.”

“Enough!”

Perhaps sensing the sympathy in Nanny Zhao’s words, undisguised disgust rose in Madam Zou’s eyes.

“Back then,” said Madam Zou, “I too was led—half coaxed, half deceived—to this remote manor by my parents for the price of a sack of coarse grain. I understood nothing of marriage then either, and look, I’ve lived just fine. That Xu Liangdi’s lot is far better than mine—no dowry, no betrothal gifts, but a proper wedding all the same.”

Nanny Zhao hesitated, words at the tip of her tongue—but only sighed.

Madam Zou curled her lips contentedly. “Nanny, rest easy. So long as the girl behaves, I won’t mistreat her.”

As her words fell, a shrill suona note cut across the courtyard.

Both women turned at the sound.

The corridor sat high; Madam Zou rose calmly and watched the Zou Family’s front gate, where three or four burly men were approaching with the bridal sedan.

She pointed at the sedan outside and smiled at Nanny Zhao.

“Look—isn’t that her, delivered to the door?”