Chapter 001: From Death to Life

"How did you seduce the master?"

The carved magpie on the plum-patterned stool, Mrs. Qi, held a white lotus cup in her hands, sitting askew with her eyes lowered, her hair tied up with a white mink hairband, a strand of hair falling down to touch her white earlobe.

Standing beside her, Hongyu kicked Liuli in the back, "Madam is asking you a question!"

Liuli winced in pain, unable to steady herself and fell to the ground, her face contorted in agony. She had had enough of being treated like this, she couldn't bear it anymore! But her back was in so much pain that she couldn't even stand up.

Mrs. Qi glanced at her, her cheeks puffed up, her nails stopped fidgeting, and she threw a delicate white porcelain cup at Liuli's face without hesitation, "You wretched creature! Drag her out and beat her to death!"

Liuli was dragged out as a wretched creature, and in the courtyard, a bench had already been set up. Soon, servants brought wooden sticks and ropes, firmly tied her to the bench.

Liuli struggled, screaming at the top of her lungs, "I didn't do it! I didn't!"

Of course, she didn't. Even though she was actually Mrs. Qi's half-sister, she didn't have the courage as a maid brought to the Qi family to do such a thing. As long as she could please Mrs. Qi every day, she was already satisfied.

Her biological father, He Congli, was the eldest son of the Ministry of Revenue's Shangshu Mansion. He was once a dashing young man. When Lady Yu was pregnant with her third child, she met Mrs. Xu, who sold calligraphy and paintings for her father, outside the capital. Unintentionally, they had a child together. Years later, Mrs. Xu brought the child to the capital, only then did He Congli know about Liuli's existence. He still had feelings for Mrs. Xu, so he rented a small courtyard for her and her daughter to live in. However, when he was about to leave, Mrs. Xu suddenly started coughing up blood. It turned out that she was terminally ill and had come to entrust her daughter to him.

Soon after, Mrs. Xu passed away, and He Congli hesitated to let Liuli acknowledge her ancestry. Lady Yu, who was well-respected in the family, had also agreed to take a concubine for him before, but this time she refused. He Congli's father, who had always been strict in character, was furious and said that he couldn't afford to lose face.

The matter was at a standstill for a while.

However, not long after, Lady Yu fell ill due to the cold weather. Despite the efforts of various medicines, there was no improvement. A high monk from the White Horse Temple outside the capital came to the mansion, saying that there was an evil spirit at play, and that gathering all the children and grandchildren to recite the Diamond Sutra for three days would resolve the issue.

Reciting the sutra was easy, but after three days, there was no improvement. The monk asked if all the children and grandchildren were present. He Congli hesitated and mentioned that there was still Liuli outside the mansion.

The old master immediately ordered her to be brought in, and the family recited the sutra for another three days. On the morning of the fourth day, Lady Yu miraculously recovered and started tending to the peonies in the garden.

With this, it wouldn't be good to drive her away, but acknowledging her would also have to consider Lady Yu's face. So, Lady Nie came up with the idea of having Liuli sign a contract to become a maid in the mansion. Since she hadn't formally met the family, the servants didn't know much about her, and she wasn't considered a formal mistress, but it also gave her a way to survive without offending the heavens or embarrassing the main family.

The old master was pleased, and Lady Yu could only nod. From then on, Liuli called her father "old master" and her sister "miss". However, the old lady always felt uncomfortable, so whenever she saw Liuli, she felt a headache and discomfort all over her body. Miss Yuhua was considerate and filial, so to ease the old lady's mind, she chose Liuli as her dowry maid, thinking that the powerful General Lin's mansion would be able to suppress this demon.

As the "demon" that she was, Liuli continued to do what a maid should do in the General's mansion. Since she nearly drowned a few years ago, she had developed weak lungs and a frail body, and she coughed incessantly when autumn arrived. Yuhua didn't allow her to get close. Today, when she went to the Lin mansion in the afternoon, she instructed Liuli to stay behind and clean the green jade cup in the study.

It was in the study that she unexpectedly encountered Qi Yunjing resting there, and she hurriedly backed out, colliding with Hongyu.

Some things are wrong to explain, and not explaining them is also wrong. Your existence is not supposed to be, so even breathing is wrong.

Liuli gritted her teeth, refusing to shed a single tear. She had lost count of how many beatings she had endured, her back was numb, and she felt her body involuntarily swaying with each blow of the stick. There was also a metallic taste of blood in her mouth, flowing continuously from her throat, and she couldn't swallow it.

A lowly daughter had no status, and she had even less status than a lowly daughter. But this wasn't her fault. Who would choose to be a bastard? Just because she couldn't choose her existence, did she lose the right to live?

Mrs. Qi leaned against the window, looking at this side with disgust, her face half-covered by a silver satin handkerchief embroidered with narcissus flowers, so noble and aloof.

If there were another life, if she could open her eyes again, she wanted to live even more nobly than her, to look down on them from a high throne, to watch them fall from their high pedestals, to watch them kill each other, and to see them grovel at her feet!

...But she knew that all of this was just a luxury dream, because she was just a lowly servant who had signed a contract to sell herself, and she was about to die, or rather, she was already dead.

She saw herself floating up, her bloody and lifeless body on the bench, and Mrs. Qi had Hongyu come over to check on her. Hongyu pinched her nose, paused for a moment, and said to the room, "She's dead!"

Mrs. Qi's eyes flickered slightly, and she stood at the window for a moment, then raised the curtain and said, "If she's dead, then she's dead. Drag her away and bury her!"

A gust of wind blew the glass open, blowing it far away, blowing it out of the grand and magnificent General's Mansion, all the way to the edge of the sky, with the mountains and rivers passing by like shuttles, like countless fallen leaves, forcing her to close her eyes.

When the wind stopped and she opened her eyes again, she thought she hadn't died, she was alive again under the noble feet of Madam Qi Er, and she was about to search for Madam Qi Er in all directions, intending to fight her with all her might. But when she saw the scene clearly, she found herself in a covered wagon!

It was as if it were early morning, with the mist drifting into the carriage through the window. A hand wearing a silver ring suddenly lifted the curtain and lifted her down. She gasped and stood firm on the ground, needing to look up to see the person in front of her. It was a woman in her fifties, with a willow chrysanthemum pattern, whom she did not recognize. Beside her was a person wearing a dark-colored steward's headdress and a matching robe, with a pair of eight-character mustaches on his mouth.

Seeing this person, she couldn't help but gasp, and then she looked at herself, realizing that she was only two or three feet tall, with her hands touching the double buns on her head, and wearing a set of apricot satin clothes that her mother had sewn for her, with a dark diamond pattern on the satin, which was the piece sent by He Cong after she arrived in Beijing. The shoes were also made of the same satin, with a tuft of beige velvet flowers on the toe.

She swallowed hard, trying to calm her pounding heart. The carriage, the person, the street, the grand mansion, the vermilion-painted corner gate, weren't they all the same as what she had seen when she first arrived at the He Mansion five years ago? And the steward with the headdress, wasn't he the one sent by the He family to escort her to the mansion? How could she have come back, and become as small as she was eight years ago!

"Miss, this is the He Mansion," Chen Wu, who had been by the side of the old master for years, spoke cautiously.

Even the dialogue was exactly the same. Liuli stood still, pinching her arm in secret. Ouch! It wasn't a dream. To conceal her expression, she had to raise her head and squint as if she were looking at the glazed tiles on the gate tower: "What year is it this year? What day is it today?"

Chen Wu paused, "It's the year of Gengshu, and today is the seventh day of the tenth month." After answering, he urged, "Miss, you'd better go in quickly. The old master is waiting anxiously." Chen Wu was accustomed to calling the old master of the He family "master," and apart from the previous sentence, this scene was exactly the same as that day.

Liuli felt that her heart not only jumped out of her throat, but also kept bouncing between her throat and chest. It was too real! Judging from all visual, tactile, and auditory cues, she was sure that this was definitely not a dream. Her memory wouldn't deceive her. In the year of Gengshu, she was nine years old, and on the seventh day of the tenth month, she officially entered the He Mansion, starting the days of her life in this hot and dangerous environment. Did the heavens not send her to the underworld, but instead let her go back eight years, was this to show compassion for the torment she had suffered over the years, or was it to bring her retribution!