Chapter Two: Dreams of a Bygone Life
Page (1/3)
Although the sun hung high outside, the rear room was dim and deathly silent, as though it were a tomb.
A small wooden bed stood against the wall, and someone lay curled up upon it.
Through the mottled light filtering through the window paper, it was clear that the figure was a woman.
As she gazed at the familiar yet strange bed, tables, and stools around her, and listened to the loud voice of an old woman speaking outside, An Chunfeng’s bewildered eyes gradually cleared.
Had she returned from the dead?
In her previous life, An Chunfeng had struggled in society from a young age. By her twenties, weary of the glittering world, she had sought out a remote little town and made a living running a tiny acupuncture and physiotherapy clinic by herself. She had lived an easy, carefree life, content to let everything take its course.
She had thought she would live that way for the rest of her life. Who could have imagined that, while saving a child who had run across a highway, she would be caught in a traffic accident and become the foolish woman before her now—a woman who had died for love?
An Chunfeng raised a hand to touch her faintly aching head and slowly sorted through the original owner’s memories.
The original owner’s parents had both died. She and Tang Yushu had loved each other and secretly conceived a child, but for special reasons, the child was already six years old and they still had not held a wedding ceremony.
The original owner had been utterly convinced of Tang Yushu’s feelings. Even without marrying him, she had considered herself a daughter-in-law of the Tang family, hoping that once Tang Yushu passed the provincial examination, she would become the wife of a successful candidate—and perhaps, one day, the wife of an official.
The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. She had underestimated the distance between love and reality.
Or perhaps she had only now realized that she could be nothing more than a concubine or a secondary wife, never his lawful spouse.
After learning that Tang Yushu had grown tired of her and intended to marry someone else, she had been unable to think clearly. Not only had she taken her own life, she had dragged the child down with her…
Women in ancient times were truly both pitiable and infuriating!
No matter how capable they appeared on the outside, within they were like dodder vines, unable to live without clinging to someone else.
An Chunfeng had sighed inwardly for the original owner, but then she suddenly realized something crucial. If the original owner had truly been driven to smash her head against the wall in despair, an injury to her forehead would have made sense. But how had she also ended up with a huge swelling and blood clot at the back of her head?
An Chunfeng immediately sensed that something was wrong.
The truth was that An’s death concealed another secret. Someone had beaten the original owner to death!
A chill instantly traveled from the soles of An Chunfeng’s feet to the depths of her heart.
Who?
People in her former life used to say that the first sword one wielded after rising above one’s circumstances was aimed at those closest to oneself. Now it had happened for real.
Had Tang Yushu tried to eliminate the original owner? Or had it been his mother, Qin? Or someone else entirely?
Being despised was not frightening. What was frightening was dying without knowing why. She had no intention of becoming a wronged ghost a second time.
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
Before she could think of anything else, the door behind her was suddenly kicked open. It slammed against the wall with a tremendous crash.
An Chunfeng started and swiftly turned toward the newcomer.
The moment Tang Yushu entered, he fixed a cold stare on the woman sitting on the bed.
An had a full, rounded oval face, graceful brows, phoenix-shaped eyes, and striking features. When he had first seen her beneath the moonlight, she had bewitched the young Tang Yushu so completely that he had sworn eternal vows to her.
But now she wore only a plain white undergarment, her hair spilling messily across her face, blood staining her forehead. There was no trace of her former beauty.
Under ordinary circumstances, Tang Yushu might still have felt some tenderness toward her. But at this moment, his heart held nothing but fury and disgust.
He had expected An, the woman who had caused such trouble, to kneel and beg for mercy, repenting for the disaster she had brought upon him.
Instead, she sat cross-legged on the bed, her expression as calm as ever. Apart from the icy depths roiling in her eyes, she exuded nothing but indifference and estrangement, from within to without.
That sudden unfamiliarity made Tang Yushu feel, for an instant, that even standing so rudely before her was somehow an intrusion.
The flames of his anger seemed to be pressed down by a block of ice, only to flare up more violently beneath it.
He had been far too lenient with An. He had merely allowed her to manage the household because she had worked hard within it. Yet now she actually presumed to act as its principal mistress and interfere in marriage arrangements.
When Tang Yushu was sixteen, disaster struck the south, and refugees gathered outside the city for months.
That same year, An—fourteen years old, orphaned, and utterly alone—rented a room in the Tang household. There she met Tang Yushu, gentle as jade, and the love between the young boy and girl ignited at once.
No one had expected them to conceive a child in secret. By the height of summer, when An’s thin clothing could no longer conceal her condition, the Tang family discovered that she was already seven months pregnant.
Tang Yushu’s father was both furious and enraged.
Tang Yushu was a licentiate preparing to take the examination for the next degree, while An’s parents had only recently died. She was still in mourning, and under the laws of the court, she was required to observe the mourning period. Neither of them could marry.
By then, the pregnancy was too advanced to terminate, so they had no choice but to conceal it and let the child be born.
No sooner had An given birth than Tang Yushu’s father unexpectedly died. Thus, over the years, she had cared for her chronically ill mother-in-law, married off Tang Yushu’s younger sister, and managed every household affair. In all but name, she had become the principal mistress of the Tang family.
Yet the matter of her marriage to Tang Yushu was never raised again.
Tang Yushu had originally intended to placate her for the time being, then grant her the status of a concubine after he married.
But now that matters had come to this, it was impossible to keep the truth hidden any longer.
Tang Yushu clenched his sleeves. His longing for power and fame had overwhelmed the vows of eternal love he had once made. He spoke in a resentful, icy voice:
“You venomous woman! You hurt the child and angered my mother into illness. After committing such wicked deeds, you should be kneeling and begging forgiveness, yet you lie on the bed pretending to be sick, without the slightest remorse. You truly deserve to die!”
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
If An Chunfeng had not already known that this man possessed a silver tongue, she might truly have believed that the original owner was guilty of every imaginable evil.
Her gaze turned icy and deep.
“Very well. If one of us is to die, then we shall die together. You once said that we would share one quilt in life and the same grave in death.”
When Tang Yushu heard his own former words repeated, embarrassment and fury overcame him. His face flushed crimson as he gritted his teeth.
“Shut up! Never mention the past again!”
An Chunfeng had no desire to repeat the original owner’s cloying declarations of love and disgust herself. In a cold voice, she said, “Was I born a venomous woman? And for whose sake did I become so vicious?
“Who was it that promised to marry me, only to break his word afterward? Who ruined my reputation and wasted years of my youth? Was that not your fault?”
Accustomed to An’s obedience, Tang Yushu had expected her to kneel and beg forgiveness at once. When she instead dared to argue with him and ask whose fault it was, shame and rage boiled over into vicious cruelty.
“I told you to shut up!”
“Once, you wept and begged to enter my Tang family, seduced me, and bore me a bastard. Now you even want to ruin my marriage.
“Let me tell you this: do not imagine that throwing yourself into despair and seeking death will inspire even the slightest pity in me.
“You are my disgrace. Do you understand? A disgrace!
“You are no longer the sensible, obedient An’er you once were. I feel sick whenever I see you.
“So many women in this world die in childbirth. Why did you not die in labor when you gave birth to that child?
“If you and that bastard had died, I might at least have remembered you fondly and burned offerings for you every year.”
Tang Yushu spoke through clenched teeth, consumed by regret over his youthful recklessness.
His parents had been right. He was destined for an official career, destined to rise to the highest ranks. How could the daughter of a wandering healer ever have been a suitable match for him? At most, he should have kept her as a concubine for the sake of her beauty.
But now that An had caused such a commotion, the disgraceful truth that he had slept with her without a matchmaker and fathered a child before marriage might be exposed to the world. He would become an object of ridicule. He hated her so much that he wished he could strangle her on the spot.
An Chunfeng regarded the unfamiliar man before her with a calm, unruffled gaze. He had once been handsome and elegant, but anger had twisted his features into something almost savage.
There was no denying that Tang Yushu was not unattractive.
His eyes were deep and shadowed, his nose high and straight, his thin lips red as rouge. Combined with the refined air of a scholar, he was indeed a dashing and charming figure.
Yet at that moment, the man was snarling at her in a low, shapeless rage, like a mad dog being throttled by the neck.
So that was the truth…
In this man’s heart, the original owner had been so utterly contemptible. There had been no love left at all—only the desire to kill her and erase the stain she represented from his life.