“I have no romantic feelings for you — this engagement is hereby dissolved!”

The sharp male voice bored into her eardrums like a steel needle, sending a searing jolt through Lin Sui’an’s skull. A taste of rust surged up her throat.

What… the hell—?

Darkness drew back like a stage curtain. About two meters ahead stood a figure; the light was dim and the silhouette was blurry and indistinct, though it appeared to be wearing a long white bathrobe of some kind. From this distance, she could still hear the heavy, rapid breathing — like a donkey that had just brayed its way through an eight-hundred-meter sprint.

An odd sensation came from her right palm. Lin Sui’an found her right hand resting against a rough boulder roughly half the height of a person. The stone’s surface was blanketed in dark-green moss, cool and slick to the touch. The shape and texture reminded her of the garden lake-rocks she had seen years ago on a trip to the classical gardens of Suzhou.

Huh.

The man inhaled deeply, lowering his voice a few notches. “My mind is made up. Don’t entangle yourself with me any further!”

Lin Sui’an rubbed the moss between her fingers; the wet, dark-green color smeared across her palm. Real moss — moss doesn’t grow on stones in the north, so this must be the south. She pinched her fingers together and discovered thick calluses at the base of her right thumb. The hand itself was slender and sharp-knuckled — nothing at all like her original soft, chubby hands.

The man’s voice dropped further still. “I have found someone I truly cherish. I wish to spend my entire life with her and grow old at her side. If your feelings for me are genuine, you should wish us well.”

Lin Sui’an shifted her gaze to the man in white and let her eyes gradually adjust to the darkness.

He wasn’t wearing a bathrobe at all, but a white round-collared long shirt, a sash loosely knotted at the hip, hair pinned up in a topknot. His face was pale as a blank page, though his features weren’t bad. They were in an antique-style garden; in the distance she could make out black upswept eaves, a bamboo lantern hanging beneath them, the candleflame swaying. The humid air carried a sweet, unfamiliar fragrance.

The night sky was ink-black. No moon. A few stars flickered with lonely light. Lin Sui’an reflexively reached up to push her glasses back up her nose — and touched nothing. She was three hundred degrees nearsighted, yet she could see all of this with perfect clarity?

Lin Sui’an worked her jaw. Sure enough — in the moment before death, she’d stumbled into the most clichéd scenario imaginable: transmigration.

She had no idea whether this was historical, a made-up setting, a game, or a novel — but whatever it was, there had to be a system, right?

System? System-buddy? System-daddy? System-grandpa? System-great-ancestor?!

Maka-Paka? Maka-Paka-mah?

Lin Sui’an tried every invocation she could think of. Regrettably, there was no response whatsoever. Her heart sank. Transmigrating in this day and age without being bound to a system — this was almost certainly HARD MODE.

“Su Lang, please don’t blame him,” a clear, bright female voice rang out, and someone dropped to their knees right in front of Lin Sui’an, startling her badly.

The girl on the ground had a slender figure; her head was bowed low, her delicate shoulders trembling faintly, the back of her neck as white as jade, her sobs coming in breathless gasps. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have come between Lin-jiejie and Su Lang — wuuwuu —”

Lin Sui’an: “…”

Wait. This girl looks incredibly young. Judging by her build she can’t be more than fourteen — a minor?

“Don’t blame Kou’er — it’s entirely my fault!” The man in white, who had just moments ago been speaking in stern, righteous tones, abruptly shifted to a voice brimming with tender devotion. “It was I who fell for you at first sight. It was I who could not contain my feelings, and thus wronged Lin Niangzi’s regard. Even if she were to cut me down right now, I would accept it!” He clasped Kou’er’s hands, tears streaming down his face. “Kou’er is innocent — wuuwuu —”

Kou’er was immediately moved to flowing tears. “Whether in life or death, Kou’er is willing to follow Su Lang. Lin-jiejie, if you demand his life, Kou’er is willing to go with Su Lang to the underworld and be his ghost-wife.”

“Kou’er, we shall share a bed in life and a grave in death!”

“Su Lang, hearing those words, Kou’er’s life is complete!”

“Kou’er — wuuwuu —”

“Su Lang — yingying —”

Lin Sui’an: “…”

She hadn’t said a single word yet — how were these two already being so life-and-death dramatic?

The situation was crystal clear: a love triangle. This Su Lang had first gotten engaged to the “original host,” then fallen for Kou’er, and now wanted to dissolve the engagement. Sure enough — HARD MODE. The opening scene was already a realm of utter chaos.

Lin Sui’an cleared her throat. “You two—” Before she could finish, a scalding iron-rust surge came shooting up her throat. She let out a cry and spat a mouthful of blood, her legs giving way as she dropped to the ground.

Su Lang and Kou’er went still as two chicks with their necks wrung.

Lin Sui’an herself was startled frozen, one hand pressed to her chest, not daring to move. Was this body even going to hold up? Had she really transmigrated only to drop dead immediately?

“Lin Niangzi!” A man came rushing from the side and quickly steadied Lin Sui’an, bellowing, “Su Chengxian, are you trying to kill her?!”

Lin Sui’an was stunned. Sir, and exactly who are you?!

“Are you all right?” The loud-voiced man had a broad, square face, a booming voice, thick heavy brows, and large bright eyes. His palms were wide and thick — and he was gripping Lin Sui’an’s shoulders hard enough to hurt.

“Brother, why are you here — don’t tell me you have feelings for Lin-jiejie—” Kou’er covered her mouth in shock.

Lin Sui’an: Help — don’t tell me this is a four-way love tangle?!

The man’s grip on her shoulders tightened suddenly, squeezing so hard Lin Sui’an sucked in a sharp breath and choked on the residual blood in her mouth, coughing violently.

“Your old injury has flared up. I’ll take you back.” The loud-voiced man pulled Lin Sui’an to her feet and pushed her forward — less an escort and more a frog-march.

“An Niang,” Su Lang said, his voice vaguely confused, “I never imagined you and Brother Meng would—”

At those words, Lin Sui’an shivered without knowing why. The loud-voiced man stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look coldly at Su Chengxian. “I, Meng Man, am nothing like you!”

Lin Sui’an followed at the heels of this Meng Man fellow, taking advantage of the night to quickly observe her surroundings. The garden was enormous; she had been walking for a good while without glimpsing a boundary wall. Wooden covered walkways, elevated on columns, rang out with a dull thumping beneath her feet. On either side grew neatly arranged plants; by day it would have all the refined charm of a Jiangnan garden, but at night it felt exactly like a haunted manor.

Meng Man said not a word, just walked with his head down. Lin Sui’an, a newcomer, did not dare to speak freely either, and the two proceeded in silence all the way to a wing room in a courtyard.

“Lin Niangzi, rest well.” Meng Man said his piece and turned to leave, but Lin Sui’an hurried to call him back.

“About that — is my injury actually going to be all right?” She was genuinely worried; her chest was still aching dully. If this were a wuxia story it might be an internal injury or poison; if it were a cultivation story it could be damaged spirit veins; if a game story, perhaps her system had been sealed. The possibilities were endlessly varied.

“The physician said your old wound has not yet healed, and that you’ve been brooding too much. You need to rest.” Meng Man paused, then lifted his eyes to look at Lin Sui’an. His irises were so black they were frightening. “Lin Niangzi — don’t forget what I said.”

Lin Sui’an stared at him silently, thinking: Could you give me a hint?

Meng Man’s expression clouded, and he turned and left with a sweep of his sleeve. Lin Sui’an scratched her temple, turned, and pushed open the door into the room, her feelings impossible to name.

Listening to all this — it really did sound like the rhythm of a four-way love triangle…

The room was larger than she had expected — over eighty square meters in floor space, with clean blue-brick floors and not a speck of dust. A wooden bed against the left wall hung with a hemp curtain. Against the right wall, beneath the window, eight square thick bamboo mats were laid out in two rows, topped with a low wooden table, two square sitting cushions. A half-burned white candle stood on the table, along with a white porcelain water pot and two cups.

Not a single chair or stool. Was this set in the Warring States period?

Lin Sui’an looked around once more, found nothing new, and slowly walked inside, kicked off her shoes, climbed into bed, and yawned enormously.

I’ve come this far already. Might as well sleep.

She pulled back the quilt and a round bronze mirror tumbled out. Its back was carved with delicate grapevine patterns; the surface was smooth, clearly used often.

A key prop — it appeared!

Lin Sui’an lit up with excitement and quickly flipped the mirror over to hold it up before her face. In the mirror, a pair of eyes looked back. Then, with breathtaking strangeness, something happened — the scene before her suddenly shifted, as if a channel had been forcibly switched. Bright sunlight bathed a low wooden table; on the table sat a small wooden box containing a writing brush, and beside it, a long narrow cloth pouch.

In a flash, her view returned to the bronze mirror. The person reflected there wore a startled expression — soaring brows, jet-black phoenix eyes, features not delicately feminine but rather edged and sharp. Lin Sui’an pinched her cheek; the face in the mirror lifted one eyebrow and smiled.

Lin Sui’an was quite pleased. She hadn’t expected this body to be not only slender but also quite dashing-looking.

She turned the mirror over and ran her fingers across its face, edges, and engravings — nothing unusual. It was probably not a magical artifact; perhaps it had simply drawn out the original owner’s memories. She felt around the bed as well, pulling a bundle out from the foot of it containing two changes of clothes. A search around the low table also turned up nothing. Lin Sui’an sat down by the table in mild dismay and drank a couple sips of water — and then noticed, from this angle, that the edge of the bamboo mat just beneath the window looked somewhat frayed. She measured it with her hand and slipped her fingers into the seam between mats, lifted, and sure enough — there was the wooden box she had seen in the memory, set into a hollow in the blue-brick floor.

Lin Sui’an wiped her hands on her knees and opened the box with due solemnity. On top were two thin small wooden boards, black, barely palm-sized, each holding a slip of paper stamped with a red seal. The rightmost column read “Passage Document” in large characters, followed by neat small regular script:

【Hua Dian Li, Xi Dian Village, Xuanyuan County: only daughter of the Lin family, given name Sui’an, born in the twenty-third day of the eleventh lunar month of the fourth year of Xuanqi, age 17. Her father having passed and having no means of support, she travels to Anding County to seek kin. Identity verified: commoner in good standing. Twelfth day, sixth month, eighth year of Xuanfeng.】

Below that, several lines in different handwriting, each also bearing red seals:

【Verified by Liu Bing, garrison officer of Quanxian County.】

【Verified by Wang Dada, garrison officer of Kuquan County.】

【Verified by Lu Dayong, garrison officer of Xigong County.】

…

Lin Sui’an understood: this was the original host’s household registration and domestic travel document. It contained two important pieces of information. First, the original owner shared her exact name, though she was ten years younger — still a girl in the bloom of youth. Second, there were two reign era names: Xuanqi and Xuanfeng — neither of which appeared anywhere in the history she knew. So this was almost certainly a made-up historical setting.

A fabricated history had wide room for improvisation, but with no ability to foresee the future, it was a landscape of risk and opportunity both. One-sentence summary: tough to get by.

The cloth pouch lay quietly beneath the travel document — about fifteen centimeters long. Inside was a scroll, tied with hemp cord and giving off a faint ink smell. Lin Sui’an felt a surge of excitement. Something wrapped this carefully had to be important. She carefully drew it out; the cover bore two characters: “Daily Record.” Reading further, she discovered it was the original owner’s diary.

【Tenth month, festival day. Snow. First snowfall. Father left at dawn and returned at dusk, having rescued a man. The man claims to be a Su family noble, name Chengxian, courtesy name Lianjun — “Gentleman Lotus.” He is as his name: a gentleman like a lotus.】

Lin Sui’an leaned forward with great interest and moved closer to the candlelight to read on with relish.

As she had anticipated, this diary contained scattered but continuous records of the original owner’s acquaintance and growing love with Su Chengxian.

Su Chengxian claimed descent from a scholar-official family, had been steeped in books since childhood, and had been set upon by mountain bandits while traveling to the capital for the imperial examinations, nearly losing his life. It was Lin Sui’an’s father who had saved him; during his recovery at the Lin household, he and the original owner had gradually fallen in love.

In the original owner’s diary, Su Chengxian was a figure as pure and radiant as the bright moon — the original owner had fallen for him heart and soul. On the day they pledged their feelings, she had been so overcome with joy she even composed a seven-couplet poem. The original host had quite a way with words, Lin Sui’an thought. But the good times didn’t last. The original owner’s father fell gravely ill; Su Chengxian swore at his bedside to remain faithful to the original owner until death. The dying father had rallied his last breath to invite an official matchmaker and formally betroth the original owner to Su Chengxian. After the father’s death, Su Chengxian, unwilling to leave the original owner alone in the countryside, brought her along on his journey east to the capital for the examinations. The original owner was deeply moved.

Up to this point the diary read normally enough — but the further in she went, the more the tone shifted.

After setting out on the road, Su Chengxian’s attitude toward the original owner turned hot and cold by turns: at times he complained she wasn’t gentle and deferential enough; at other times he grumbled about poor food and lodging. In the beginning it was only occasional, but it grew more and more frequent. The original owner’s diary, which began with joy and anticipation, became increasingly self-doubting, then self-deprecating. She convinced herself that Su Chengxian was noble-born and full of learning, and that once he passed the exams his future would be limitless — while she herself was nothing more than a village woman, plain-looking, without talent or virtue, far beneath him. So she made herself smaller and smaller, waiting on Su Chengxian hand and foot each day as though he were a god.

Their travel funds had come entirely from the original owner selling her family’s property. All along the road she not only handled all of his daily needs but also took on odd jobs to supplement their travel costs. Already exhausted in body and spirit, she also endured Su Chengxian’s daily scorn and contempt, which eventually festered into illness.

Lin Sui’an’s chest burned with fury as she read. Damn it all — this poor girl had obviously been psychologically manipulated by Su Chengxian, that scum!

Reading further only stoked the anger higher.

Mid-journey, the two of them had the terrible luck to run into bandits again. The original owner risked her life to save Su Chengxian and was gravely wounded for it — fortunately, a passing merchant convoy found her and took her in. The convoy’s master was named Luo Shichuan, a man of considerable righteousness, who took them both home to recover. While the original owner lay unconscious from her wounds, Su Chengxian pulled his usual tricks: first concealing his engagement to the original owner, then using sweet words to win the heart of Luo Shichuan’s daughter, Luo Kou. His plan had been to wait for the original owner to die, and the matter would take care of itself — but the original owner proved stubbornly tenacious and survived. Su Chengxian, who had been on the verge of attaching himself to the Luo family, was naturally unwilling to accept this, and began using every means, soft and hard, to force the original owner to dissolve the engagement.

Lin Sui’an: Heh.

What followed was a record of the original owner’s anguished feelings. Occasional mentions were made of Luo Shichuan’s adopted son, Meng Man, who had cared for the original owner. After that the diary broke off for a stretch of time; when the original owner resumed writing, her handwriting had changed — the brushstrokes were still somewhat shaky and weak, but they had acquired a backbone, a spirit. This was especially true of the final page, which read nothing like the sorrowful, heaven-lamenting tone of what came before.

【In recent days the chest pains have worsened; I fear I may not have much time left. Looking back, it was the gravest mistake to trade Qian Jing as a token of promise in exchange for a heartless man’s empty vows. I regret it bitterly. Yet my heart aches and rages to think of how young Luo Niangzi, so young and deeply in love, has also been deceived and persecuted by that wretched Su-pig. I toss and turn all night, unable to sleep. A piece of filth like him — even at the cost of my life, I am determined to strip away his skin and expose his true face!】

“Well done!” Lin Sui’an slapped her knee and laughed. “Perfectly said! That scoundrel deserves no better than the pigs and dogs — hahaha—” Something scalding slid down the corner of her eye. Lin Sui’an’s laughter stopped short. She touched the corner of her eye in bewilderment, then looked at her fingertip.

Tears.

Not hers. The original owner’s final tears.

Lin Sui’an’s chest ached again, this time from sorrow and profound admiration.

What a beautiful soul — even in her final moments she worried about Luo Kou, afraid she would be deceived by that scoundrel just as she herself had been, and was even willing to spend her last breath to act— wait. Why spend her last breath? When Lin Sui’an had arrived, the original owner must have died at the moment of confronting the scoundrel. Could it be that the original owner’s death was not as simple as it appeared?

The night wind stirred, and the candleflame swayed faintly.

In the instant between one heartbeat and the next, the roots of Lin Sui’an’s hair prickled. She rolled off the bed in a single movement.

A fierce wind cleaved the air. The bamboo mats split in two. At the spot where Lin Sui’an had been sitting, a person appeared — holding a long blade, dressed entirely in black with a black hat, bare feet in hemp sandals. The figure was thin and elongated like a stalk of giant bamboo, face wrapped in a black cloth mask, eyes blazing fiercely at Lin Sui’an.

The hairs all over her body stood up like a radar detecting danger. Lin Sui’an dropped to one knee, one palm braced against the floor, striking a dashing low crouch that she could absolutely never have managed before. Every muscle in her body coiled with potential energy, and she felt within herself an unprecedented surging vitality.

Oh ho! Lin Sui’an raised her eyebrow with satisfaction. Looks like this body knows how to fight.