Pain flooded every bone in Cen Sheng’s body. She tried to scream, but a rag stuffed her mouth.
Gongs and drums thundered outside. A suona wailed through the winter night.
“Seal the coffin!”
The last thread of light vanished beneath the lid.
Hammer blows drove iron nails into the wood. Each strike landed like a blow against her heart. Cen Sheng twisted wildly, ropes sawing her wrists bloody as her nails clawed the cracks.
She did not want to die.
“Mother, please! Eldest Sister-in-law must be innocent…” Xue Lan’er sobbed before someone dragged her away.
“Innocent?” Wang Guizhi shrieked. “That barren hen gave us no child in twelve years and poisoned my son! Serving Wenyan below is her good fortune.”
Air thinned inside the coffin. Blood filled Cen Sheng’s throat as her life flashed before her.
At ten, her parents had starved during a famine. She was sold into the Xue family of Qinghe Village as a child bride for Xue Wenyan, five years her junior. She raised him, washed clothes in winter rivers, labored beneath the summer sun, and stitched shoes by lamplight to fund his education.
He had promised, “Sister Sheng, when I earn scholarly honors, I will treat you well.”
When he passed the county examination, he stopped seeing the wife who had sacrificed everything.
He brought home a delicate distant cousin named Jing Shishi and looked at her with tenderness Cen Sheng had never received.
Wang Guizhi told her, “You are older and cannot bear children. Shishi reads and writes. She is Wenyan’s proper match. Leave quietly and the Xue family will not mistreat you.”
Not mistreat her?
They forced sterilizing poison down her throat. She burned with fever for three days in the woodshed without a visitor. When she recovered, a divorce letter waited.
Still, she had nowhere to go.
On the eve of Xue Wenyan’s wedding to Jing Shishi, he died in the bridal chamber, blood spilling from every opening. Wang Guizhi immediately bound Cen Sheng and put her in this coffin.
“Mother! I carried the medicine to Eldest Brother!”
Xue Miao.
Cen Sheng’s fading mind cleared.
“It was a sedative from the physician. It had nothing to do with Sister-in-law. If you bury her, bury me too!”
A wheelchair overturned. A body struck the ground. Wang Guizhi cursed, and clubs thudded against flesh.
“You would throw away your life for that calamity?”
“She is one of the Xue family,” Xue Miao said weakly but distinctly. “She worked like an ox for twelve years and never ate her fill. Brother’s death was not her fault. Release her. I beg you.”
“Finish nailing the coffin!”
The final nail went in. Snow and wind swallowed Xue Miao’s voice while Cen Sheng’s heartbeat slowed.
She hated them.
If another life existed, she would make every one of them pay in blood.
As darkness claimed her, warmth surged from her dantian and wrapped around her—the spiritual-spring space she had once discovered in a mountain cave.
It had come too late.
Cen Sheng closed her eyes.
—
“A hen that cannot lay an egg still has the nerve to cling to the Xue family?”
Cen Sheng jolted awake.
Sunlight entered through a broken lattice. She knelt on the blue-brick floor of the Xue family hall. Beside her, a black medicinal brew steamed in a coarse bowl.
She knew it.
The sterilizing poison.
In her previous life, she had begged for one more year. Wang Guizhi ordered servants to hold her down and force the medicine into her mouth. It tortured her for three days and destroyed her ability to conceive.
“Shengniang,” Wang Guizhi said, feigning kindness, “drink this. Once you leave, you will not bring shame upon Wenyan’s new marriage.”
Xue Wenyan stood nearby beside Jing Shishi, avoiding Cen Sheng’s eyes. Jing Shishi leaned close to him, fragile as a white blossom.
Cen Sheng looked at the bowl, then smiled.
She had returned.
This time, she would not drink, accept the divorce, or die for them.
“You say I owe the Xue family?” Cen Sheng rose despite the pain in her knees. “I entered this house at ten. I washed in freezing rivers, cut fodder under the hottest sun, and stitched every coin that paid for Xue Wenyan’s studies. Twelve years have repaid any debt.”
Xue Wenyan stared at the wife who had never resisted.
“Shengniang—”
“Call me Miss Cen.”
She lifted the bowl and walked toward Jing Shishi.
“Since Cousin Shishi and Wenyan love each other, she should share his fortunes. I should not keep this wonderful medicine to myself.”
Jing Shishi retreated. “Sister-in-law, what are you doing?”
Cen Sheng reached for her chin.
“Brother Wenyan, save me!”
Xue Wenyan seized Cen Sheng’s wrist. “Have you gone mad?”
A low, rich voice came from outside.
“Sister-in-law. Wait.”
Everyone fell silent.
A man in a worn blue robe was wheeled into the hall, a thin blanket across his knees. His face was lean and pale, his features deep and severe. Long, narrow eyes watched Cen Sheng with the stillness of a dark pool.
Xue Miao.
The man who had crawled through snow and blood to defend her was alive and whole before her.
Though the family called him a useless cripple, his gaze silenced the room.
“What are you doing here?” Wang Guizhi snapped. “This has nothing to do with you.”
Xue Miao ignored her. “The medicine in Sister-in-law’s hands came from Rejuvenation Hall, correct?”
“So what?” Xue Wenyan asked.
“Physician Zhou was imprisoned last month for killing patients. Several dosages in his prescriptions are wrong. If she drinks that bowl, she may become infertile—or die when her intestines rupture.”
The hall turned deathly still.
“I collected that prescription myself,” Wang Guizhi stammered.
“You know better than I where it came from,” Xue Miao replied.
Cen Sheng tore free and stepped beside his wheelchair.
In her previous life, he had never appeared here. Why had he come now?
“Discuss Sister-in-law’s divorce another day,” Xue Miao said. “Something more urgent concerns us.”
He unfolded a letter.
“An imperial censor will reach Qingping County in three days to investigate corruption in last year’s river-dike project. It appears the Xue family is involved.”
Wang Guizhi staggered against the table. Xue Wenyan’s face changed.
Cen Sheng remembered.
The Xue family had later been stripped of its property and exiled over that case.
By then, she had already been nailed into her coffin.
The calamity had only begun.