Shengjing, Prime Minister's Mansion.
The mansion was aflame, reaching up to the sky with an eerie silence prevailing. The heavy snow filling the air melted before it could touch the ground.
Within the mansion, from the seventy-year-old matriarch to the two-year-old children, their bodies were haphazardly scattered across the open ground of the courtyard.
The crackling of burning embers echoed through the grounds, with the thick, acrid smoke and the smell of char spreading all over the place.
Arriving, Han Qingyi was met with this catastrophic scene.
Soon, a handsome man dressed in a purple official robe stopped beside her. His voice was as soft as ever, but devoid of all past warmth.
"The emperor ordered me to obliterate the enemy, so do not blame me. Rather than being taken to guillotine, it's better for you to face this fiery execution, and die a more dignified death than offerings to ravenous beasts on a deserted hill."
Han Qingyi shivered, laughing coldly. "My Han family has been loyal generation after generation. My grandfather saved the former Emperor on the battlefield, and my father single-handedly suppressed several massive calamities on his own. Betray the country? Is the whole world blind, Chu Xuan, are you blind too? Who my father really was, if others don't know, don't you, Chu Xuan?"
Chu Xuan, once an aide in the Prime Minister's mansion, now he's a powerful general of the nation.
The man who had shared the same bed with her, Han Qingyi, for three years.
Chewing on her words, she asked coldly, "You wrote that letter colluding with the enemy, didn't you?"
"Heh, even if you don't answer, it doesn't matter. Your handwriting was extremely similar when you played the guest, Chu Xuan, do you want me to continue?"
The man known as Chu Xuan spaced out for a moment, but soon recovered his calmness, smiling eerily: "My thoughtful wife, you missed one point. I've accomplished great deeds. The emperor promised to grant me Princess Liangyu's hand in marriage. Ah, you also have a sister. Don't worry, I will send her to reunite with you."
Such ridicule. Shengjing's number one talented woman turned out to be a calamitous blindness. She invited the wolf into the house and caused the death of over a hundred and thirty people.
Chu Xuan's face gradually transformed into something monstrous in Han Qingyi's eyes. Unable to stand the sight of him, she grabbed a long knife from her side and lunged at Chu Xuan's chest.
Chu Xuan reacted, cursing, "Madwoman!" He grabbed the knife, stabbing her brutally, then kicked her into the roaring fire.
The hot flames crawled along Han Qingyi's clothes, searing her skin, and she could smell her own flesh cooking.
It's so hot, unbearably hot...
Through the flames, Han Qingyi glared at Chu Xuan with poison in her eyes. "God, if you're watching, let this beast fall from grace and die a horrible death!"
——
"Help, it's hot, it hurts, help..."
The woman murmured on, her forehead slick with sweat, frightening the maids attending to her. "Sister Li, Sister Li, wake up."
"Should we check if she has a fever? If she's ill, I'll fetch the doctor from the house. We can't let her condition worsen, the lady will blame us."
"She's not hot, rather cool. Close the windows."
"Alright."
Voices of the conversation seemed both far and near. Han Qingyi could only make out vague blurs. All she could see was the inferno and the bloody earth beneath her. Suddenly, the fire intensified and swallowed her whole. She awoke with a start and sat up like a reanimated corpse, giving the two maids attending to her a scare.
"Sister Li, tell us if you're uncomfortable. We'll fetch the doctor." One maid in a pink dress was on the verge of tears.
The woman on the bed looked around at her unfamiliar surroundings. Where was this?
"Who are you?" This voice, it was so sweet and soft, not hers at all. Han Qingyi looked down at her body to discover that it was small, with skin as soft and white as an infant's.
The two maids exchanged a glance, their faces filled with despair. "Sister Li, you truly don't remember us anymore?"
