My Savior, My Second Chance - Chapter 3

Duan Ming knelt beside my bed, slapping his own face hard and weeping as he poured out his helplessness and impropriety of the previous night, his remorse and his love.

His display of self-reproach left my parents at a loss over how to punish him.

Our household physician backed up his story. “The young lady was indeed poisoned with a peculiar aphrodisiac. Without timely relief, the blood in her body would have reversed its flow and killed her.”

It had been the same in my previous life. The physician had vouched for him, and I had no memory of that night.

My parents could only grit their teeth. “Then Duan Ming really did save your life.”

Merchants held low status. Even as the wealthiest imperial merchant family, the Shens were always a rung below everyone else in the world of rank and influence.

The crown prince and I were close in age. My parents had raised and educated me with great care, hoping I would one day enter the Eastern Palace and secure a bright future.

All of it had been destroyed that night, at the hands of a gate guard.

Father’s hair turned white overnight. The next day, he went to the Eastern Palace to beg forgiveness.

My name was already on the list of consort candidates. If the matter was mishandled, our family could be accused of defying the Eastern Palace and showing contempt for imperial authority.

The Eastern Palace did not condemn us. The crown prince even came in person to tell me not to seek death, but to live on.

For days, Duan Ming stayed on his knees in our courtyard. He seemed to be admitting fault. In truth, he was forcing a marriage.

Once a woman lost her chastity, she lost control over her own life as well.

In the end, burdened by the debt of my life to Duan Ming, I accepted my fate and married beneath my station into his family.

Outwardly, I was marrying down. In practice, he married into the Shen household, bringing his coarse old mother to live in our mansion.

A servant became the family’s son-in-law overnight, enjoying the wealth and luxury that three generations of imperial merchants had amassed.

I was my parents’ only daughter. With my prospects in the Eastern Palace gone, they accepted their lot and used every connection the Shen family had to advance Duan Ming’s career.

With mountains of gold and silver clearing his path, three years later his victories over bandits finally earned him the title of General of Manifest Might, a junior fourth-rank appointment.

He had neither the brilliance of a scholar nor the makings of a hero. That was as far as the Shen family could carry him.

Parents who love their child plan far ahead for her. Mine only hoped he would treat me well.

But on the very day he achieved success, Duan Ming summoned those three beggars.

The moment they saw me, they shouted, “We’re the lovers the general’s wife was screwing before her wedding!”

Their foul mouths opened to reveal blackened teeth as they mocked me brazenly in front of everyone.

I thought they were madmen making trouble and told Duan Ming to drive them away.

His expression suddenly changed. He laughed viciously.

“Why would I send them away? They’re telling the truth. These three aren’t just your lovers, my wife. They’re our matchmakers!”

“What are you saying?”

“That drug from the Western Regions certainly lives up to its reputation. Three whole years, and you still had no idea.”

Right in front of my parents, he declared without shame,

“I wasn’t the one who violated you that night. It was these three beggars!”

He savored the memory. “You did look delicious. If those beggars hadn’t dirtied you first, I might have made do and had a taste. After all, who would ever have known what happened in that alley?”

“Father-in-law, Mother-in-law, you really took me for her savior.”

Duan Ming shook out his general’s armor, full of swagger.

“All I did was pick up the young lady’s unconscious body that morning!”

“And I got a noble young woman for a wife, all this wealth and glory, and a splendid career—for nothing!”

When Father learned the truth, rage overwhelmed him. He vomited blood and died on the spot.

Mother tried to take Duan Ming down with her, but he shoved her into the corner of a table, splitting her head open.

Cold swept through me. I pulled out my hairpin, determined to die taking him with me. He kicked me off the platform, and I landed covered in blood.

As I lay dying, I saw the three beggars closing in.

Memories of that night flashed before my eyes.

Under cover of darkness, they had bitten at my skin, wetting my entire body amid the mist.

I screamed and wailed, on the edge of breaking. Duan Ming held the childhood sweetheart he had long kept outside our home and watched coldly.

That day, he told everyone he had returned from a bandit campaign to find his wife sleeping with beggars. When her disgrace was exposed, she went mad and killed her own parents. Only then, he claimed, had he accidentally killed me.

The court was already in decline, beset by troubles within and threats without. The local authorities were failing. No one even investigated that absurd lie.

And so Duan Ming kept his official appointment and gained a lawful claim to the fortune three generations of Shens had built.

With his childhood sweetheart in his arms and his mother beside him, he stepped over my corpse and replaced the Shen family plaque with one reading “Duan Residence.” He became our family’s “new master.”

Every detail of my previous life remained clear. Now, after my rebirth, it was all playing out again.

Just as before, Mother listened to the physician and tried tearfully to persuade me.

“Qingzhi, what’s done is done. You cannot blame Duan Ming. Accept your fate.”

“The story has already spread through the streets.”

Father looked grave. “Marry him, and we’ll say you were betrothed all along. At least the marriage will be proper. I’ll beg forgiveness at the Eastern Palace again. His Highness is merciful. He should not punish us harshly.”

“Otherwise, it means that before the consort selection, you were…”

He gritted his teeth. “Carrying on with a guard! That violates every rule of propriety. Worse, it defies the Eastern Palace and insults the heir to the throne. Deceiving the sovereign is a capital offense. All nine degrees of our kin could be exterminated!”

Neither of my parents knew that the man I had “carried on with” was the crown prince himself.

Duan Ming thought victory was his. His eyes gleamed as he clutched my hand greedily.

“Miss, for the sake of your entire clan, I’m afraid you’ll have to lower yourself and marry me!”