The Villainess Begins in the Imperial Prison - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The stench of blood and rot in the prison was enough to make a person retch.

With great difficulty, I opened my mouth and said, “Elder Sister, I know I’m beautiful, but could you take your foot off me first?”

Perhaps she hadn’t expected me to say something like that when I was already at death’s door. For a moment, she actually froze, giving me the chance to break free.

No longer wiping the floor with my face, I took great gulps of the prison’s fresh air.

Of course, it wasn’t actually fresh. This was the deepest part of the Imperial Prison, where only the most heinous criminals were locked away to suffer every manner of torture and torment.

Just like me now. My body was covered in wounds, so many that I could no longer tell which were new and which were old. All I knew was that I hurt from head to toe.

To distract myself, I could only lift my head and look at the richly dressed woman before me.

If this scene had been the opening of a rebirth novel, I would have believed there was still hope for me.

Unfortunately, that was impossible.

Because the woman standing before me was the female lead of this story, reborn for revenge, holding the ultimate palace-intrigue and household-scheming heroine script in her hands. I could practically see the shining halo above her head.

They said a person spoke kindly when death was near. I had always been good at seeing reality for what it was. Once the ending was set, I never made pointless struggles.

Besides, a vicious villain at the end of her road had no cards left to play.

“Elder Sister, why don’t you just grant me death?”

I met the gaze above me, a little too resigned to care anymore. “Look, you’ve had your fun. Why not let me die early and reincarnate sooner?”

Those words seemed to strike her sore spot. A slap filled with inner force came crashing down, sending me flipping onto the ground. Half my face swelled up like a pig’s head.

I felt rather wronged. I had no idea where this disaster of transmigrating here had even come from.

“Dream on. I will make you suffer here day and night. I will return the pain you inflicted on me a hundredfold, a thousandfold.”

Clearly, Her Majesty the Empress was rather worked up because of what had happened in her previous life. Her eyes were bloodshot. With a furious flick of her sleeve, she left in anger.

Immediately after, I was dragged out. When I saw the many torture instruments hanging on the racks, my courage failed me, and I wished I had poison hidden in my teeth so I could end myself on the spot.

But the Imperial Prison was not a place where I could die just because I wanted to.

The people here were executioners. No one knew how to torment someone better than they did.

In the torture chamber, screams of utter agony rang out without end. I knew there was no way I could withstand pain like that.

“May I ask if there’s any way I can avoid these punishments?”

At my words, the man in the black official uniform turned around and stared at me as if I were insane, probably trying to see from my eyes whether I was joking.

I looked back at him with utmost sincerity, my eyes practically speaking for me.

Perhaps it was hard for him to imagine what great crime a person like me could have committed to end up imprisoned here. But that did not stop him from carrying out the torture.

I was terrified. I began struggling nonstop, desperately trying to break free of the shackles around my wrists and ankles.

A piece of black cloth covered my eyes. It was the black-clad executioner. I could even sense his abnormal temperature-colder than mine.

Endless terror came surging in. My body trembled uncontrollably, and I began to cry.

“Don’t be afraid.”

His voice sounded beside my ear, a little hoarse, as though he rarely spoke. Yet the words he said were incomparably cruel and bloody.

“Bear with it for a while, and it’ll be over.”

An icy blade wandered over my body, carefully slicing open my skin. Warm blood flowed out. Muscle and sinew were stirred again and again. My mind went completely blank, leaving only bone-deep pain.

I bit down on my tongue, wanting to end it all, but he dislocated my jaw and stuffed a wooden gag into my mouth. I whimpered, unable to make a sound.

In the pitch-black Imperial Prison, I woke from unconsciousness. Cold sweat had soaked through my clothes and hair, and the wounds on my body left me too afraid to move.

My legitimate elder sister, the eldest daughter of the Minister’s Mansion and Her Majesty the Empress of the Great Zhou Dynasty, hated me to the bone. She wanted to drink my blood and devour my flesh.

In her last life, my former brother-in-law and I had made her watch her entire family be executed. We had made her suffer the pain of losing a child as though it had been carved into her flesh.

Betrayal, blood, tears, and hatred coiled between us.

Before she had fully vented her rage, she would only let me live in this sunless place, enduring torment day after day.

Whenever I woke, I was on the torture rack. Whenever I was about to die, palace attendants brought medicine over, roughly stuffed it into my mouth, and smeared it carelessly over my body.

The chill from the ground seeped in without end. The pain on my body seemed to turn numb, leaving my mind unusually clear.

If I could not beg for death, then should I beg for life?

I began recalling everything from the book.

Lin Yingxue did indeed hold the script of her previous life in her hands, but what I knew now was the script of her rebirth and revenge.

I was not the only one in the Imperial Prison who wanted to escape. But only one person could actually do it.

A martial arts expert. A man of the jianghu.

I had to find myself a sliver of hope, and my only chance was the person dearest to the Emperor of Great Zhou-my legitimate elder sister.

Clearly, Heaven still had a little pity left for me. When I saw the man in prison clothes across from me, I could not help baring a mouthful of bloodstained teeth.

If circumstances had allowed, I would have laughed three times at the sky.

Not because he looked even worse off than I did, but because he was exactly the person I was looking for.

His shoulders had been pierced through, two bloody holes so large they were terrifying to behold. That proved his martial prowess was extraordinary enough to make people wary.

And here, in the depths of this prison, beneath the Son of Heaven’s feet, at the heart of imperial power, there was only one person who still needed to be feared.

The orphaned remnant of the previous dynasty, Qin Yao.

The emperor’s sworn enemy and the empress’s sworn enemy were now imprisoned face-to-face. Whether this was shared misery or destiny, I did not know.

In the depths of the prison, aside from the pungent reek of blood and filth, the only sounds were blood-choked screams and the most vicious curses.

Martial artists had sharp ears and clear eyes, and my gaze was focused and burning.

After a few breaths, the bloodstained man in white across from me finally could not help opening his weary eyes to look over.

Joy rose in my heart.

Qin Yao froze. Caught off guard, he seemed to fall into a pair of clear, innocent eyes like new rain in early spring.

They were calm with despair, no longer like before, when they had begged softly for mercy, then roared and cursed in helpless rage after being refused.

Seeing him somewhat stunned, I guessed he remembered me. After all, the figure of the current empress appeared here from time to time.

I parted my lips slightly without making a sound, signaling for him to come over.

Qin Yao hesitated for several moments before moving slightly, his motions clumsy and slow.

Even someone with martial arts as formidable as his had been tortured day and night in this deep prison until old wounds never healed. Let alone me.

My finger twitched faintly, and a pill rolled down, landing in front of his lapel.

This medicine worked wonders on external injuries. Lin Yingxue had spared no effort in order to temper me into steel.

I did not look at him again. This was the first step in showing my sincerity and willingness to cooperate.