In midsummer, right after the Dragon Boat Festival, the imperial palace in Jin is sweltering with heat.

The corridors of the six palaces are still adorned with calamus and mugwort leaves, their spicy fragrance carried by the hot wind.

Yet, the Yuzhu Hall, where Zan Ying resides, remains cool and refreshing.

Zan Ying, naturally delicate and weak, fears the cold in winter and the heat in summer. During the hottest months, she must have three ice jars placed in her room every day to keep cool.

Today, however, there isn’t a single maid in the inner quarters fanning her.

Early in the morning, Zan Ying dismissed all the palace maids and sat alone before a large bronze mirror.

She lifted her thick bangs, exposing her forehead, and stared at her reflection in the mirror in silence.

The young girl in the mirror has snow-white skin, with delicate eyebrows and lips.

She wears a set of ancient jade-colored clothing with a cross-collar and a flared skirt, wide sleeves, and a long sash.

Every detail, from the hairpins to the ornaments, is perfectly in place.

Even the way she sits, although she might feel back pain after a while, remains as straight as if measured by a ruler.

Zan Ying moved her sleeve, and the reflection in the mirror followed suit.

She curled her lips into a smile, but the unadorned face in the mirror showed a stiff expression, no livelier than a wooden puppet.

Zan Ying leaned in closer, her dark eyes fixed on her reflection as if she did not recognize herself.

“Oh, my lady, why are you daydreaming here?”

The golden brocade curtain in the inner room was suddenly lifted, and an old woman in a dark green gown with black edging entered, her voice as loud as beans pouring from a pot. “The coming-of-age banquet is approaching. The golden silk sachets for His Highness the Crown Prince need to be finished. It’s not that I’m being talkative, but rather, my lady should not be idling here. It would be better to stitch a few more threads with care.”

The familiar tone of admonition caused Zan Ying’s eyes to shift slightly.

She then lowered her hand, her once delicate bangs now covering her forehead, instantly transforming her from the charming young lady she was just moments before.

Indeed, Zan Ying thought, I have truly returned to fifteen, before the coming-of-age ceremony.

Yuzhu Hall is a subsidiary hall of the Empress’s main residence, Xianyang Palace.

She had lived here since she could remember.

Zan Ying, whose surname is Fu, is the daughter of the third branch of the Fu family, a prestigious family.

Her father, Fu Zixu, died alongside his elder brother Fu Rong in the first northern campaign after the entire Jin Dynasty had moved south, both sacrificing themselves for the country.

Her mother, Tang Su, came from a wealthy family.

However, the “wealth” of the Tang family was wealth enough to rival that of a nation.

The Tang family had risen during the previous dynasty when the capital was still Chang’an in the Central Plains, and the northern Hu and Di tribes had not yet dared to invade.

The Tang family started with horse trading and later engaged in grain, cloth, and fine porcelain, accumulating vast wealth over four generations.

By Tang Su’s time, her father had only one beloved daughter, whom he carefully raised and eventually handed over the entire family business to.

Tang Su lived up to expectations, not only managing the family estate but also boldly exploring and expanding maritime routes, dedicating herself to exporting the Tang family’s silk and porcelain to the Western Regions and foreign lands.

The title “Madam Tang of the Great Jin” thus spread far and wide.

It should be noted that people of different ranks had different statuses, with merchants being particularly despised.

Yet, the Jin Emperor Li Yu made an unprecedented move by conferring the title of “County Lady of Xinchang” upon Tang Su.

Empress Wei favored her and formed a sworn sisterhood with Tang Su, calling each other sisters.

Some insightful people murmured that this move was not merely to elevate Tang Su but rather a way to curry favor with the Jin Dynasty’s foremost moneybags.

Since the southward migration, the court had been divided by aristocratic factions, weakening imperial power and depleting the national treasury.

The emperor and empress were clearly seeking to win over the Jin Dynasty’s greatest financial asset.

Whether true or not, Zan Ying’s engagement to the Crown Prince of Jin was established through the close relationship between Madam Tang and Empress Wei.

Unfortunately, fate was unkind.

During one of her voyages leading a trade convoy, Tang Su encountered a hurricane, and everyone on the ship perished in the sea disaster.

At just three years old, Zan Ying inherited all the wealth of the Tang family and became an orphan.

Emperor Li Yu then issued an edict to take her from the Fu family and raise her in the palace.

Thus, the young girl lowered her gaze, staring at the jade key in the shape of a ruyi tied to her waistband.

This marriage arrangement was not something she, Fu Zan Ying, actively sought.

Why, in her previous life, did she always act so cautiously and feel that she wasn’t good enough for Li Jinghuan?

The golden embroidered sachet was a gift she had intended to painstakingly create with all her heart, spending countless hours sewing it before her coming-of-age ceremony, to present to Jinghuan as a token of her feelings.

Yet, in the city of Jiankang, who would have thought that a girl’s coming-of-age gift would be so painstakingly made for someone else?

In her previous life, she had been taught from a young age by the Empress herself and constantly drilled by the palace’s matron on the principles of a wife’s duties and a woman’s virtues.

She was always told that the Crown Prince would be her only support in the future, and she should love and respect him sincerely, putting him and the royal family first in everything.

Children are like blank slates.

Hearing these various teachings repeatedly, they gradually filled Zan Ying’s heart.

Li Jinghuan, however, truly deserved her affections.

At her coming-of-age banquet, she caught him secretly confiding his feelings with a girl named Fu Zhuangxue behind a rockery in the banquet hall.

And that girl, Fu Zhuangxue, who looked so delicate, was someone Zan Ying’s elder brother had told her was a distant relative of the Fu family, merely visiting the capital.

But it turned out that Fu Zhuangxue was actually the illegitimate daughter of her uncle, born from a liaison with a barbarian woman at the border.

Her elder brother, Fu Ze’an, was the eldest grandson of the main branch of the Fu family.

Fu Zhuangxue was his half-sister from the same father.

They had long known Fu Zhuangxue’s true identity but kept Zan Ying in the dark.

It was almost laughable to think she might be the domineering type who would bully an orphaned cousin.

Her most trusted elder brother knew of her engagement to the Crown Prince but still helped the Crown Prince secretly meet with Fu Zhuangxue.

Even her most relied-upon “mother,” the Empress, had noticed but chose to turn a blind eye.

As for Li Jinghuan, whom she admired wholeheartedly:

“Ah Ying, you’ve always been thoughtful. I just don’t want you to misunderstand and wrongly blame Ah Xue. Rest assured, you will always be my main wife.”

When she pressed him for answers, Li Jinghuan only said this.

But by the time he said it, Zan Ying’s arm had already been injured in the fire.

After discovering the affair between the Crown Prince and Fu Zhuangxue, she maintained her composure for the sake of the Crown Prince’s dignity, enduring the pain and concealing the truth at the coming-of-age banquet, despite her heartache.

Li Jinghuan promised he would give her an explanation.

Zan Ying thought his explanation would involve ending things with Fu Zhuangxue, but what she waited for was Fu Zhuangxue coming to the palace to find her.

It was Fu Ze’an who brought her into the palace.

At that time, Zan Ying was in the Jin Kui Library in the Western Garden and heard her usually calm elder brother pleading with her, “Ah Ying, please give Ah Xue a chance to explain.”

“Ah Xue has had a difficult life. You, living in the palace, may not know the hardships she faced beyond the river in the northern borders, with endless warfare and famine. She barely survived and made it back. Ah Xue is young and doesn’t understand. Please be more forgiving as her elder sister.”

It was indeed difficult.

Once the door closed, Fu Zhuangxue began to tearfully recount her hardships and plead for forgiveness.

Zan Ying felt a lump in her throat and coldly walked away around the bookshelf. Yet Fu Zhuangxue, oblivious to the hint, followed her step by step.

To this day, Zan Ying still does not understand how the fire started.

She only remembers faintly smelling something burning amidst Fu Zhuangxue’s cries.

In her frustration, she was not alert enough, and it wasn’t until Fu Zhuangxue’s scream that she realized the fire behind them had already grown large.

In the room, all three walls were piled with silk books and bamboo slips; the speed at which they would burn if ignited was unimaginable.

Outside, Fu Ze’an noticed the commotion and rushed into the library.

He saw Fu Zhuangxue scared and unable to move, glanced at Zan Ying, and decisively picked up Fu Zhuangxue and fled the scene.

That glance pierced Zan Ying’s heart with cold.

She wanted to escape too, but the fire was too intense, blocking the door to the library. Fortunately, she then heard a familiar voice outside commanding, “Quick, save the people.”

It was the Crown Prince.

In her fear, Zanying’s hope ignited.

Then, she watched as the Crown Prince’s personal guards arrived and escorted Fu Ze’an and his sister out of the library.

The blazing wooden beams crashed down in Zanying’s blurred vision.

She instinctively raised her arm to protect her head, and by the time the guards came back to rescue her, her right arm was already badly burned.

Fu Zhuangxue, with some of her hair singed, collapsed in her elder brother’s arms, looking at her in panic.

“Ah Ying, I’m sorry.”

Later, her elder brother leaned by her sickbed, his face full of shame as he explained, “I thought that the Crown Prince, having a bond with you, would certainly prioritize you. Thus, I went to save Ah Xue first, hoping that both of you would be safe.”

Li Jinghuan’s explanation was that he believed Fu Ze’an, having a deep sibling bond with Zanying over many years, would naturally protect her first in a crisis.

Since Ah Xue was only recently found, Fu Ze’an would surely prioritize his long-time sister, so he ordered to save Ah Xue first.

How ironic.

Both of them thought that she should be heavily prioritized and protected in danger, and so, they inadvertently overlooked her.

Yet, in her past life, Zanying, tender-hearted and indecisive, blindly accepted this explanation.

When the doctor diagnosed her that the burns on her right arm were too severe and amputation was necessary to save her life, she had only one thought:

If I become disabled, Brother Jinghuan won’t want me anymore.

Having lived for fifteen years, her entire life spent pursuing a single shadow, and now, with fifteen years of hope about to be destroyed, this was even more frightening and helpless than having her heart burned.

“Aside from amputation, there is another method: to cut away the rotten flesh every few days.”

The doctor, faced with the young lady’s desperate pleas, showed compassion. “Please reconsider. The burn area on your arm is too extensive; this method only alleviates the symptoms and does not address the root cause. It would only add to your suffering.”

She was blinded by stubbornness.

She preferred to endure endless pain rather than amputate her arm to save her life.

During this time, the Empress sent the best supplements to Zanying’s quarters every day, advising her to stay calm.

She said that Zanying had now reached adulthood and, once her wounds were healed, the position of Crown Princess would be hers.

The Empress also took away the jade key to the treasury that Zanying wore, as a reminder of their previous promise.

Li Jinghuan also visited her a few times, looking at her bandaged arm with pity, hesitant to speak.

Later, unable to bear seeing her suffer, he gradually stopped visiting.

Eventually, her arm’s burns, apart from the increasing removal of rotten flesh, revealed deep white bones and showed no signs of improvement.

The delay in the fire scene had also damaged her lungs with smoke, causing her to cough.

The palace servants whispered that Miss Fu might have contracted tuberculosis.

Soon after, the Empress ordered her to be moved to the Luozhi Hall in the Northern Garden for recuperation.

That deep autumn was unusually cold.

In a desolate and cold palace, accompanied only by the howling mountain ghosts and cold owls.

No one came to see her.

Only the imperial physician visited every seven days to remove the rotten flesh from her arm.

The sound of flesh being torn away from the tendons and the bones underneath was no match for the howling autumn wind.

For the next two years, Fu Zanying languished in the Luozhi Hall, barely clinging to life.

Two years later, Current Emperor passed away, and Li Jinghuan ascended to the throne as Emperor.

She, who had been the “future Crown Princess” for fifteen years, was neither given the title of Empress nor Queen.

Unable to get out of bed or leave her room, she was addressed by palace servants as “Lady Sovereign,” which felt like an immense honor.

Meanwhile, Fu Zhuangxue was reportedly made a Noble Consort.

But Zan Ying’s health was failing.

She realized too late, unable to turn things around, and in her final moments, she could only hope that the wealth left by her maternal grandfather and mother would be used to benefit the common people.

Otherwise, she would have no face to meet her ancestors in death.

Fate seemed to conspire against her.

After Li Jinghuan ascended, he was so determined to eradicate the aristocracy and seize military power that the noble families rebelled, and various local warlords rose up in chaos.

Eventually, a so-called new Prince of An emerged, leading an army of 200,000 to Jiankang, burning the Suzaku Bridge and besieging the southern city gate.

They demanded Fu Zanying as a bargaining chip for the safety of the imperial city.

On the cold, burning bed, Fu Zanying, who was too ill to even sit up, first thought it was laughable.

How could such a confused barbarian prince not know that she was now a useless piece, worth nothing at all?

But the next message made her unable to smile: Li Jinghuan was trapped in the city and had urgently called a meeting of the Ministry of Rites.

Not the Ministry of War, but the Ministry of Rites.

The great Emperor of Jin seemed to be leaning towards negotiation.

The cost was sacrificing a long-sick, useless woman, draining her last bit of value.

With despair, regret, and unwillingness, Fu Zanying died that long, dark, and cold night.

When she opened her eyes again, she was back to being fifteen years old.