He Xianjin died. To be precise, she had died.

Past tense.

They say hearing is the last sense to fade when a person dies. No investigation, no right to speak? He Xianjin proved it true with her own experience. As her vision went pitch black and her consciousness began to dissolve, her ears were flooded with the sound of sobbing. She had lived twenty-four years in this life—at least ten of them spent in a sickbed. Born with a weak heart, she couldn’t experience intense joy or sorrow, couldn’t exert herself physically, and couldn’t even live like a normal person. Her life was a careful balancing act, constantly dodging accidents and misfortune.

Thanks to her family’s financial stability, she managed to survive—cautiously, painstakingly—pursuing her studies, earning a business degree, and starting from the bottom in the family company to slowly build experience. She thought she could keep living carefully, but she collapsed the night before her twenty-fifth birthday.

The cries of family and friends blended together, yet He Xianjin could still clearly pick out her mother’s voice.

Heart-wrenching. Desperate. But powerless to change anything.

Mama’s okay. That’s good. Mama…

He Xianjin wanted to comfort her. She tried to open her mouth, but her whole body felt bound by fine, chaotic threads. The sobbing around her gradually faded.

Goodbye, everyone. Xiao Jin is leaving now.

And then, He Xianjin heard nothing at all.

When He Xianjin opened her eyes again, she was soaked to the bone. She was now He Xianjin of Great Wei.

He Xianjin of Xuanzhou. Fifteen years old, from the third branch of the Chen family—a renowned papermaking clan. Same name, same characters, but a completely different He Xianjin.

This He Xianjin was healthy. No illness at all.

No illness—but plenty of misfortune.

The previous He Xianjin had drowned. Her soul, newly departed and from a hundred years in the future, somehow slipped into this body in another time and space. As a bedridden young woman who spent years immersed in anime and fantasy worlds, she accepted the bizarre reality of soul transmigration and rebirth with surprising speed. She immediately began investigating her new identity.

And what she found was startling.

This body’s He Xianjin bore a complicated background. Though her surname was He, the household that fed and clothed her was surnamed Chen. The head of that household was her mother’s second husband. Her mother was his favored concubine. And He Xianjin herself was the child of her mother and her previous husband.

In short, she was baggage.

And not just any baggage. She was a concubine’s child from a previous marriage, living under someone else’s roof without proper status.

He Xianjin clicked her tongue. In a feudal era, to remarry and bring along a child from a former husband? Her mother was one fierce concubine.

After carefully surveying her opulent bedroom and the four maids attending her personally, He Xianjin couldn’t help but marvel again—her mother really was a battle-hardened concubine. Was it even reasonable for a child from a previous marriage to enjoy such material comfort?

Unfortunately, by the time He Xianjin arrived, her mother—Madam He—had already been bedridden for years. The original He Xianjin’s drowning had accelerated her decline. On the fifth day after the soul transfer, Madam He passed away.

That moment was now.

The wind stirred the window lattice. It creaked softly. He Xianjin’s thoughts slowly returned to the present, her gaze settling lightly on Third Master Chen’s face.

Behind every fierce concubine, there’s a man with a hopelessly romantic brain. Third Master Chen was exactly that.

This wasn’t just her opinion—it was the consensus of the entire Chen family.

The Chen clan had built its fortune on papermaking, a legacy spanning over a century. Though the Great Wei dynasty didn’t exist in any of He Xianjin’s historical knowledge, its customs, geography, scholarly traditions, and governance bore unmistakable traces of the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Familiar place names and objects made it surprisingly easy for her to adapt.

“Xuan paper” was simply paper produced in Xuanzhou, and in this region, the Chen family was a leading name in the trade.

In her first few days after arriving, He Xianjin took the Chen family’s third branch token and toured the entire inner compound. Just the inner courtyard alone had four layers, divided into five separate residences.

The family matriarch, Old Madam Chen, lived alone in the Ramie Hall. The eldest son, now an official in the capital, resided in the Grass Selection Hall. The second branch occupied the Pulp-Making Hall. The third branch—her own—was housed in the Paper-Scooping Hall. And there was one empty courtyard labeled the Sun-Drying Hall.

All are clearly named after stages in papermaking. Ramie, grass selection, pulp-making, paper-scooping, and sun-drying—together they formed sheets of fine, jade-like paper. And together they made up the seventy-six members of the Chen household, masters and servants alike.

Put simply, the Chen family was a well-run local private enterprise in Xuanzhou.

The Old Madam held the reins inside and out, managing everything with an iron grip. The eldest son expanded the family’s influence in officialdom. The second son worked alongside the Old Madam, preparing to inherit the paper business. As for the youngest, he was mostly a liability.

And Third Master Chen was no exception. His name was Chen Fu. He began his studies at six, and now, at thirty-six, had achieved neither literary nor martial success. At eighteen, he married the youngest legitimate daughter of the neighboring Sun family, a textile magnate in Jiangnan. He should’ve lived out his days as a carefree, mediocre heir. But at twenty-seven, he encountered the delicate, disaster-stricken concubine He Ai and her little baggage—He Xianjin.

That was when Chen Fu’s romantic brain switched on. Against all pressure, he stubbornly took the twice-married He Ai as his concubine. And from then on, he was utterly bewitched.

Whatever Madam Sun had—be it dragon liver or phoenix marrow—he insisted on getting the same for He Ai, even if it meant being scolded by his mother right to his face.

He Ai was frail and sensitive, often ill. Chen Fu never left her side, spending his own money to send ginseng and bird’s nest soup to her room like water flowing from a spring. Not only did he send it—he made sure everyone knew.

So they’d envy her.

So they’d see that even if Chen Fu was useless in other ways, he knew how to pamper and cherish someone.

He wasn’t completely hopeless.

The third branch’s inner courtyard was full of envy for He Ai’s “lavish favor.” But as He Xianjin quietly gathered information, she mentally added “rebellious” and “immature” to Chen Fu’s romantic label. Piecing things together, she realized her mother and Chen Fu were basically a story of a second-generation rich kid with a rebellious streak and a delicate damsel heroine.

He Xianjin’s gaze drifted from Chen Fu’s lovestruck face to the memorial tablet before the coffin. It read: “In memory of my wife, He Ai.”

He Xianjin let out a soft sigh.

My wife? Chen Fu’s actual wife—how long had she been holding back? Probably long past the point of tolerance. After all, it was the original He Xianjin’s mysterious drowning that had triggered He Ai’s sudden decline.