Chapter 1
The continuous loud sounds echoed in Gu Yanfei’s ears.
Her eardrums were ringing and the ground beneath her was shaking violently.
Pain shot through her limbs and she felt as if carriages were running over her.
Gu Yanfei struggled to open her eyes. Blood covered her left eye like a veil, blurring her vision.
Gray dust filled the air.
Her surroundings were in chaos. The narrow and dilapidated carriage was on the verge of collapse.
“Second Lady…”
A low moan entered Gu Yanfei’s ears, weak and powerless.
The female voice was both familiar and unfamiliar.
Gu Yanfei’s pupils constricted, and her body trembled slightly.
Gu Yanfei slowly turned her head and saw a 13 or 14-year-old girl in an emerald green dress on her right. The girl’s hair was messy and one of her arms was wrapped protectively around Gu Yanfei’s waist.
The girl’s face was facing down, so Gu Yanfei couldn’t see her face clearly. However, from her figure, Gu Yanfei was certain that she recognized the girl.
It was Juan Bi, her former maidservant.
The physical pain Gu Yanfei felt reminded her that what she was seeing was neither an illusion nor a dream.
She had actually returned to the Great Jin Dynasty from the Bright Spirit Realm and returned to her previous life.
In her previous life, she had only lived for a short dozen years. It was only after she died that she realized that she was just a supporting character in the novel “The Phoenix Journey”.
Her short life was simply a joke.
She was clearly the legitimate daughter of the Dingyuan Marquis Household and should have been the apple of her parents’ eyes. However, the moment she was born, she was secretly swapped with someone else and grew up poor.
It was only when she was 14 years old that the Marquis Mansion found out the truth about the fake daughter’s swap and sent a housekeeper to Huaibei to fetch her back.
Back then, she was filled with longing for her family and traveled all the way to the capital. How could she know that there was no place for her in the Marquis Mansion?
Gu Yunrong, the fake daughter who had grown up in the Marquis Mansion on her behalf, had been pampered by the Gu family. She was the apple of the Gu family’s eye and the female lead of the novel, “The Phoenix Journey”.
As the female lead, not only was Gu Yunrong a lucky girl, she was also resourceful, self-respecting, and had a reputation in the capital. She attracted a group of young talents to fall in love with her. The male lead, Kang Wang, even had a crush on her. After several twists and turns, the two of them finally got together.
In contrast, Gu Yanfei grew up in the countryside. She was dull and ignorant. Other than being of the Gu family’s bloodline, she had nothing else. Her existence seemed to be only a contrast to the female lead’s extraordinariness.
The fleeting past flashed through Gu Yanfei’s mind…
In her previous life, she was a short-lived ghost. She was set up, framed, and trampled on… She was the stepping stone for Gu Yunrong to reach the peak of her life.
In the end, she ended up dead with a thousand arrows through her heart.
After her death, her soul floated in the world. She watched helplessly as the Gu family fell. She watched as Gu Yunrong helped Kang Wang win the struggle for imperial power. Kang Wang ascended to the throne, and Gu Yunrong was made empress.
As just a ghost, Gu Yanfei could only watch from the side and could not do anything…
Later, she finally reincarnated into the Bright Spirit Realm with the memories of this life.
The Bright Spirit Realm was completely different from the first world. It was a cultivation world filled with spiritual energy. There were also cultivators who relied on spiritual energy to cultivate. In that world, Gu Yanfei became a medical cultivator.
200 years passed in the blink of an eye. After much difficulty, she finally cultivated tto the Greatest Enlightenment realm. However, when she was trying to break through to the Nascent Soul realm, her mental demons acted up and she was struck back to her first life by the ninth bolt of lightning.
It had never occurred to her that she would ever be able to return to “this day” when she was 14 years old!
She still vividly remembered “this day”. How could she forget!!
At this moment, she had already left Huaibei and had yet to reach the capital. The housekeeper left her in Danyang City and told her to learn the rules first.
She had stayed in Danyang City for a full three months. During this period, the maidservant who served her was Juan Bi.
She clearly remembered that one afternoon, her carriage had fallen from a cliff thousands of feet high because of a landslide. Both the carriage and the horse had been destroyed. She was the only one in the carriage who had survived.
Back then, she had thought that this was just a sad accident, but she did not know that all of this was an elaborate scheme by the British Crown Prince, Fang Mingfeng, to take her life.
This was all because the person he liked was the fake Gu Yunrong, but because of his family’s interests, he had no choice but to get engaged to Gu Yanfei.
He could not resist his family, so he could only eliminate the pushover.
“Pushover.” Gu Yanfei pursed her lips and endured the discomfort in her body as she sat up. There was a violent surge of blood in her heart, as if a storm was brewing inside.
After she reincarnated into the Bright Spirit Realm, she had never been able to let go. Gradually, the unfinished wishes and regrets of this life became her mental demons.
Even though much of the past had faded and become irrelevant over the years, the “mental demon” remained in her heart.
It was probably because of this that she was unable to break through to the Nascent Soul realm…
It was probably because of this that Heaven’s Will brought her back to this life.
Since she was here, she might as well stay and make the best of it.
Gu Yanfei quickly adjusted her breathing and calmed herself down.
“Juan Bi!” she cried, as she quickly flipped her tiny body round so that she was lying flat on the woolen carpet.
She was greeted by the sight of Juan Bi’s round, rather silly face. It was as pale as paper, and her full lips had a faint grayish purple tint. A few strands of dark hair, stained with blood and dust, were scattered messily across her face.
Her breathing was extremely weak, and the movement between her nostrils was barely visible. Blood oozed from between her lips and ran down her chin and neck, as if she would stop breathing in the next moment.
Gu Yanfei placed three fingers firmly on Juan Bi’s wrist and focused on the weak and slow pulse under her fingers.
Not only had Juan Bi suffered external injuries, she also had multiple fractures in her body. Furthermore, her spleen was bleeding. She was practically one foot in the grave. Even if Hua Tuo was reborn, he would be helpless to save her.
In her previous life, Juan Bi had died.
...
She couldn’t save Juan Bi. She could only watch and sob as she took her last breath.
Tears would save no one.
Gu Yanfei pursed her lips and quickly tore a piece of paper from a book beside her. She bit her finger and forced out her blood essence. On the note, she drew a series of strange runes that looked like earthworms.
Then, she gently patted the rune on the acupoint on the top of Juan Bi’s head.
“Wake up, Juan Bi,” she said calmly.
In this narrow space, her voice was ethereal and holy, like the sound of nature.
As soon as she finished speaking, a bright orange flame suddenly ignited in the corner of the talisman paper written in blood and burned away in the blink of an eye.
Juan Bi’s closed eyelids fluttered. Her eyelashes trembled, and a low moan escaped her lips.