When her eyelids fluttered open, the first thing that struck her was how cold it was. She instinctively pulled her blanket further up so that it wrapped snugly round her shoulders, before the shivers finally made her register that something wasn't quite right.

Was it cold in the afterlife? And were there blankets?

Zi-ning immediately sat up, surveying her surroundings warily. The last things she remembered before waking up here were the stench of blood from the innocents and those mocking looks in the eyes of Meiyan and Ru-an. Even now she could still feel the anger coursing through her veins, and her hands clenched into tight fists, grabbing at the soft fabric of her blanket.

There was something oddly familiar about the room she was now in, from the sandalwood furnishings to the mild scent of mulberry in the air. Before she could figure things out, the door creaked open and an overexcited shriek followed.

"Miss Zi-ning! You're finally awake!" A young girl dressed in servant robes came rushing into the room, quickly setting down a tray on the table before dashing to her side. "We were so worried about you, falling into the pond in this terrible weather. The physician said that you had hypothermia and might never wake if your fever doesn't subside. Thank the heavens that you're alright!"

"Shujin?" Zi-ning blinked, not sure whether or not to believe her eyes. This must surely be heaven because Shujin, one of her closest personal maidservants, had died two years back after having been caught having relations with Minister Huang's second son, a promiscuous chap famous for his licentious nature. Even though he eventually agreed to take her into his household, the girl had resisted vehemently, choosing instead to throw herself into a well to prove her innocence. On hindsight, perhaps Shujin's death had been engineered by Meiyan and her vicious mother too, to remove her loyal servants from her side.

"Miss? Are you feeling alright?" Shujin placed one hand over Zi-ning's forehead, frowning when she noticed how out of sorts her young mistress seemed to be. "You're still running a slight temperature, but it seems to have gone down. I'll go get the physician." She turned to leave, but Zi-ning immediately reached out and grabbed on go her wrist.

"No, wait," Zi-ning called out, though her voice sounded like a hoarse whisper. To her alarm, Shujin's skin felt warm to her touch, and she took hold if the girl's other hand with her own, just to be sure. Frowning, she asked, "What year is this? What happened to me?"

"What year?" Shujin looked confused. "It's the seventeenth year of King Shunde's reign of course. Don't you remember what happened? You accidentally slipped and fell into the pond two days ago and when they got you out you were unconscious and the tips of your fingers and toes had already started turning blue." Just then, the door opened and another servant girl walked in, carrying a basin of warm water and a towel. "Hana, something's wrong with Miss Zi-ning, she can't remember what's happened," Shujin said anxiously.

"Miss, you're awake?" the newcomer exclaimed, a look of relief appearing across her face.

"Hana!" Shujin flung her arms around the bewildered girl, tears suddenly streaming down her cheeks. Hana, her other personal maidservant, had been with her ever since she was a child, even longer than Shujin had been, and she had always treated the older girl like her own sister. Hana's ending hadn't been much better than Shujin's, having been banished from the Han manor after being caught red-handed with some of the old madam's jewellery. Zi-ning hadn't believed that Hana would have done such a thing, but the evidence spoke otherwise, and the last she heard was that Hana had been sold to a brothel in another county, where she would live out the rest of her days being humiliated and abused.

But all that had happened in a previous life and none of those events had taken place yet. It was only the seventeenth year of King Shunde's reign, which meant that it was five years before the fateful moment when she had been marched to her death.

She had been given a second chance.

Letting go of Hana, Zi-ning picked herself off the bed and rushed towards her mirror. The reflection that stared back at her was one that she could hardly recognise. She raised her right hand to her cheek, tracing her jawline from the base of her ear down to her chin. There was no sign of any of those ugly cuts and bruises lining her skin, her complexion still porcelain fair like it used to be. She quickly lifted up her sleeve, but that wretched mark of a flame was nowhere to be seen.

It can't be...

It seemed too incredulous to be true, yet here she was looking at a reflection of her sixteen-year-old self, at a time when all of those harrowing events had yet to occur. But the girl in the mirror was no longer that same, naïve child who had placed her trust so willingly into the hands of wolves. At the recollection of what she had been through, Zi-ning's gaze hardened, turning into one that was frigid and cold.

An hour later, Zi-ning's room became a lot more crowded than it had been, with the physician just finishing with taking her pulse and the maidservants rushing in and out making sure things were in order.

"Doctor Song, how is my daughter?" Lady Min asked, wringing her handkerchief anxiously. Dressed in silk brocade in a shade of deep maroon, the Minister for Agriculture's second wife was standing by Zi-ning's bedside, having rushed here at the earliest instance the moment she got wind that the girl had awoken.

"The young miss is still suffering from a cold and running a slight temperature, but it should get better in a week or so with enough bedrest and regular medication," the physician replied, picking up the brush to pen down a prescription. "It's lucky she managed to survive that fall, with the temperatures falling below zero this week."

Zi-ning still remembered this incident from her previous life—it had been early winter and she had been invited by Meiyan to the manor gardens for a stroll to see the first snowfall, but while she was waiting at the pavilion by the pond for her sister to arrive, she had somehow slipped and fallen into the freezing water. By the time they pulled her out, her life was barely hanging by a thread and it was a miracle that she had even survived. Now that she thought about it, she thought she had caught a brief glimpse of Liren's face by the pond when she was submerged underwater, but she had been too terrified then to register anything. Liren was Meiyan's personal maidservant and closest confidant, so if Liren had been responsible for her fall then it wasn't difficult to figure out who was behind it all.

She thought she saw a momentary flicker of disappointment appear in Lady Min's eyes, one that was immediately replaced by a look of hypocritical relief.

"Thank goodness," her stepmother exclaimed, placing one hand gently over Zi-ning's wrist. "We were so worried."

Zi-ning slipped her hand out of Lady Min's grasp and turned her body the other way so she was now facing the wall, ignoring the slight stiffening in the woman's expression when she did so. Since she was well aware of her stepmother's false pretences, there was no need to keep up with this tiresome act.

"She must be tired," Lady Min said to no one in particular, smiling awkwardly. Turning to Hana, she said, "Take the prescription and brew the medicine quickly. The sooner your young mistress takes her medicine the sooner she'll recover."

Such a hypocrite, Zi-ning thought to herself, pretending to be concerned about her when deep down she was actually disappointed with the outcome.

"How is Zi-ning? I rushed over the moment I got news. Is she alright?" another voice joined the fray, one that immediately triggered a coughing fit in Zi-ning.

"Is it contagious?" another high-pitched voice called out, sounding more worried for herself than for Zi-ning.

"The doctor just left. He said that it's just a cold, nothing to worry about. The maids have gone to brew the medicine," Lady Min explained.

Zi-ning felt someone patting her back to soothe her coughs. It made her skin crawl. She didn't need to turn around to know who had just entered—Meiyan, her conniving older sister, and Meisi, the youngest of the sisters and daughter of her father's second concubine, Lady Wan.

Since her mother's passing many years back, Zi-ning's father—the Minister for Agriculture, Han Hao—had elevated the status of his first concubine, Lady Min, to that of his official wife. Lady Min had a daughter, Meiyan, and a son, Yongjin, who was only a three-year-old toddler at this point. Besides her, the minister still had three other concubines, of which only Lady Wan, his second concubine, had a child of her own—Meisi. As such, Lady Wan's standing in the household was second only to Lady Min herself, and Meisi had been brought up to be a spoilt and self-centred brat with a fiery temper much like her mother's.

"Zi-ning, are you feeling alright?" Meiyan asked, her hand still patting Zi-ning's back to ease her cough. "Why don't you sit up and drink some water before going back to sleep?"

It was taking a great deal out of Zi-ning not to rip that utterly fake mask of concern off her sister's face, but she managed to hold it in anyhow. Taking a deep breath, she turned back around and sat up, revealing her pallid countenance to the newcomers.

A certain coldness flashed in her eyes, threatening to slice through Meiyan like a knife. But in the blink of an eye it was gone, like it had never been there before.

If her sister noticed it, she said nothing. Instead, she smiled and handed a cup of water to Zi-ning, saying, "Thank goodness you're alright. The gods must have answered my prayers after all."

"Meiyan went to the Ryoko Temple two days ago to pray for your recovery," Lady Min said. "The gods must have felt her sincerity."

Zi-ning felt like laughing as she watched mother and daughter continue their little charade. This was exactly what they had done in her previous life, except back then she had been genuinely touched by their care and concern. When she had heard that Meiyan spent an entire two days kneeling in front of the temple altar to pray for her recovery, she had been close to tears, thinking that Meiyan treated her even better than her own brother. After that, she never doubted or questioned anything that Lady Min or Meiyan said, believing that everything they did was for her best interests. Now as she watched a replay of what had happened, she couldn't stop beating herself up for her own stupidity.

"I'm tired," she said abruptly, turning back round to face away from them and pulling her blanket over her shoulders.

"You're just going back to sleep? But we just got here!" Meisi burst out indignantly.

"I just came back from the gates of hell. Do you expect me to entertain you with tea and idle chatter?" Zi-ning replied blandly.

"Whatever are you talking about?" Her stepmother coughed awkwardly, exchanging wary glances with her daughter. "Zi-ning must be tired, so let her rest." She patted Zi-ning gently on the shoulder. "Go to sleep and I'll have the maids wake you when your medicine is ready." Gesturing to the other girls, she led everyone out of the room, not forgetting to leave a couple of instructions for the servants before she stepped out. That was how Lady Min always was—ever the caring and accommodating motherly figure in the household—so much so that no one ever suspected her of those abominable deeds she did in the background.

Once upon a time she had believed every word that woman said, hook, line and sinker, but this time she wouldn't be that gullible.

#

"What's wrong with her?" Meiyan frowned, folding her arms in contempt as she flounced down onto an empty chair in her mother's room. "Did you see that look in her eyes? And what she said to Meisi? Did she knock her head during her fall or something?"

Now that they were behind closed doors, there was no longer a need to keep those masks on. It was tiring having to pretend to like Han Zi-ning in front of everyone else.

"Perhaps," Lady Min replied drily, sitting down beside her daughter. She reached for the teapot and poured herself a cup, taking a slow sip as she thought back on the recent turn of events. "It's a pity they managed to rescue her in time." Else right now she would be busy planning a funeral—something that she would have been most glad to do. "Are you sure she didn't see anything by the pond?"

Meiyan shook her head. "I'm positive. If she had seen Liren she would have said something by now. The stupid wench was just too lucky. If she had been fished out two minutes later she would have died." How could anyone have survived falling into the water in this weather?

Her mother nodded. "No matter. Even if we can't get rid of her now, there'll always be other ways." She sighed, closing her eyes and rubbing her sore temples. The girl was like a thorn by her side, but since she had already put up with this for so many years, what was another couple more? In any case, she had already done enough to ensure that Han Zi-ning was just another invisible person in this household, someone who would never be able to outshine her own precious daughter Meiyan.

Throughout these years, she had carefully groomed Zi-ning into becoming the good-for-nothing spoilt brat that she was, one that was coarse and unrefined despite all the riches and jewels that adorned her. In contrast, Meiyan appeared like an angel from the heavens, beautiful and elegant, much like everything a well brought up lady should be. In everyone else's eyes, it seemed as though Lady Min treated Zi-ning better than her own daughter, always giving her the finest of silks and the most expensive of accessories, but only she knew the true motive behind doing all that.

Meiyan pouted, tugging on her mother's sleeve. "Can't we just find an excuse to send her away? I don't want to keep having to bring her along when I go out. It's such a disgrace to be standing beside her."

"The old madam would never allow it, at least not now."

The old hag—Minister Han's mother—was another eyesore that Lady Min wished she didn't have to see every day, but there was no escaping it. The minister was a filial son, and as a result the old madam was treated with the utmost respect by everyone in the Han household. Moreover, the old madam was related by blood to the incumbent Chief Minister, Minister Sun—her oldest sister happened to be Minister Sun's mother—which elevated her status even further. While Han Hao himself had long been disappointed by his crass and ill-mannered daughter and seldom spoke of Zi-ning, she was still the apple of the old madam's eye. A lot of that had to do with the old lady's preference for her son's first wife, who had been the eldest daughter of the scholarly Yang household, as compared to her—merely the third daughter to a concubine in the Min household. Although some of Lady Min's brothers now held positions in the imperial court, they were not significant ones. The Min household would always be viewed as a merchant's household, and merchants were looked down upon by the nobility. Had it not been for the fact that she had given birth to Yongjin, perhaps the old hag might never have agreed to elevate her position in the household.

"Grandmother's always so biased. What's so good about Han Zi-ning?"

Lady Min sighed. She could understand her daughter's frustrations. Her Meiyan was the prettier one, the one who was talented in music, dance, calligraphy and drawing, the one who was praised and complimented by everyone for her graceful manners, yet their grandmother still preferred Zi-ning.

She placed a comforting hand over her daughter's, patting it gently. "You are better than her in every single way. Just ignore your grandmother. She's a traditionalist who values birthright over anything else and that's why she treats Zi-ning and Yongxing better than the rest of you. Regardless, their mother is dead, so those offspring of hers will end up nowhere, even with the old madam's support." She had suffered so many years in the shadow of Yang Yihua, but she wasn't about to let her children live in the shadows of that woman's progeny.