Chapter Two: The Beginning of the Script Is Rather Troubling

Song Ci gazed at the plump, ruddy old man before her, who looked for all the world like a living Buddha, and a suffocating frustration swelled in her chest.

This was her husband—youthful, fairer-skinned, healthier than she was. His complexion glowed with vitality, and he still had the energy to dally merrily with his concubine.

Damn the heavens.

So unfair.

The Song family was no grand household, merely poor scholars who tilled the land. Song Ci herself was a child bride, taken in by the Songs. She was three years older than Old Master Song Kun, and from her earliest years had played the roles of elder sister, mother, and wife.

She toiled in the Song household like a beast of burden, tending to Song Kun and his aged parents. Her life could hardly be called anything but arduous.

When Song Ci was fourteen, the Song elders, frail and ailing, insisted the two marry. Only when Song Ci was sixteen and Song Kun thirteen did they finally consummate the marriage. At seventeen, she bore her first son, Song Zhiyuan.

At this memory, Song Ci’s face flushed with heat—what on earth, they were both just children! Shaking her head, she forced the discomfort aside, reminding herself that this was a different era, not to be compared with modern times.

Upon Song Zhiyuan’s birth, the elderly Songs passed away with smiles on their lips. Song Ci, left behind, became both nursemaid and caretaker—tending her son, managing her reckless young husband, and shouldering the burdens of housework and farm labor. Because everything depended on her, she became strong-willed and sharp-tongued, and only thus managed to preserve what little wealth the family possessed.

Song Ci was farsighted; she knew to invest in her eldest son’s future, selling everything she could to send him to school, even amidst the chaos of war.

Fate smiled on Song Ci and her son. During those war-torn years, the founding emperor was but one of many rebel leaders, too consumed by the struggle to care for his wife and child. Thus, the empress dowager and her son wandered destitute, taken in by Song Ci’s family. Five years later, when the emperor unified the land and founded his dynasty, he brought his wife and son back to court, and the Song family's fortune was forever changed.

Song Zhiyuan, brilliant and virtuous, achieved highest honors in the imperial examinations at eighteen, earning the title of top scholar. The emperor and empress dowager held him in high esteem. Though the family was still of humble means, he was betrothed to Gu Xiangyi, the illustrious daughter of the Loyal and Brave Marquis. They married when he was twenty-one and now had a daughter and a son.

Over the years, Song Ci and her young husband Song Kun bore three sons together. Song Kun, meanwhile, took a concubine, with whom he sired a pair of twins. Thus, the next generation of the Song family consisted of four sons and a daughter; all but the youngest were married with children of their own.

One could say the Song family’s rise owed everything to Song Ci, the anchor that held them steady. It was thanks to her that the Songs now basked in prosperity.

And yet, Song Ci herself had worn her body out early. She was older and frailer than her peers, while Old Master Song, with nothing to worry about, remained plump and rosy-cheeked, spending his days playing with birds and his nights carousing with his concubine—living in pleasure, growing only younger at heart.

Song Ci sighed. She didn’t know if her body’s resilience was a blessing or a curse; she had worked herself to the bone for the Song family, brought them fortune, but enjoyed little of it before death claimed her.

All is fate—such a bitter, wretched fate.

Song Ci prided herself on her adaptability. Since she had transmigrated, she might as well see it as taking on a new role—so be it, she would play her part.

Still, this opening scene left a sour taste in her mouth.

To be saddled with the role of an aging, nearly spent noblewoman...

Alas.

“You—what’s with that look in your eyes? Have you no respect? How dare you look at me like that!” Old Master Song, feeling guilty under her gaze, blustered.

All he’d done was shake her a few times—not as if he’d broken her back.

Song Ci shut her eyes. “Get out.”

“You old crone, you dare order me out—”

“Leave, or I’ll end my life right now.” Song Ci’s patience had worn thin.