The rain didn't wash the blood away. It only made it slicker, turning the marble floor of the Jiang family's private mountain villa into a skating rink of crimson and shattered glass.
Jiang Lianxue, thirty-one years old, heiress to the colossal Jiang business empire, lay sprawled near the shattered remnants of a Ming dynasty vase. Her breath hitched in her throat, a wet, rattling sound that tasted of copper. Her vision was blurring at the edges, a vignette of darkness encroaching on the sterile white lights of the living room.
Her left arm hung uselessly at her side, dislocated at the shoulder. A nasty gash ran down her thigh, soaking her silk evening gown—a gown she had put on for an anniversary dinner.
Happy anniversary, Lianxue, she thought, the irony burning hotter than the wound in her leg.
Across the room, standing by the fireplace with a glass of her father's finest scotch in hand, was the man she had loved for thirteen years.
Lu Yichen.
He looked impeccable. His suit was unrumpled, his hair perfectly styled, his face wearing that gentle, scholarly expression that had fooled the entire business world. He looked like a grieving saint, even as he watched four men in tactical gear surround his fiancée.
"You're surprisingly durable, Xue'er," Lu Yichen said, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. His voice was soft, carrying that familiar warmth that used to make her heart flutter. Now, it just made her want to vomit. "I expected you to faint after the first slap. But look at you… breaking Zhang's nose like that. Where did you learn to throw a punch?"
Lianxue spat a mouthful of blood onto the pristine floor. She forced her trembling legs to move, pushing herself up until she was leaning against the wall. Her chest heaved.
"Yichen," she rasped, her voice a broken shard of its former elegance. "Why?"
It was the cliché question. The question of every fool who died betrayed. But her mind was reeling, struggling to align the reality of this slaughter with the man who had brought her breakfast in bed this morning.
Lu Yichen sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. He took a sip of the scotch. "Why? Because the Jiang Group is worth forty billion, Lianxue. Because your father, that stubborn old fossil, refused to let me on the board. He kept saying I 'lacked the temperament.' Can you believe that?"
He chuckled darkly and walked closer, stopping just out of reach of her good arm. He looked down at her with pity—no, with contempt.
"And you… you were just so boring, Xue'er. The perfect wife. The perfect daughter. So trusting. So naive. It was suffocating pretending to love you."
Lianxue's eyes narrowed. The pain in her shoulder was blinding, screaming at her to stay down, but a colder, older instinct was waking up in the back of her brain. A dormant beast she had starved for thirteen years.
"You want the money?" she hissed. "Take it. Sign the transfer papers. Just… let my father and Xiao Fan go."
The room went silent. The mercenaries surrounding her shifted their weight, exchanging amused glances.
Lu Yichen stared at her for a long moment, then threw his head back and laughed. It wasn't a maniacal villain laugh; it was a genuine, amused chortle, as if she had told a delightful joke at a cocktail party.
"Oh, Xue'er," he wiped a tear from his eye. "You really don't get it, do you? You think this is a negotiation?"
He squatted down, bringing his face level with hers. The scent of his expensive cologne mixed with the metallic stench of blood.
"Your father isn't coming to save you. Neither is your little brother."
Lianxue froze. "What did you do?"
"Your father had a car accident an hour ago," Lu Yichen said casually, checking his Patek Philippe watch. "Brakes failed on the winding road down from the estate. At his age, and at that speed… well, there wasn't much left to identify."
A low, guttural sound escaped Lianxue's throat. Not a scream. Something animalistic.
"And Xiao Fan?" Yichen continued, enjoying the show. "Poor kid. Coming home from university for the weekend. He ran into some… complications. A mugging gone wrong in the city center. Tragically, he was stabbed seventeen times. The police are already calling it a random act of gang violence."
Seventeen times.
The world tilted. The roar of the rain outside faded into a high-pitched ringing in her ears.
Her father. Her stern, loving father who built an empire to keep her safe.
Her brother. Xiao Fan. Nineteen years old. A boy who loved piano and feared spiders. Stabbed seventeen times.
"You killed them," she whispered. The words felt foreign, heavy like lead.
"I liquidated assets," Yichen corrected, standing up and brushing an invisible speck of dust from his lapel. "And now, I'm liquidating the final obstacle. Once you're gone, I am the sole executor of the estate. The grieving fiancé who lost everyone in one tragic night. The public will eat it up."
He gestured to the mercenaries. "Finish it. Make it look like a break-in."
The nearest man, a brute with a scar running through his eyebrow, stepped forward, raising a tactical baton. He grinned, revealing yellow teeth. "Sorry, princess. This might sting."
He swung.
In that split second, time dilated.
Jiang Lianxue saw the arc of the baton. She saw the muscle twitch in the man's forearm. And the part of her that she had buried deep—the part of her that belonged to the Xue Clan, the maternal family she had forsaken to live a normal life—screamed.
Move.
It wasn't a conscious thought. It was muscle memory etched into her bones from age five to eighteen.
Lianxue dropped.
The baton smashed into the plaster wall where her head had been a millisecond before.
Ignoring the agony in her dislocated shoulder, Lianxue pivoted on her good leg, driving the heel of her stiletto into the attacker's kneecap.
CRACK.
The sound was sickeningly wet. The mercenary howled, his leg buckling backward at an impossible angle. He collapsed, dropping the baton.
Lianxue didn't hesitate. She didn't think. She lunged, her good hand snatching the falling baton out of the air.
She spun, the momentum of her dress flaring like a bloody flower, and swung the steel rod with every ounce of hatred in her body.
THWACK.
It connected with the mercenary's throat. Crushed windpipe. He went down, gurgling, clutching his neck as pink froth bubbled from his lips.
The room froze.
Lu Yichen dropped his glass. It shattered, scotch pooling on the floor. He stared at her, eyes wide, the arrogance wiped clean off his face.
"What the fuck?" he breathed.
Lianxue stood over the dying man, her chest heaving, her hair plastered to her face with sweat and blood. She held the baton in a reverse grip, her posture shifting. No longer the socialite. No longer the victim.
She stood like a predator.
"Kill her!" Lu Yichen shrieked, scrambling backward behind the sofa. "Shoot her, you idiots!"
The remaining three mercenaries snapped out of their shock. They raised their suppressed pistols.
Lianxue moved.
She kicked the coffee table, flipping the heavy oak slab onto its side just as the phut-phut-phut of silenced gunshots erupted. Wood splintered as bullets chewed into the makeshift barricade.
She was fast. But she was thirty-one. She hadn't trained in thirteen years. She had spent her days arranging flowers and attending board meetings, not dodging bullets and breaking necks. Her breath was short. Her muscles burned with lactic acid.
I'm slow, she realized with a pang of terror. I'm so slow.
If she were eighteen… if she were the Shadow Orchid of the Xue family… these men would already be dead.
She grabbed a heavy crystal ashtray from the floor and hurled it blindly over the table.
"Fuck!" One of the men cursed as the crystal clipped his ear.
Lianxue scrambled low, sliding across the slick floor toward the kitchen entrance. She needed a knife. She needed cover.
A bullet caught her in the calf.
"Ah!"
She tumbled, crashing into the kitchen island. The pain was white-hot, searing through her nervous system. She dragged herself behind the granite counter, leaving a thick smear of red in her wake.
"Flush her out!" Yichen's voice was shaking now. "Don't get close! Just shoot her through the counter!"
Bullets hammered the granite, chips of stone flying like shrapnel. Lianxue curled into a ball, clutching her bleeding leg. Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She was going to die.
She knew it. The realization wasn't panic; it was a cold, heavy stone in her gut. She had wasted her life. She had hidden her strength, rejected her heritage, and played the role of the gentle, civilized woman. And for what? To be butchered like cattle by a man who never loved her.
To let her father die. To let Xiao Fan die screaming alone in an alley.
"Come out, Lianxue!" Yichen taunted, though his voice wavered from the safety of the hallway. "Stop dragging this out! It's pathetic!"
Lianxue looked at her reflection in the stainless steel oven door opposite her.
A bloody mess. A broken woman.
No, she thought. Not just a woman.
She reached into her dress, her fingers brushing the hidden pocket she had sewn in years ago—a habit she couldn't break. A tiny, ceramic blade. The size of a thumb.
She gripped it.
"Yichen," she called out. Her voice was calm. Eerily calm.
The gunfire stopped.
"Come say goodbye to me," she said. "If you're man enough."
Silence stretched. Then, the sound of footsteps.
"Cover me," Yichen muttered to his men.
He stepped into the kitchen entrance, flanked by two mercenaries. He held a gun now, his hand trembling slightly. He looked at the trail of blood leading behind the island.
"It didn't have to be this messy, Xue'er," he said, regaining some of his composure. "You always were stubborn."
Lianxue closed her eyes. She listened.
Heartbeat. Breath. Step. Step.
She calculated the distance. Three meters. Two shooters. One coward.
She had one move. One burst of energy left before blood loss took her.
"Do you know," Lianxue said softly, "who my mother was?"
Yichen frowned. "What? She was some dead socialite. What does that matter?"
"She was Xue Meilin," Lianxue whispered.
She surged.
It was a suicide run. She knew it.
She exploded from behind the island, not moving away, but toward them.
The mercenary on the left fired. The bullet punched through her stomach.
Lianxue didn't stop. She didn't even flinch. She used the impact to twist her body, throwing the ceramic blade with a flick of her wrist.
It wasn't aimed at the gunmen.
It was aimed at Yichen.
The tiny white blade whizzed through the air. Yichen flinched, raising his hand.
Thwip.
The blade buried itself in his right eye.
"AAAAAAHHH!"
Yichen dropped the gun, clutching his face, screaming a sound that tore through the villa. He fell to his knees, thrashing.
Lianxue smiled. Blood coated her teeth.
The second mercenary fired.
Bang.
Her chest exploded.
The force threw her backward. She hit the floor hard, her head bouncing off the tiles. The ceiling spun—a kaleidoscope of white lights and shadows.
"Boss! Boss!" The mercenaries were panicking, rushing to Yichen, who was wailing, blood streaming through his fingers.
"My eye! My fucking eye! Kill her! Make sure she's dead!"
Lianxue couldn't feel her legs anymore. The cold was spreading, creeping up from her fingertips, numbing the agony. It was a gentle, suffocating embrace.
She stared up at the ceiling.
I failed.
The thought was bitter bile.
Father is dead. Xiao Fan is dead. And I only took an eye.
The sounds of the room began to fade. Yichen's screams sounded like they were coming from underwater.
I had the power, she thought, her mind drifting into the grey fog. I had the training. The Xue family techniques. The killer instinct. I buried it to be a good wife. To be normal.
Normalcy was a lie. Power was the only truth. Violence was the only currency that mattered in the end.
A shadow fell over her. One of the mercenaries stood above her, raising his gun for the coup de grâce.
Lianxue didn't blink. She stared into the black bore of the silencer.
If there is a hell, she vowed, her internal voice screaming even as her lips remained still, I will crawl out of it. I will tear my way back.
Lu Yichen. I will skin you alive. I will make you eat your own lies. I will burn this world to ash if that's what it takes to save them.
The mercenary squeezed the trigger.
Bang.
Darkness.
Absolute, crushing void.
There was no tunnel of light. No pearly gates. Just the sensation of falling. Falling through ice. Falling through time. The hatred in her soul was a burning coal, the only thing keeping her warm in the infinite abyss.
I will return.
I will kill you.
I will kill you.
I will—
"Lianxue? Lianxue!"
The voice was loud. Annoying.
Warmth hit her face. Sunlight?
Jiang Lianxue gasped, her eyes flying open.
She sat up violently, her hand instinctively flying to her chest, expecting to feel the ragged hole where the bullet had entered. Expecting the slick wetness of her own blood.
There was nothing.
Only soft cotton.
"Whoa! Easy there, Sleeping Beauty!"
Lianxue blinked, her vision swimming. The air smelled… different. It didn't smell of blood and gunpowder. It smelled of… vanilla lattes and cheap air freshener?
She looked around frantically.
She wasn't in the villa. She wasn't dead.
She was in a car. A bright red convertible, top down, cruising along a coastal highway. The wind whipped her hair—her long, black hair. She had cut it short when she turned twenty-five. Why was it long?
She looked at her hands. They were smooth. Unscarred. No wedding ring tan line.
She looked to her left.
Driving the car was a girl with bright pink streaks in her hair, wearing oversized sunglasses and chewing gum loudly.
"Suya?" Lianxue croaked.
Her cousin. Her maternal cousin, Xue Suya.
Suya laughed, popping a bubble. "You okay, cuz? You were having a nightmare or something? You were twitching like a fish."
Lianxue stared at her. Suya… Suya had died five years ago. A car bomb in Macau.
"Suya… you're… alive?"
Suya rolled her eyes behind her shades. "Uh, yeah? Unless this coffee is distinctively otherworldly. Did you study too hard for entrance exams? I told you, B University is already accepting you, you didn't need to stress."
B University? Entrance exams?
Lianxue's heart hammered against her ribs, faster than it had when she was dodging bullets. She looked into the side mirror of the car.
The face staring back was hers. But it was younger. So much younger. The baby fat was still clinging to her cheeks. Her eyes were clear, unburdened by a decade of deception.
She looked down at the phone resting in the cup holder. It was an old model. Ancient.
She grabbed it, her fingers trembling uncontrollably. She pressed the home button.
September 12, 2025.
Thirteen years.
She had gone back thirteen years.
"Hey, earth to Lianxue?" Suya poked her arm. "We're almost at the campus. Is Lu Yichen meeting us there? I still don't get what you see in that guy. He's so… vanilla."
The name hit her like a physical blow.
Lu Yichen.
Lianxue's grip on the phone tightened until the screen protector cracked.
The image of him standing over her, drinking scotch while her family's blood dried on the floor, flashed before her eyes. The sensation of the bullet tearing through her chest. The cold knowledge that her father and brother were dead.
But they weren't dead. Not yet.
Xiao Fan was… he was six years old. He was just a baby.
Her father was alive. Healthy.
The Xue family was still standing.
And she… she was the heiress again. But this time, she wasn't the naive girl who wanted to escape her family's shadow.
A low, trembling laugh escaped her lips.
Suya glanced at her, concerned. "Lianxue? You okay? You're freaking me out."
Lianxue lowered the phone. She turned to look at the ocean flashing by, the endless blue horizon.
Slowly, the trembling stopped. Her eyes, which had been wide with shock, narrowed. The warmth of the eighteen-year-old girl vanished, replaced by a glacial, ancient coldness.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror again. The innocent doe eyes were gone. In their place was the gaze of a ghost who had crawled out of hell.
"I'm fine, Suya," Lianxue said. Her voice was steady. Terrifyingly steady. "I'm just… waking up."
"Okay…" Suya muttered, turning back to the road. "Well, get ready. College life starts today!"
Lianxue smirked. It wasn't a happy smile. It was the sharp, dangerous curve of a blade being unsheathed.
"Yes," she whispered to the wind. "It starts today."
Lu Yichen. Enjoy your breath while you can. Because I'm coming for you.
And this time, I won't miss.
[End of Prologue]