Chapter 1
The sun was shining brightly when my wedding day finally arrived.
What a pity.
I would have rather been anywhere else.
I took a deep breath and stepped into the palanquin, which had been adorned for the occasion with vivid red silk, intricate embroidery, and tassels. The extravagant decorations stood in stark contrast to the number of bearers accompanying me. The greater a family’s rank and wealth, the larger the procession that was expected to attend a wedding. Yet despite the family’s status, the procession before me was pitifully small.
This was never how I had imagined my wedding.
I had always pictured myself surrounded by splendor and extravagance.
That is, if the damned Shen Yaozu hadn’t broken off our engagement, I wouldn’t have found myself forced into this miserable situation in the first place.
But it was fine.
I would have my revenge eventually.
While I was busy plotting my future plans, the procession slowly began to move. The voices of people chatting and laughing in the streets reached my ears. A wedding procession was always an interesting sight. When I was a child, I used to stand among the crowds and watch them with excitement.
But now...
As I continued to wallow in self-pity, we gradually made our way farther and farther from the city.
In fact, we had already left it.
What exactly was going on?
Unfortunately, tradition dictated that I was not allowed to look outside through the palanquin window until we arrived. But the farther we traveled, the more this journey began to resemble a kidnapping rather than a wedding procession.
The family I was marrying into was a prestigious family of officials that had served the Emperor for several generations. The current head of the family was the Deputy Director of the Imperial Archives and Records Office.
And their residence was certainly not located in the middle of nowhere.
I should have known that this marriage proposal was too good to be true.
I was the daughter of a merchant. My family possessed considerable wealth, but for the sake of strengthening our political connections, I had been engaged to the son of the Shen family.
Although they were not a family of officials with generations of history behind them, their connections reached far and wide, and Shen Yaozu was preparing to take the official examinations.
After he broke off our engagement, naturally, my reputation suffered.
That was why I was so surprised when the far more prestigious Su family came to our household with the intention of arranging another engagement.
There was only one problem.
My future husband, Su Yanzhi, had been ill for quite some time. His family had decided that holding a wedding would drive away the negative energy surrounding him.
Of course, I knew what that really meant.
They were simply sending me there to serve as his caretaker.
After all, if they truly wanted to drive away negative energy, they would hardly have arranged such a pitifully small procession.
At the thought, I rolled my eyes.
Perhaps I would be better off worrying about where exactly we were going.
Just as I was beginning to panic again, the palanquin stopped.
In the middle of nowhere, if I had to put it that way.
A-Xiang, my maid, came to help me down from the palanquin, carefully making sure that my feet landed on the red carpet that had been laid out beneath me.
As I looked around, it became even more obvious that we were truly in the middle of nowhere.
Trees surrounded us on every side. Before me stood an open gate decorated for the occasion, but even from here I could tell that the building beyond it was extremely old and in considerably worse condition than my family’s residence.
The servants were waiting outside to welcome me, but my future husband was nowhere to be seen...Most likely, his illness had left him too weak to even get out of bed.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t see much more through the red bridal veil covering my face.
Judging by the shocked expression on A-Xiang’s face, I was beginning to think that perhaps it was better that way.
As an older female servant approached me, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this marriage would last very long.
Somehow, I had a feeling it wouldn’t.
