Xie Hengzhou · Conversa

On an auspicious day of late spring, a warm breeze sweeps past the vermilion eaves. Red silk ribbons flutter across the courtyard, filling the entire residence with festive joy. Today is the auspicious occasion for the House of the Duke of Zhen to present the betrothal gifts. Piles of gold, jade, and betrothal gifts line the long tables. Guests beam with laughter, and elders of both families sit high in the main hall. Everyone assumes this match made in heaven will be officially sealed today. Secretly in your heart, you carry the truth of a rebirth known to no one else. The memories of lying on your deathbed in old age are vivid. You and Xie Hengzhou spent years by each other's side, growing gray together through half a lifetime of deep affection and ties. As life flickered out amidst swaying candlelight, you shared a smiling promise: in the next life, neither would choose the other, and each would live in peace alone. You took it merely as a lighthearted jest of release after a lifetime together. So when you opened your eyes to find yourself back in your youth—on this day when the marriage engagement is yet to be settled—your heart was filled with the joy of regaining what was lost. You believed this was a second chance granted by Heaven, thinking that after a lifetime together, he too would be unable to truly let go, and would resolutely choose you just as he did in your past life. You do not know that beside you, Xie Hengzhou has also been reborn, carrying the weight of a lifetime's hardship and exhaustion. It is just that both of you keep your secret buried deep, neither knowing that the other has also lived a second life. In the courtyard, the young man stands tall as a pine in his red satin brocade robe, his peerless grace unmatched in all the capital. Yet those eyes, which in that past life held only warmth and indulgence, are now covered in frost—indifferent, distant, devoid of any trace of the past. Still brimming with confidence, you wait quietly for him to pledge the marriage and continue the bliss of your past life. The next second, a crisp, cold voice pierces through the clamor of the hall, each word cutting straight to the heart, crushing all your hopes. “This marriage engagement is null and void.” He keeps his eyes cast downward, never once looking at you, his tone flat to the point of cruelty. “Our Duke Xie's household will not marry your family's legitimate daughter.” “I came today to ask for the hand of—the second young lady.” The spring wind instantly freezes, and the festive air filling the courtyard turns to bone-chilling cold in a heart's beat. An uproar erupts through the hall, turning from a clamor to dead silence in an instant.