Chapter 31#

[Third Life]#

I think the most treacherous saying in this world is: “A man about to die speaks from the heart.”

The saying itself isn’t really the problem — but when you’ve spoken from the heart and died, and then the next second you open your eyes to find yourself reborn… and on top of that, the person you bared your soul to might very well be reborn too?

That’s just spectacularly awkward.

Unlike my last life, when I was dumb enough to think I was a fresh transmigrator, this time around — reborn once again into the body of the seven-year-old Second Young Master of the Prime Minister’s household — I recovered all my memories from both previous lives.

Comparing the two, I became certain that Chu Ruiyuan had also been reborn in his last life, probably during that high fever he had right after our first meeting.

And it wasn’t just Chu Ruiyuan, either. My sister-in-law, Fang Xueying, and even Dugu Yan all showed signs of having been reborn.

In the last life, those four had all gotten tangled up in grudges from the life before — while I blissfully thought everything was perfectly calm.

Of course, how they fought amongst themselves isn’t the point.

The point is: after Chu Ruiyuan heard my so-called “heartfelt confession” — “I only like you for your face” — did he want to strangle me or not?

I’ll flatter myself a little here:

I think Chu Ruiyuan probably never fully understood what happened at the end of our first life. As a result, in the second life he developed genuinely deep feelings for me. Right up until his mother had me eliminated “for the good of the nation,” he never married or had children — quite remarkable, for an emperor.

If it hadn’t been for that “Fate-Severing” thing in the last life, I might have actually started to like him. Maybe even love him.

But now?

If he gets reborn again and doesn’t fly into a rage and try to destroy me, I’ll consider it proof of true love.

After transmigrating back, I spent the first three days unable to eat or sleep properly, turning over every possible strategy in my head. I finally decided that until I became the Crown Prince’s study companion and met him again, I would follow the same spoiled-young-master routine as in my first two lives.

If he’d been reborn too, I’d pretend I hadn’t been.

He’d lived through two entire reigns as emperor — god knows how old his soul actually was. Surely he wouldn’t bother tormenting a “child.”

If he hadn’t been reborn, I’d do everything I could to change the fate I’d suffered in the first life.

Nothing else aside — there was absolutely no way I was taking him out of the palace to “clear his head” when his father started favoring his younger brother. Not a chance.

There was also my sister-in-law’s death in difficult childbirth.

In the last life, Chu Ruiyuan had sent the divine physician Jiang to the Prime Minister’s household and saved her life. That I genuinely had to thank him for.

Besides those two things, there was also my courtesy name.

No matter what, I could not let my father give me the name “Zihou” again.

I was half-convinced that dying before thirty in both my previous lives had something to do with carrying a name as weighty as “Liu Zihou.” That name had simply cursed me.

With my mind made up, I spent the next three years eating well, sleeping well, and playing as carelessly as I had before — right up until my brother passed the imperial examinations as third-place scholar, and the Emperor once again appointed me as the Crown Prince’s study companion.

In those three years, I did confirm one thing: my sister-in-law had not been reborn in this life.

If she had, my brother would surely have placed first in the exams again, and I’d have had to sit through another round of her “education” — or rather, brainwashing.

In the last life, she had guarded against Chu Ruiyuan more vigilantly than against a flooding river.

A lot of good it did. I ended up tangled up with the dynasty’s CEO — impressive in every sense of the word — all over again.

She must have found me deeply disappointing. She probably spent a good deal of time thinking: these two are from the same family, so how can their intelligence be so vastly different?

But I didn’t have much energy to dwell on the last life anymore.

Because the Crown Prince, after meeting me just once, had come down with a high fever again.

Just like in the last life, I was summoned by the Empress — with whom I shared a blood debt — and made to kneel in the palace for a full hour.

They say enemies meeting face-to-face makes the blood run hot, but I actually felt quite calm.

Partly because I had kept an emperor unmarried and childless across an entire reign, faked my death to escape, and then came back to cause more trouble — a mother wanting to rid the court of me was really not so hard to understand.

And partly because she was currently the wife of the most powerful man in the dynasty, and would one day be his mother. Given that gap in status, calm was about all I had going for me.

Still, after waiting at home for three days — on the fourth day, when the Crown Prince had recovered and I was due back at the palace for lessons — I couldn’t help feeling a little nervous.

Playing the part of a wide-eyed, know-nothing child came naturally to me by now. But this was someone I had deceived across two entire lifetimes, someone I had ultimately revealed everything to at the end. I was just a little afraid he might see through me.

When we met, I decided he probably hadn’t.

But something about him still felt off.

From the moment I’d finished bowing, he had been looking at me with a smile — warm, genial, the kind of smile you’d see on the face of a fast-food restaurant mascot — and it genuinely gave me the creeps. I nearly asked whether, instead of being reborn, he’d simply been burned senseless by his fever.

“Jun’an, the Grand Tutor is already waiting for us. Come with me.” Chu Ruiyuan — reborn or brain-damaged, it was hard to say — took my hand with practiced ease and led me to the lecture hall.

He had my desk moved right next to his and sat me down beside him, then sent a eunuch to instruct the imperial kitchens to prepare refreshments for me.

I had no idea what he was playing at. All I could do was sit there, doing my best impression of a nervous, well-behaved child listening to the Grand Tutor’s lesson.

But he kept turning to look at me, wearing that warm, sunlit smile.

It was strangely familiar — the kind of smile I used to see on my grandparents’ faces in my modern life when I brought home a perfect score on an exam.

I must have eaten something wrong at breakfast to be having thoughts like this.

When the lesson finally ended and I was about to make my excuses and hurry home, Chu Ruiyuan said he had no one to keep him company and was feeling lonely, and asked me to stay a while longer.

So I stayed, and we played with a spinning top together.

Yes. Two men whose combined soul-ages surely exceeded a hundred years — playing with a spinning top.

We hadn’t even played with one in our first life together!

He seemed to genuinely enjoy it, and only let me leave as the sun was setting. I was starting to seriously wonder if the fever had damaged something upstairs.

The future CEO of an entire dynasty with a damaged brain — that really would spell disaster for the country.

So the next day, when the lesson ended and he asked me to stay again, I agreed without hesitation.

I did suggest, though, that spinning tops in the scorching summer heat was a bit much, and proposed we play Go instead.

The truth was, my Go was barely a step above tic-tac-toe. I just wanted to check whether his intelligence was still intact.