In the dead of winter, snow kept falling without a break, and the whole sky looked dark enough to crush a person.
Luna Ashford lay on the hospital bed, tubes and needles all over her body, eyes wide open, despair written plain across her face.
The ward door was pushed open, and heavy footsteps came in from outside.
The moment she saw her husband, a faint spark finally lit up in Luna Ashford’s dead, dim eyes.
"Ethan... you finally came..."
He had been dead set on divorcing her. She had felt too humiliated to agree, and in his panic Ethan Mercer had shoved her. When she fell, the back of her head slammed against the floor, and blood spread out in a great pool.
He had been so frightened he turned and ran. Luckily, someone who had come by to see a doctor happened to witness it and hurried her to the hospital.
Her injuries were not that serious, really, but the bleeding from the wound simply would not stop. After a full examination, they finally found out why—late-stage breast cancer.
All the days she had been in the hospital, she had kept hoping her husband would come to his senses and visit her.
What she had not expected was to see Ethan Mercer walking in with a finely dressed woman tucked against his side.
The woman stood in the backlight, so her face could not be seen clearly. All Luna Ashford could make out was that she was holding the hand of a boy around ten or so.
"You... what is this...?"
Luna Ashford was so agitated she could barely get the words out. Her mouth hung open as she struggled to breathe.
Seeing her like that, Ethan Mercer turned his head away in disgust, his tone full of impatience.
"Luna Ashford, a country woman like you who can’t do a single thing married me and lived as an officer’s wife. You’ve had enough good days these years, haven’t you?"
"Isabelle was carrying my child, but because of you she had to run off to another place. She suffered for years, nearly died out there!"
"You should be the one to die! You should’ve given up this place long ago!"
After hearing those words, the last bit of light in Luna Ashford’s eyes went out completely. She suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood.
"Heh, I can’t do a single thing? I’m just a country woman? I lived well?"
"Ethan Mercer, don’t you forget—who took care of your parents? Who cleaned up the messes your sisters made? Who raised your younger sisters with these two hands?"
"Who was it that found a doctor for you when you were hurt on a mission and lying there half dead? And who was it that helped you climb to the position you’re sitting in now?"
"Ethan Mercer! You ungrateful bastard! You’ll die a bad death!"
"Pfft—"
A thick, rusty taste of blood rushed up into Luna Ashford’s mouth. In the same instant, she bit open the poison capsule hidden between her teeth. A mouthful of bloody spit burst out and splashed all over the two of them.
"Ethan Mercer, everything you have came from me. If I gave it to you, I can take it all back too!"
"If I die here today, then you two shameless adulterers can forget about walking out alive!"
Luna Ashford died in a fit of wild laughter, a strange, chilling smile still hanging at the corner of her mouth.
The capsule had been filled with a deadly poison to begin with, the kind that killed on contact with blood. Once it mixed with her blood and sprayed onto them, it quickly soaked through their clothes and seeped into their skin.
In less than three hours, the poison would flare up and kill them both. They would go down to the underworld with her!
But even knowing the people who ruined her were about to die, the hatred in her heart still burned like mad.
If she could do it all over again, she would never marry that faithless man. Never give him the ladder that let him rise.
She would make sure he rotted in the mud his whole life, never once getting the chance to turn things around, and die bitter and miserable in the end!
The venom in Luna Ashford’s eyes before death scared Ethan Mercer out of his wits. He grabbed his mistress and the child and fled in a panic.
The moment the ward door shut, the safety charm hanging at Luna Ashford’s neck gave off a faint glow.
It was the one her grandfather had begged for from an old temple in the provincial capital before he died, kneeling all the way there.
The light slowly wrapped around Luna Ashford, little by little, until it covered her whole body.
The fierce hatred she carried at the edge of death tangled with that light, and in the end it turned into a ring of dim gray radiance.
...
"Brother, Sister Xinrou is gone!"
Stella Mercer’s shrill cry rang out. Ethan Mercer, who had just been pulling the bride forward for the wedding bows, shuddered all over, as if he had only now snapped back to himself.
The hand that had been gripping Luna Ashford’s a moment ago flew off her like he’d touched a live coal. Ethan Mercer let go at once and shoved her hard in the shoulder.
"You cheap thing, wait till I get back. I’ll deal with you then!"
He didn’t hold back. Luna Ashford staggered, her feet slipping, and she nearly went down on the spot.
Her grandfather pushed through the crowd in a panic and caught her by the arm, but even so, her head still knocked against the wall with a dull thud.
A bit of skin got scraped off her forehead. Under the red veil, her eyes slowly lit up.
The faint smile on her face disappeared. In its place came a sharp, cold look.
"The groom’s run off? Then how’s this wedding supposed to go on?"
Her grandfather was so anxious he kept stamping his foot. Pauline Mercer, the mother-in-law, quickly cut in.
"Isn’t it just that our Ethan had something urgent to handle? The bride’s already been brought in, so of course the wedding has to go on!"
He stood there alone, but his voice was loud enough for everyone to hear.
"A wedding without the groom? That breaks every rule there is!"
He would not let his granddaughter suffer even a little. A wedding like this should never have continued in the first place.
But Pauline Mercer was no soft touch either, and she started arguing with him right away.
"I invited all these people and put out so many banquet tables. You think we can just call it off like that? Do you know how much I’d lose?"
"This wasn’t our doing. You sort it out yourselves!"
The two of them argued back and forth until somebody in the crowd said Luna Ashford ought to decide for herself.
"Luna Ashford, you say it."
"Daughter-in-law, you’ve already stepped through the door. We’ll be family any minute now, so you’d better think carefully."
Her grandfather and Pauline Mercer both turned to look at Luna Ashford, waiting for her answer.
Right in front of everybody, Luna Ashford lifted the red veil and revealed a young, striking face.
It was October 15, 1982. She had come back to the very day she married Ethan Mercer.
In her last life, when she and Ethan Mercer were getting married, Isabelle Atkinson had vanished out of nowhere too.
But back then, the marriage papers still hadn’t been filed, so Ethan Mercer didn’t dare make it too obvious.
He insisted on finishing the wedding rites before going out to look for her, and on their wedding night, he left Luna Ashford alone in an empty room.
But he was too late. He missed the train Isabelle Atkinson had taken.
After that, he asked around everywhere and still couldn’t find her. Just because he was one step too late, she disappeared from his life for good.
That one thing haunted Ethan Mercer for the rest of his life.
He wandered around town like a madman for three whole days. When he finally came back, he was filthy from head to toe, looking no better than a beggar.
He went home, took a quick wash, and dropped straight into bed. The next day, he said a quiet "sorry" to Luna Ashford like nothing much had happened. On the third day, the two of them went and got their marriage certificate. Only then were they husband and wife in name and law.
After the wedding, he kept saying he wasn’t feeling well and never once shared a bed with her.
Not long after, word came down that he had been approved to join the army, and by early November that year, he was gone.
Luna Ashford’s grandfather, Edmund Ashford, was a well-known traditional doctor in the village. She had learned all his skills, and though she was still young, her medical hands were already steady and sharp.
She had originally been offered a post as an army doctor, complete with an official position, because she had once saved an officer from the troops.
But before Ethan Mercer left, he said, "I’m going into the army. With things like this at home, somebody has to stay and look after everything. Don’t go."
And just like that, Luna Ashford let her own future slip through her fingers.
She didn’t go become an army doctor, but she traded that favor to get the army to look after Ethan Mercer.
Once Ethan Mercer entered the military, everything went smoothly for him. Every time there was a mission, someone experienced was there to guide him, and step by step he kept climbing higher. He really thought it was all because he was capable.
It never crossed his mind that Luna Ashford had already laid the road for him in advance. Otherwise, how could an ordinary soldier like him, with no family backing and no real ability, rise all the way to regiment commander in just a little over ten years?
After the marriage, Luna Ashford stayed home taking care of his bedridden mother, Pauline Mercer, and also had to keep an eye on his father, who turned violent whenever he drank.
Neither of Ethan Mercer’s two sisters had married well, and Luna Ashford had even brought them back to their maiden home more than once to stand up for them.
She got beaten black and blue before she managed to claw back their dowries, win custody of the children, and drag those women out of those rotten marriages.
And in the end? They blamed her instead, said she’d stuck her nose in and ruined their homes.
Not only that, they dumped the kids on her to raise, snapped at her every other day, and kept holding out their hands for money whenever the mood struck.
Luna Ashford had spent years treating the sick and saving lives. Later on, two former patients remembered her kindness and married those two elder sisters-in-law. Only then did the house quiet down a little.
Ethan Mercer’s two younger sisters were no easier to deal with either.
They were still young, yet already making trouble at school, picking fights and bullying classmates. Luna could only force a smile, keep apologizing to the teachers, and pay compensation out of her own pocket.
She had swallowed her anger and suffered in silence in that family for so many years that her health had been worn down bit by bit.
After more than ten years of marriage, the two of them lived like strangers. By the time she was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, she finally learned that her husband had long since been keeping another woman outside.
It wasn’t that Ethan Mercer had no interest in women.
He just had no interest in her.
All those years, she had kept telling herself that if she gave him everything, if she treated him with all her heart, then sooner or later he would see it, and one day he might come back to her.
Who would’ve thought that the only reason he married her was because she knew medicine, because he wanted her to nurse his parents and keep them in good health?
He had no place for her in his heart, but he knew she was useful. Giving her the title of wife was, in his mind, already charity enough—while wasting her whole life in the process.
And in the end, he even had the nerve to turn it around and say she was the one who had profited, that she had lived comfortably all her life.
What a joke.
"There’s nothing worth regretting about not going through with this marriage!"
