Chapter 1: The Number One Ugly Woman

The warm breeze of March carried a gentle heat, and boundless willow catkins drifted like mist; it was a season of magnificent spring scenery in the Imperial Capital, a time for warbling orioles and dancing swallows.

The Prince Gong Mansion, solemn and dignified, had always been a forbidden place for ordinary citizens, yet on this day, a large crowd of onlookers had gathered three zhang away from the main gates.

Lying quietly on the stone slab ground in front of the crowd was a young girl in green.

The girl in green had her eyes tightly shut and remained motionless, as if she were dead. Crimson blood flowed from her forehead, slowly trickling down a face covered in bumpy red spots, making her appearance hideous and distorted.

"Go see if that wench is dead or not," a cold voice rang out, icy and devoid of a single trace of warmth. "If she's dead, send her a reed mat, roll her up, and throw her at the entrance of the Liu Chancellor's Mansion. If she's not dead, splash her with water to wake her up and tell her to get lost back to her own home!"

Upon the high steps, a young man dressed in luxurious purple robes stood proudly. His features were handsome and elegant, but his face was filled with disgust and contempt.

"Reporting to the Prince, she has stopped breathing." A guard walked over and checked the breath of the girl in green.

"Dead? If she's dead, it's cleaner." The man in purple let out a cold snort through his nostrils. "Bring a mat. Wrap her up. Out of consideration for the fact that she was once this Prince's fiancée, I shall show a moment of mercy and grant her a coffin."

"Yes, Your Highness."

The surrounding commoners all showed expressions of pity, unable to help but whisper among themselves.

"Miss Liu is so pitiful. She was only three days away from becoming the Consort of Prince Gong, yet her engagement was broken."

"Not only was the engagement broken, but she was even driven to... to ram into the stone lion. Sigh."

"What a pity for those once beautiful features; to think they have become so hideous..."

"Shh, look, Miss Liu seems to... seems to have come back to life."

So noisy!

A splitting headache...

Shen Xinru slowly regained consciousness. She felt that the surface beneath her body was both cold and hard, as if she were lying on a stone floor, which made her very uncomfortable.

Frowning, she struggled to open her eyes. The first thing she saw was a patch of blue sky with white clouds drifting leisurely by.

The surrounding voices were noisy and chaotic. She slowly turned her head to look and saw a group of commoners dressed in ancient attire surrounding her, pointing and whispering.

Shen Xinru felt a wave of confusion, not knowing where she was.

Then, she felt a sense of foreboding...

Her lips were dry, she was breaking out in a cold sweat, and her limbs were weak. These were the symptoms of someone on the verge of fainting due to massive blood loss!

And these symptoms were worsening, indicating that the blood in her body was still continuously flowing out. She raised her hand to touch her aching temple and found that blood was still gushing from the wound.

She pressed her index and middle fingers of her right hand together and quickly placed them against the pulse of her left hand. In just a few seconds, as a chief military physician, she quickly diagnosed that if she lost another 50cc of blood, she would immediately fall into a coma!

She had to stop the bleeding immediately!

She scanned her surroundings quickly but could not find her medical kit. The smooth, flat bluestone pavement was clean; she couldn't even find a scrap of paper.

Without the golden needles from her medical kit, she could not perform acupuncture to stop the bleeding. What she urgently needed now was a piece of gauze or a cloth strip.

Feeling a sudden intuition, she reached into her bosom and pulled out a large, bright red embroidered handkerchief, which she tore into two pieces without hesitation with a "swish."

The moment the silk tore, an image suddenly flashed into her mind.

A young girl sitting by an eastern window, embroidering twin lotuses on a silk handkerchief with a heart full of tenderness.

Such a familiar image!

There was no time to think further; she quickly tied a knot in the torn handkerchief and tied it tightly around her forehead, stopping the gushing blood.

Having escaped the immediate danger to her life, she breathed a light sigh of relief.

Suddenly, a man's cruel and cold voice rang out, piercing her eardrums like ice.

"Liu Ruoshui, you ugly woman, you actually didn't die? If you're not dead, then hurry up and get back to your Chancellor's Mansion. Don't keep loitering at this Prince's gate, defiling the stone lions at my entrance and further offending my eyes!"

Liu Ruoshui? Was he talking about her?

She furrowed her brows and looked toward the sound, meeting a pair of hawk-like eyes filled with undisguised loathing.

Such a familiar face!

Large chunks of unfamiliar memories suddenly surged into her mind like a tide, and she involuntarily closed her eyes. A moment later, she opened them, her gaze shimmering, clear as water.

So, she had transmigrated.

Jun Tianxiang... she whispered softly.

The man before her was none other than Prince Gong, Jun Tianxiang, the third son of the current Emperor Shengde, and Liu Ruoshui's fiancé.

Her original self was named Liu Ruoshui, the eldest legitimate daughter of Chancellor Liu Chengyi. A year ago, she had been infinitely glorious, outshining all others at the Palace Hundred Flowers Banquet and being hailed as the number one beauty of the Imperial Capital. A year later, her beauty was destroyed, and she was called the number one ugly woman of the Imperial Capital.

Her gaze dropped to a large, bright red engagement cancellation notice on the ground.

The cancellation notice, written in a free and elegant hand, had been written by Jun Tianxiang himself.

Shen Xinru... no, Liu Ruoshui picked up the notice and slowly stood up. She looked at Jun Tianxiang again, her eyes flickering with thought.

To write a letter to break an engagement just because his fiancée's appearance was ruined—for such a cold-hearted, selfish, and cruel scumbag, Ruoshui, you actually died by ramming into a stone lion for him?

It was truly a death not worth dying!