"Creaaak!" A dull bang ripped through the room as the broken bed was kicked hard. One of the legs scraped across the floor with a harsh screech, like the whole thing was about to fall apart the next second.

"Damn it, you filthy woman, you’re finally dying. Took you long enough. Had me waiting forever!"

A tall man stood by the bed. His face was well maintained, almost refined at a glance, but every inch of it was twisted with cruelty.

The woman lying on the bed had hair gone completely white. She was so thin she barely looked human anymore, more like a skeleton wrapped in skin. Pain had curled her whole body up tight. Her face was ghostly pale, her breathing broken and shallow, like she could stop at any moment.

Seeing her like that, the smile on the man’s face widened bit by bit. "If that woman hadn’t insisted on keeping you alive, and if I hadn’t still been short of getting all the money, I’d have sent you to hell a long time ago. Because of you, I couldn’t marry Fiona for most of my life. I couldn’t even openly call my own son my son. You bitch, you really deserve to die."

The woman on the bed, whose gaze had been dull and unfocused, suddenly fixed her eyes on him. A flash of cold hatred cut through them.

"Who the hell said you could look at me like that?" The man slapped her across the face. His expression turned ugly, almost feral. "You figured out something was off a long time ago, didn’t you? Fine, I’ll say it straight. Fiona is my wife, not my sister. If it wasn’t for your family’s money, did you really think I would’ve married you?"

Then, as if remembering something amusing, he let out a low laugh. "Though yeah, you should hate me. Things are already at this point, so there’s no point hiding it anymore. I’m the one who dealt with your parents and your brothers. So what? Blame your bad luck. Who told your family to be so rich? If you weren’t loaded, I wouldn’t have picked you."

As he spoke, he suddenly reached out and grabbed her face, pinching it hard. He clicked his tongue in disgust. "Who would’ve thought that Vivian Ashford, the famous eldest daughter of the Ashford family in Haishi, would end up looking like this? Seriously disgusting."

Then he pulled out a sheet of paper and wiped his hand with open loathing, like he’d touched something filthy. After wiping it clean, he tossed the paper straight onto Vivian Ashford’s face.

"Come to think of it, if you hadn’t given me the address where they were sent to the countryside, how would I have found your parents? So when they died, that was on you too. You’re not innocent in this."

"Ah—" Vivian Ashford suddenly seemed to catch a final burst of life. She tried to lunge at him, wanted nothing more than to strangle him on the spot. So when he said he was going to save them, it had all been lies. He had gone there to kill them. It was all because she was stupid, stupid enough to be played by this monster so completely.

"Shit, you almost scared me." Sebastian Holt glared at the person on the bed, annoyed out of his mind, then lifted his foot and kicked her hard.

Vivian Ashford’s body had long since reached its limit. She was only hanging on by sheer force. Blood poured from her mouth in heavy gushes, and in the end all that was left was a faint, nearly inaudible rasp of breath.

"You mad? What’s the point of being mad?" he sneered. "Let me tell you this. I’m the one who had your father’s leg broken. I had him thrown into a cesspit and watched him drown little by little, watched him sink inch by inch. Tsk, tsk. The great head of the Ashford family died in a shit pit. And your mother, my dear mother-in-law, that was me too. I paid those old village bachelors to deal with her. That noble madam, pinned down like a stray dog under them. Who knew she’d be that fragile? She got messed up to death right there."

"Oh, right, and your second brother. He was pretty alert, I’ll give him that, but his heart was too soft. Fiona just pretended to be some lost, pitiful girl, and he fell for it. Later, we found a chance to shove him off the cliff. Bang. Smashed into pulp. Didn’t even leave a full body behind. Pathetic. And your eldest brother? He actually started suspecting me. Good thing my son was there. Smart kid, seriously. Only eight years old, and he had your brother spinning in circles. In the end he was turned into a human stick, miserable, really miserable.

"You probably didn’t know this, huh? If it weren’t for the poison in the tea you served him every time he came, with his ability, maybe he would’ve escaped ages ago. Hell, maybe by now he would’ve become some top commander. Tsk. Right before he died, he kept calling your name."

When he finished, he gave the figure on the bed a fake, pitying glance. "The Ashford family is gone. Now it’s your turn. From this day on, everything the Ashfords owned belongs to the Holts. Hahahaha!"

"Ah! Ah!" Bloody tears slid from the corners of Vivian Ashford’s eyes. Her elegant father, her gentle and dignified mother, her upright eldest brother, her warm and sincere second brother—they had all been murdered by this man, and every one of them had died horribly.

No wonder. No wonder Sebastian Holt had suddenly shown his true face when Archie Holt turned eight. So that was the year her whole family had already been wiped out. And she had been kept in the dark by this beast for a full twenty years.

"Die... die..." Vivian Ashford stared at him with all the hatred in her soul. Agonizing pain tore through her abdomen, and her whole body began to convulse. But the hatred in her eyes was so intense it was almost solid. She hated him to the bone. The son-in-law her father had once chosen with such trust had turned out to be less than an animal. For the sake of swallowing up her family’s fortune, he had slaughtered every last one of them.

"Dad... Mom... Big Brother, Second Brother... ah—why is heaven so unfair?!"

If she could get one more shot at life, just one, she would never let that man off. Never. Not in this lifetime, not in the next.

Sebastian Holt got so spooked he staggered back a few steps. But the second he realized how pathetic that made him look, his face darkened, and he stomped forward to kick Vivian Ashford several more times.

"Sebastian, come out and eat already!"

A soft, sugary voice floated in from outside the door. It belonged to Fiona Holt, the woman Sebastian cared about most, the so-called younger sister he kept by his side in name only.

"Dad, come eat. Ignore that dying woman!" Archie Holt shouted with total impatience. "Seriously, just finish her off already. Why drag it out? So annoying."

He was the son of Sebastian and Fiona, and on paper, Vivian's son too. What a joke.

"It'll only be another day or two," Fiona said coldly, glancing toward the bed with naked disgust. There was poison in her eyes, dark and vicious. "Why dirty our hands now?"

This wretched woman had occupied the position of Mrs. Holt for years. How could Fiona possibly let her die that easily?

If it hadn't been for those overseas dividends from the Ashford family, she would have dealt with Vivian long ago. But by now Sebastian had already moved most of the money away. All they had to do was wait for Vivian to breathe her last, and everything would fall neatly into his hands—and Archie's too.

"Exactly," Archie said right away. "Once she's dead, we'll go handle the inheritance paperwork. Nice and easy."

...

But Vivian could no longer hear any of it.

She was already at death's door, and after that brutal shock, her body gave out even faster. Her consciousness sank, her breathing thinned, and just as she was about to exhale her final breath, a faint golden glow suddenly flickered over her chest.

The next second, the world spun around her.

By the time everything stopped, she realized she was no longer on that sickbed.

She was standing inside a siheyuan courtyard.

The place was unbelievably huge, so huge she couldn't even see where it ended. Where she stood now looked like some kind of back garden. Right in front of her was an old well, ancient by the look of it, with wisps of pale mist curling from the mouth of it, thread by thread, like it was breathing spiritual energy.

And above the courtyard, suspended in midair, was a line of red text:

[Rebirth Countdown 72:00:00]

Before she could fully react, the words turned into a streak of light and shot straight into her body.

In that instant, Vivian felt it clearly.

Her body, which had been on the verge of collapse, suddenly seemed to be filled with fresh strength. Warmth spread through her limbs. Her chest loosened. Even her head felt clearer, lighter, as if the weight of death had been peeled away.

Then a flood of information rushed into her mind.

Only then did Vivian understand what this place was.

This... was the spirit spring space passed down by the Ashford family's ancestor.

The water in that well was actually spirit spring water. It could strengthen the body, restore vitality, and even increase a person's strength. With this—and with her body already recovering—she would have enough.

More than enough.

She wanted revenge.

She wanted every single member of Sebastian Holt's family to die.

Die.