The concrete slab pressed into her back like a judgment.
Lin Xiyue couldn't feel her legs anymore. That was probably bad.
But the kid in her arms was breathing—she could feel the small chest rising and falling against her ribs, and that was everything.
"Stay with me," she whispered, though her own voice sounded like it came from far away.
"They're coming. I hear them."
She did hear them. Shouts. Drills. Someone screaming orders.
The whole symphony of rescue that she'd been part of a hundred times as a surgeon, except now she was on the other side of the debris.
Blood trickled warm down her forehead, stinging her left eye.
Five more minutes, she told herself. Just five more. Keep the kid calm. Don't let her see you freak out.
The little girl's hand clutched her scrub top. "Does it hurt?"
"No, baby. I'm tough."
The last thing she saw was a flashlight beam cutting through the dust.
The last thing she heard was someone yelling "We got two!"
The last thing she thought was good.
Then nothing.
The nothing didn't last.
Xiyue woke up to darkness and the worst smell of her entire life.
And she'd smelled some things. Rotting flesh in the ER. The inside of a homeless man's gangrenous foot. That one time a guy came in after three weeks dead in a bathtub.
This was worse.
This was mold and urine and something rotting—not a person, maybe, but definitely organic.
Wet hay poked into her cheek. Her body ached with a deep, bone-level wrongness, like she'd been hit by a truck and then someone decided to run it back over her for good measure.
What hospital puts patients on hay?
She tried to move her arm. It responded, but slowly, like wading through water. Her hand touched something cold—a wall. Dirt. Was this... mud?
Her chest throbbed.
Not the sharp pain of broken ribs from the earthquake. This was different. A dull, squeezing pressure that radiated down her left arm.
Cardiac symptoms, her brain supplied automatically, because apparently even half-dead, she was still a surgeon.
"Hello?" Her voice came out raspy, foreign. Louder than she meant.
Silence. Then, somewhere in the darkness, the skitter of rat feet.
Xiyue forced herself up on one elbow. The world spun, her stomach lurched, and for a solid ten seconds she was absolutely certain she was about to puke.
She didn't.
Her hand went to her face. Different. The skin felt thinner, the nose narrower, the cheekbones sharper. She traced her features like a blind person reading braille, and none of it matched the face she'd woken up with for thirty years.
Okay. Okay okay okay. Panic later. Assess now.
But before she could even start the assessment, something slammed into her brain.
Images. Feelings. A whole life that wasn't hers.
A woman with empty eyes, standing in a corner while others laughed. Being pushed. Being ignored. Being forgotten.
A name—Lin Xiyue. Nineteen years old.
A rank—seventh-level concubine, which apparently meant "nobody" in a language her brain suddenly understood.
And a place—the Cold Palace, an abandoned section of some massive complex where they sent concubines who'd outlived their usefulness.
The last memory hit hardest: this body, alone, feverish, chest burning, trying to call for help.
No one came.
No one ever came.
She died, Xiyue realized. The original owner died right here, and I just... moved in.
Her breath caught. The chest pain spiked.
And then a blue light exploded in front of her eyes.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
Xiyue screamed. Or tried to. What came out was more of a strangled gasp.
A translucent screen floated in the darkness, glowing soft blue.
[Host detected in critical condition.]
[Basic functions activated: Vital Monitoring.]
"What the—" she started, but then the screen changed.
Numbers appeared. Red. Blinking.
[Heart Rate: 42 bpm]
[Blood Pressure: 68/40]
[Oxygen Saturation: 88%]
Her surgical brain kicked in despite the terror. Bradycardic. Hypotensive. Hypoxic.
The screen updated.
[Diagnosis: Congestive Heart Failure — Terminal Stage]
[Estimated Time Remaining: 72 hours]
Xiyue stared at the words. Seventy-two hours. Three days.
That's what she had in this body that wasn't hers, in this place that smelled like death, in this situation that made absolutely no sense.
"Seventy-two hours for what?" she whispered at the empty air. "To do what? Die again?"
The screen flickered.
[Suggestion: Locate high-energy life form for bonding.]
[Bonding will extend host lifespan.]
"Bonding? Like... make friends? That's your solution?"
No response. The screen just hung there, blinking softly.
Xiyue laughed. It came out hysterical, too loud, bouncing off mud walls.
She was lying in some abandoned hut, wearing a dead woman's body, talking to a blue screen that told her she had three days to live unless she went out and made friends.
And yet.
The chest pain was real. The weakness in her limbs was real. The cold seeping up from the ground was real.
Whatever this was—hallucination, afterlife, second chance—the physical part of it was terrifyingly solid.
She needed to move. Needed to see. Needed to understand.
Xiyue pushed herself up, ignoring the way her heart stuttered in protest. The blue screen followed her movement, staying in her peripheral vision.
The room was small. Maybe ten feet square. Mud bricks, dirt floor, one wooden door that looked like it hadn't been opened in years.
A pile of moldy hay in the corner served as her bed. A cracked clay bowl held what might have been water once but was now just... sludge.
No windows.
This is where they put her to die, Xiyue thought. This is where she waited until her heart gave out.
She stumbled to the door and pushed.
It didn't move.
She pushed harder, throwing her whole weight against it. The wood groaned, dust rained down from above, and for a horrible second she thought she'd be trapped in here forever—
The door swung open.
Xiyue fell through it, landed on her hands and knees in dirt, and looked up.
The sky was wrong.
Not the color—it was blue, mostly, with clouds doing their normal cloud thing.
But the way it sat above the buildings around her, the architecture, the sheer age of everything—this wasn't any place she recognized.
Wooden pavilions with curved roofs rose in the distance. Stone walls, twenty feet high, enclosed everything.
In the other direction, she saw more abandoned buildings, collapsed structures, overgrown gardens.
And silence. Complete, total silence.
No cars. No planes. No distant traffic or humming appliances.
Historical drama set, her brain offered weakly. You're on a movie set.
But she knew, somewhere deep, that this wasn't a set.
This was real. This was wherever that woman's memories came from.
The blue screen pulsed.
[High-energy life form detected.]
[Distance: 500 meters. Direction: Northeast.]
[Bonding recommended for survival.]
Xiyue looked northeast. A wall. Beyond it, more walls.
And somewhere past those walls, apparently, her ticket to living past three days.
"Bonding," she muttered, pushing herself up. Her legs shook. Her chest ached.
"What does that even mean? Do I shake its hand? Ask for its astrological sign?"
No answer.
She started walking.
Every step was torture. Her body screamed at her to stop, to lie down, to just give up.
But the surgeon in her—the part that had run on thirty-six hours of no sleep during trauma rotations, the part that had crawled into a collapsing building for a kid she didn't know—that part kept going.
One foot. Then the other.
Through crumbling courtyards. Past empty buildings with dark windows. Around a pond choked with weeds.
The wall loomed ahead. A gate stood slightly ajar, just enough for a thin person to squeeze through.
Xiyue pushed through.
On the other side, everything changed.
The buildings here were maintained. Clean. Paint fresh, roofs intact.
Servants hurried along pathways, heads down, carrying trays and bundles.
In the distance, she could see the main palace complex—massive, ornate, screaming wealth and power.
And she could hear something else.
Screaming.
Not just any screaming. Angry screaming. Male, deep, enraged—the kind of sound that made animals run and humans freeze.
The servants around her certainly froze. A maid dropped her tray. A eunuch went pale.
Everyone looked toward the largest building at the complex's heart.
[Target detected: Ye Rong — Emperor.]
[Energy Level: SSS — CRITICAL]
[Warning: Target extremely unstable. High mortality risk.]
[Note: Also host's only viable bonding option within range.]
The screaming continued. Something crashed. More screaming.
Xiyue looked at the screen. Looked at the building where some dude was apparently losing his absolute mind. Looked back at the screen.
"You want me to bond with that?"
The screen pulsed, cheerful and unhelpful.
[Bonding recommended. Time remaining: 71 hours, 48 minutes.]
Another crash from the palace. A servant ran out, clutching his arm, blood seeping through his fingers.
"Yeah," Xiyue muttered, already moving toward the building despite every survival instinct screaming at her to run.
"This is fine. This is totally fine."
Her chest burned.
Her legs shook.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice that sounded like her own whispered: You're really going to die here, aren't you?
Probably.
But at least she'd go down fighting.
The doors to the imperial chamber loomed in front of her, carved with dragons and clouds.
Guards flanked them—two men in armor who looked like they hadn't blinked in years.
They didn't stop her.
They didn't even look at her.
Because she was nothing. A ghost. A seventh-level concubine from the Cold Palace who shouldn't exist.
Xiyue pushed the door open.
Inside, chaos.
A room the size of her old apartment. Silk hangings torn from walls. Furniture splintered. Papers scattered everywhere like snow.
And in the center, a man.
He was on his knees, back to her, shoulders heaving. Blood dripped from his hands onto the marble floor.
His robes—the kind of embroidered silk that probably cost more than her previous life's annual salary—were torn, disheveled, stained.
He wasn't screaming anymore.
He was shaking.
And then, softly, so softly she almost didn't hear it:
"Leave."
Xiyue didn't move.
"I said leave." His voice cracked on the word. Broke.
And then, quieter: "Leave before I..."
He turned.
She saw his face.
Young. Younger than she expected. Maybe mid-twenties. Beautiful in the way that sharp things are beautiful—dangerous, cutting, not meant to be touched.
His eyes were red-rimmed, wild, pupils blown wide.
Vasodilation, her brain noted. Possible toxin exposure. Sympathomimetic effects.
His hands were bleeding from where he'd punched—what? Walls? Furniture? Himself?
He stared at her.
She stared back.
"No," she said.
His eyes widened. Just slightly. Just enough.
"I'm not leaving," Xiyue continued, because apparently her survival instincts had taken the day off.
"You look like you're about to have a cardiac event, and honestly? Same. So we're going to figure this out together."
The Emperor of somewhere, some dynasty, some empire—opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"Who," he finally managed, "are you?"
Xiyue took a step forward. Then another. Her heart hammered, stuttered, kept going.
"The woman who's going to keep you alive for the next three days," she said.
"After that? No promises."
The blue screen pulsed softly in her vision.
[Bonding initiated.]
[Progress: 0.01%.]
She had no idea what she was doing.
But for the first time since waking up in that filthy room, the chest pain felt slightly less crushing.