Chapter 4: The One She Never Expected

While she was focused on dealing with Shen Ruowei’s scheme, Wan’er happened to cross paths with Pei Ziqi. He was a young general who had just been posted back to the capital, one of her father’s most trusted subordinates. In her past life, he had died in battle defending the frontier just before the Lin family fell, and she had never had the chance to truly know him.

Their first meeting was rather comical. Wan’er was disguised as a commoner, secretly following a lead connected to the Shen household, when she got caught up in a brawl at the market, and Ziqi stepped in to rescue her just in time.

“Miss, why would a girl from a good family wander alone in a rough place like this?” Ziqi asked, his eyes a little suspicious but unable to hide genuine concern.

“Thank you for saving me, sir,” Wan’er replied, deliberately hiding who she really was. “I just have some private business to look into.”

From then on, the two of them often ran into each other. Sometimes at court discussions about the frontier, which Wan’er secretly watched from afar. Sometimes in places she went in disguise to investigate. Ziqi gradually realized that the familiar “common girl” was in fact the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Zhenguo’s house, but he didn’t expose her. He only quietly kept watch over her from a distance whenever he saw her in danger.

Unlike Xiao Yichen, who always gave off an air of noble aloofness, Ziqi made Wan’er feel a strange sincerity and warmth. A selfless kind of feeling she had never truly experienced in her past life.

“Why do you always show up exactly when I need help?” Wan’er once couldn’t help asking him outright.

Ziqi paused for a moment, then answered with a shyness rarely seen in a battlefield general: “Maybe because I’m always paying attention to where you are and what you’re doing, even though I don’t know why myself.”

Wan’er fell silent at that sincere answer. Her heart, frozen after the tragedy of her past life, seemed to be showing signs of thawing again. But she still had too much to finish before she could allow herself to think about love.