Chapter 1: The Veil Lifts on an Unwanted Marriage
The silk veil was red as a fresh wound, and under it, Lin Mei trembled. The scent of cheap incense clogged the air, thick and soupy. Outside, the last of the wedding guests' laughter had faded, leaving only the oppressive silence of the unfamiliar farmhouse and the frantic drumbeat of her own heart. She clung to a single, desperate hope: that the man she’d married today was kind. That she could talk to him. That the brutal tradition waiting in this shadowed room could be postponed, negotiated, somehow softened with words.
The door groaned open.
She didn’t dare look up, only saw the heavy, dusty boots that stopped before her. His breathing was louder than any sound in the room. A hand entered her limited vision—broad, the knuckles scarred, the nails rimmed with earth that no bath seemed able to fully cleanse. It was a farmer’s hand, rough and utilitarian. It hovered for a moment, then closed on the edge of her veil with clumsy finality.
He flung the fabric aside.
Her eyes snapped up.
Zhang Wei’s face was not cruel. But in the guttering light of the single oil lamp, it was devastatingly cold. Hard planes, a firm set to his mouth, eyes that seemed to look at her without really seeing her. This was not the face of a talker. This was the face of a man who moved rocks and felled trees. Her stomach dropped, a stone into a deep well. Reason died in her throat.
He just stared. She was beautiful, a city flower wilting in his crude chamber. He didn’t know what to do with beauty. He’d spent the day sweating under his good robes, shaking hands that felt like hams, nodding at advice he didn’t understand. Now the silence between them was a physical weight, pressing down. He had to do something. The next logical thing, the only thing the jokes and elbows from his uncles had prepared him for, was the bed.
He reached for the first fastening of her ornate jacket.
Lin Mei flinched. It was subtle, a tiny catch of her breath, but she saw his eyes flicker to hers. She cleared her throat, a dry, pathetic sound. “Husband, I…” The words died. He said nothing, his fingers fumbling with the unfamiliar loops and buttons. His touch was impersonal, rough. He worked in a tense, methodical silence, peeling away the layers of red silk and embroidered finery until they pooled like shed petals at her feet. The cool air hit her skin, raising goosebumps.
He then undressed himself, his movements jerky, turning slightly away as he shucked his trousers. He hoped she didn’t notice the shaking in his own hands.
Naked, she stood, trying to cover herself with arms that felt like twigs. Her mind was screaming, scrambling for the courage to form a sentence, any sentence, to delay what was coming. Please, let us just sleep. Let us know each other first. She opened her mouth again.
But Zhang Wei was already moving. He took her by the shoulders. His palms were calloused, hot. He guided her, not ungently, but with an utter lack of ceremony, towards the bed, turning her until she was on her hands and knees on the coarse linen. The posture was instinctual for him, a mimicking of animals in the field, the only blueprint he possessed.
She gasped, the position pounding humiliation into her fear. She felt the blunt, hot pressure of him against her entrance. He was big, harder than she’d imagined possible.
“Wait,” she managed, a strangled whisper.
He didn’t hear. Or he didn’t know how to stop. The nervous tension in him had wound into a single, sharp need. He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock nudging at her tightness. He was going to treat her right, he promised himself. Later. Starting tomorrow. He’d buy her something.
He pushed.
Lin Mei screamed.
It was a raw, tearing sound. Her body fought, a tight channel fiercely unyielding, but he was strong and driven by a rutting instinct that overrode everything. He shoved himself in to the hilt in one brutal, shearing thrust, his hands gripping her hips so tightly she knew there would be bruises.
He groaned, a low, guttural sound of relief and overwhelming sensation. So hot. So tight. He began to move, setting a clumsy, inept, and fast rhythm, driven by a pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain. There was no art to it, just frantic friction.
Lin Mei buried her face in the bedding, her fingers clawing at the rough sheet. Each slam of his body jolted through her. The sound was obscene—the wet, slapping noise of flesh on flesh, the creak of the bed, her own whimpered sobs swallowed by the fabric, his harsh, ragged breaths puffing against her back.
He didn’t last long. With a choked, strangled cry, his whole body locked. She felt him throb inside her, then the hot, sudden flood of his release, pulse after pulse filling her. It felt violating, a claiming more profound than any vow.
He slumped over her, his weight heavy and sweaty, then pulled out with a soft, slick sound.
She collapsed beneath him, breathing in ragged hitches. She felt a warm trickle escape her, a mixture of his spend and something else. When he rolled off, she saw it: a smear of pink, and beneath it, a darker, unmistakable redness blooming on the linen. A broken hymn. Proof.
Zhang Wei lay beside her, staring at the ceiling. The frantic energy was gone, replaced by a bone-deep tiredness and a swell of satisfaction. He’d done it. He was a husband now. She was his wife. He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t speak. After a few minutes, his breathing evened out into sleep.
Lin Mei lay perfectly still, the pain between her legs a fresh, bright brand. The smell of sex and sweat and incense mingled into a nauseating perfume. She listened to the snores of the stranger beside her, a man who owned her body as he owned his fields.
A cold, sharp scorn crystallized in her chest, hardening the fear into something more sustainable.
A great start, she thought, the irony bitter as ash on her tongue. A truly magnificent beginning to this new life.
The gray light of dawn felt like a verdict. Her body ached in places she’d never known could ache, a deep, bruised tenderness between her legs a constant, humiliating reminder. The bloody stain on the sheet had been somberly folded away by her mother-in-law, a silent transaction complete.
In the main room, the air was thick with the smell of boiled grain and old wood. The elders sat in a stern line: Zhang Wei’s father, Kuo, his mother, and a bony, ancient aunt. Lin Mei’s knees hit the hard-packed earthen floor, the impact jarring up her spine. She kowtowed, forehead pressing into the cool ground, then rose to pour tea from a heavy pot, her hands trembling only slightly.
The cup she offered to Zhang Kuo first. As she knelt, the movement pulled at the soreness inside her, a sharp pinch that made her breath hitch. She looked up as he took the cup, and their eyes met.
His were not cold like his son’s. They were weathered, lined with years of sun and worry. In them, she saw a flicker of something that startled her: sympathy. A faint, knowing pity. Her scream had been loud. The walls here were thin. He could imagine his clumsy son, all brute strength and zero finesse, not knowing how to prepare her right. He gave her the barest, almost imperceptible nod as he accepted the tea.
That look, that tiny acknowledgment of her pain, was a lifeline. It didn’t fix anything, but it let her draw her next breath. It gave her the brittle courage to make it through the ceremony, to bear the appraising stares of the women, to swallow the tasteless tea herself.
The day unspooled in a blur of instruction and labor. She was shown the kitchen garden, the pig pen that made her stomach turn, the well with its heavy bucket. Her chores were listed without consultation: laundry at dawn, vegetable prep, feeding the chickens, mending. The work was physical in a way her city life had never been, a grinding fatigue of muscle.
In the afternoon, a lull. The other women retreated for a nap. Lin Mei slipped away, not towards the house, but out past the last vegetable plot, to where a scrubby meadow met the edge of a wood. She needed air that wasn’t heavy with smoke and sell.
She lay on her back in the rough grass, staring at the high, indifferent clouds. She plucked at stems, shredding them, her mind a numb blank. A sharp edge of straw bit into her finger. She winced, lifting her hand. A perfect bead of crimson welled up from the pad of her thumb.
She watched it, fascinated by its rawness, this proof she could still feel something simple. Before she could bring it to her mouth, the bead grew heavy, detached, and fell.
It landed not on the coarse linen of her dress, but on the cool, pale-green surface of the jade pendant she had worn since she woke in this body. The droplet vanished into the stone as if swallowed.
The jade grew warm. Not just warm—it pulsed with a sudden, deep heat against her sternum. A glow, faint and greenish, emitted from its heart.
Panic ripped through the numbness. What—
The world dissolved into a swirl of emerald light and a sensation of being tugged through a keyhole. No sound, no air. Then, solidity.
She stumbled, her knees buckling, and caught herself on soft, mossy turf. She was in a small, perfect clearing. The air was sweet and crystalline. In the center, a spring bubbled up from pearlescent stones, its water so clear she could see every grain of sand at the bottom. The silence was profound, broken only by the gentle plash of water.
Her heart hammered against the now-cool jade. Transmigration novels. Portal fantasies. Is this… a space? Her space?
The throbbing ache between her legs echoed, a persistent, ugly reminder. Without overthinking, driven by a primal need for cleanliness, for erasure, she tore at her clothes. They fell in a heap on the moss. She stepped into the spring.
The water was cooler than she expected, a shock that became a balm. It wasn’t just washing her; it was seeping into her. A tingling energy danced over her skin, sank into her muscles, poured into the bruised, torn feeling inside her. She watched, stunned, as a faint yellow discoloration on her hip from his gripping fingers faded to nothing. The piercing soreness in her core softened, dulled, then vanished entirely. It was a relief so profound it bordered on euphoria. The throbbing in her pussy subsided, leaving only a memory.
She scrubbed every inch of herself until her skin felt new, then simply floated, letting the water hold her. When she finally stepped out, she was not just clean; she was healed. The trauma was still in her mind, a dark painting, but the physical canvas was restored.
Dressed again, a thought occurred. She focused on the pendant, on the feeling of the cool, clear water. A shimmer appeared in the air before her palm, and a cascade of water, about a cup’s worth, poured from nothing into her cupped hand. She drank. It was pure. It was sweet. It was the best thing she had ever tasted. Energy, subtle and clean, trickled through her veins.
She returned to the farmyard just as the nap ended. No one remarked on her absence. In the kitchen, she fell into the rhythm of helping with the evening meal. The other women—her sisters-in-law, an aunt—chattered about the price of thread, a neighbor’s quarrel. Surface things. Lin Mei replied when spoken to, her voice quiet but steady.
She watched as one woman hacked a knobby carrot, as another added fistfuls of salt to the bubbling pot. An instinctual, competitive urge rose in her—I could do this better. I could make this taste like something. She bit her tongue. Showing skill now was a risk. It was attention. She kept her head down, stirred the pot she was assigned.
The men returned with the last light, smelling of earth and sweat. The table was loud, spoons clattering, voices overlapping about the fields, the stubborn mule, the weather. Zhang Kuo sat down beside Lin Mei. He nudged a bowl of pickled vegetables towards her.
“The city must be noisy,” he said, not unkindly. “All those people. Here, the noise is from birds and foolish men.” He smiled a little.
“It’s… different,” she said.
“Different isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s just slow.” He asked her a simple question about the stitching on her sleeve, and somehow, coaxed a few more sentences from her. It wasn’t a deep conversation, but it was human. For a few minutes, under the warm noise of the family meal, she felt almost lighter. The water inside her seemed to hum.
Then the bowls were cleared. The lamps were lit. Zhang Wei stood up from the table. He did not look at her, but his movement was a command. The room’s chatter dimmed. A path opened between them.
She followed him, the short walk to their room a funeral procession. The door closed, sealing them in the familiar scent of incense and damp. He began to undress, his back to her, the same jerky motions. She undressed herself this time, a slow, dreadful automaton.
He turned. He looked at her body, but his expression didn’t change. No desire, no hesitation. It was a task. He came to the bed, his body already hard. He pushed her onto her back this time, a slight variation. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t touch her beyond what was necessary. He pushed her thighs apart with his knee.
He was still big, still hard. But she was healed now, slick from the spring’s lingering effect, not from arousal. There was no tearing this time, just a blunt, stretching fullness as he shoved inside. He grunted, a short, sharp sound, and began to move. It was the same rhythm. Purposeful, mechanical, a piston driving into a sheath. The bed rocked. His breath hit her neck. She turned her face to the side, staring at the faint pattern on the wall tapestry, separating her mind from the wet, sliding sounds, from the jarring of her body. He found his release with a muted shudder, a hot flood inside her, then rolled off.
He was asleep within minutes.
Lin Mei lay awake, the foreign wetness leaking onto the sheet. The physical pain was gone, courtesy of the spring. But the act itself, its brutal indifference, carved a deeper hollow inside her. She touched the jade pendant, cool and smooth against her skin. In the darkness, it held a secret glow only she could feel. Water. Healing. An escape.
She had survived the day. She had even found a fragment of kindness. But here, in this bed, nothing had changed. He was just a man performing a duty on a piece of compliant flesh. And she was just a wife, staring at the dark, counting the beats of her own heart, waiting for the dawn.