The first thing Lin Yue became aware of was the cold.
It seeped through her cheek, through thin fabric and into bone, grounding her in a way the darkness never had. The ground was uneven—packed earth and stone, rough enough to scrape skin when she shifted.
She tried to move.
Pain bloomed, slow and heavy, radiating outward from her joints. Her limbs felt wrong—too light, too weak, as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
Didn't i die?
Sound reached her next.
Laughter.
Too close. Too sharp.
"Well? Is she dead this time?"
A sudden pressure struck her side. Not hard—deliberately light. A nudge meant to provoke.
Her breath left her in a soundless wheeze.
Why can't I—
Light stabbed through her closed eyelids, forcing a groan she couldn't voice. She squinted, lashes fluttering uselessly as the world flooded in.
Sky.
A vast, open blue framed by dark tiled eaves and high stone walls. Sunlight glinted off carved stone paths and trimmed hedges arranged with almost obsessive care.
This wasn't the hospital.
Her heart lurched.
"She's awake."
The voice came from above.
Lin Yue's vision swam as a figure leaned into her field of view. A girl—young, delicate, draped in soft silk the color of blooming peaches. Jade hairpins caught the light as she tilted her head, studying Lin Yue with idle curiosity.
Disdain followed immediately.
"Honestly," the girl said, wrinkling her nose. "She faints every time she's given real work."
Lin Yue tried to speak.
Her throat moved. Her lips parted.
Nothing.
No sound. No whisper. Not even a rasp.
Panic surged hot and sudden, squeezing her chest until her breath came shallow and uneven. She dragged in air and tried again, forcing it upward with desperate intent—
Nothing.
Not even a rasp.
The silence was absolute.
A soft laugh broke it.
"What's wrong, Yueying?" the girl asked lightly, as if amused by a private joke. "Still can't talk?"
She covered her mouth with her sleeve, giggling to herself. "That's what I like most about you, sister—always so quiet. You never argue. Never complain."
The word hit harder than the silence.
Sister?
And then—
Yueying?
The name echoed in her mind, unfamiliar yet strangely close, like something overheard in a dream. Her thoughts stuttered, fragments colliding as she tried to grasp hold of it.
That was… her.
The girl in front of her straightened, clearly pleased by her own cruelty. "You should be grateful," she continued. "If you could speak, Father might actually notice you. Wouldn't that be troublesome?"
Father.
Another word slid into place, heavy with meaning.
Images flickered at the edge of her consciousness—broad shoulders draped in dark robes, a stern profile glimpsed only from a distance, a presence that made servants lower their heads and quiet their breathing.
The Shen family patriarch.
A renowned physician.
Her father.
Her knees weakened.
This body—Shen Yueying—had known these words long before she ever had. The fear, the submission, the instinct to shrink and disappear flooded her senses all at once, so strong it nearly dragged her under.
She shifted, trying to push herself upright, but the sudden rush of dizziness sent the world tilting. Her hand slipped against the stone, and she had to brace herself hard to keep from sagging back down.
The girl noticed immediately and smirked.
"Careful," she said lightly. "If you pretend to faint again, Mother will say you're doing it on purpose."
Servants stood nearby, eyes averted, pretending not to see.
Yueying—no, she was Yueying now—lowered her gaze, breath coming in shallow pulls as she struggled to steady herself. Her mind raced, piecing together what little she could grasp.
Sixteen years old.
Illegitimate.
Mute since birth.
Bullied openly.
Ignored completely.
She lifted her head again, slowly, and met her sister's eyes.
The girl's smile faltered for just a heartbeat.
Something in Yueying's gaze was wrong—too clear, too focused, stripped of the dull fear she was accustomed to seeing.
"…What are you looking at me like that for?" her sister snapped.
Yueying didn't answer.
She couldn't.
But she didn't look away either.
Her fingers curled at her side, nails biting into her palm as she anchored herself in the present. Panic still trembled beneath her skin, but beneath it—deeper—something steadier was forming.
Understanding.
This was not a dream.
Not delirium.
She had fallen into another life.
Into Shen Yueying's life.
And for the first time since opening her eyes in this world, a single, quiet certainty settled in her chest:
She might be trapped in this body—
—but she would not live this life the same way.
The silence stretched.
Her sister studied her for another moment, irritation replacing amusement. The look in Yueying's eyes no longer entertained her. There was no trembling, no frantic nodding, no tearful submission—just a steady, unsettling calm.
"Tch." The girl clicked her tongue. "You're no fun today."
She straightened, smoothing her sleeves as if Yueying were no longer worth the attention. "Lying there like a half-dead thing… honestly, it's unsightly."
Her gaze flicked toward the servants. "Leave her. If she's really sick, she'll crawl back on her own."
Without another glance, she turned and walked away, silk skirts whispering across stone. The servants followed quickly, relief evident in the way they avoided looking back.
The courtyard emptied.
The sudden quiet pressed in around Yueying, broken only by the distant rustle of leaves and the faint sound of footsteps fading away.
Her strength ebbed almost immediately.
The moment the tension vanished, her legs gave out. She sank back onto the cold stone, breath hitching as weakness rolled through her in waves. Her hands trembled uncontrollably, fingers numb and clumsy.
Too much, she realized hazily. This body… can't handle shock.
Her vision blurred.
She squeezed her eyes shut, focusing on her breathing the way she had countless times before in operating rooms and emergency wards. Slow. Controlled. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
Stabilize first.
Footsteps hurried toward her.
Yueying tensed instinctively, heart lurching—but the presence that knelt beside her was different. Careful. Anxious.
"Second Miss!"
A woman's voice—low, rushed, genuinely worried.
Yueying opened her eyes to see a maid kneeling beside her, plain robes rumpled, hair pulled back hastily. The woman glanced over her shoulder, then back at Yueying, panic flashing across her face.
"Heavens, why are you still out here?" the maid whispered. "I went to fetch water and you were gone—why didn't anyone help you up?"
Her hands hovered uncertainly before settling on Yueying's arm, warm and steady.
Yueying tried to respond. Tried to explain.
No sound came.
The maid seemed to understand immediately. "Ah—right." Her voice softened. "It's alright. Don't move. I'll help you."
She slipped an arm around Yueying's shoulders and carefully lifted her, taking most of her weight. Yueying winced as pain flared along her side, but the maid adjusted at once, murmuring apologies under her breath.
"You shouldn't be out here," the maid continued, half to herself. "If Madam finds out—"
She didn't finish the sentence.
They moved slowly across the courtyard, each step measured. Yueying leaned against her, dizzy, the world swaying with every movement. The manor seemed larger now—paths longer, walls higher, the sky impossibly far away.
When they reached a small side building tucked away from the main residence, the maid paused to catch her breath before guiding Yueying inside.
The room was dim and sparse.
A narrow bed. A small table. One shuttered window.
Yet the moment Yueying was helped onto the bed, warmth seeped back into her limbs. The maid tucked a thin blanket around her shoulders, movements practiced and gentle.
"Rest for now," she whispered. "I'll bring you some water. Don't worry—no one saw."
Yueying watched her move about the room, chest rising and falling unevenly.
This woman—this stranger—was the first person to treat her like someone worth helping.
Her fingers tightened slightly in the blanket.
Confusion still swirled in her mind. Fear lingered at the edges.
The maid straightened the edge of the blanket one last time, hesitated as if she wanted to say more, then quietly slipped out. The door closed with a soft click.
Silence.
It settled heavily over the small room.
Yueying lay still, staring at the low wooden ceiling. The faint scent of dried herbs clung to the air—bitter, medicinal, unevenly mixed. Her breathing slowly steadied, but her thoughts refused to follow.
Then—
Pain lanced through her skull.
She gasped soundlessly, fingers clawing into the bedding as images erupted behind her eyes, sharp and violent, nothing like the vague impressions before.
She saw figures moving in ways that defied sense and weight, bodies lifting from the ground as if the air itself had become a stepping stone beneath their feet. Robes snapped sharply in the wind as impossible arcs carried them across open courtyards, across rooftops, across distances no human should have been able to cross in a single breath.
Blows landed without contact. A single gesture sent ripples through stone, through earth, through the very air, leaving cracks spiderwebbing outward where feet touched down. Movements blurred together—too fast, too precise—ending in violent collisions that scattered bodies like leaves caught in a storm.
Some struggled back to their feet.
Others did not.
She felt it more than she saw it: the unspoken rule beneath every clash, heavy and inescapable. Victory did not belong to the just or the kind, but to those who stood last. Strength decided everything that followed.
This world felt eerily familiar.
Not because she had lived it before, but because she had once imagined it. The worlds of flying swords and impossible heroes she had devoured in novels and films late at night—stories she had dismissed as fantasy—now crowded in around her with startling, suffocating clarity.
That familiarity deepened as the memories shifted again, pulling her away from clashing figures and toward quieter spaces.
Rooms heavy with the scent of herbs. Low tables crowded with ceramic jars and paper-wrapped bundles. Roots and leaves laid out to dry, some bitter, some sharp enough to sting the nose. Mortars worn smooth from generations of use.
Medicine.
Not the sterile kind she had known before, but something older—more intuitive. It followed patterns she recognized instinctively: balance and imbalance, heat and cold, flow and obstruction. Energy moving through the body along invisible paths, much like blood through veins or impulses along nerves.
Meridians.
Qi.
The realization sent a small shock through her.
This world's medicine was not entirely foreign.
It was close—uncannily so—to the traditional Chinese medicine she had once studied only briefly, squeezed between anatomy exams and clinical rotations. She remembered the short elective she had taken in medical school, more out of curiosity than conviction. Yin and yang. Five elements. Organ systems viewed not in isolation, but as part of an interconnected whole.
At the time, she had found it fascinating.
And impractical.
She had wanted to learn more—had even bought a book she never finished—but there had always been another exam, another shift, another demand on her time. Modern medicine had swallowed her whole, leaving little room for anything else.
Now those half-forgotten concepts surfaced with startling clarity, no longer theoretical.
Here, they worked.
She felt it in the memories of Shen physicians diagnosing not by machines, but by pulse and breath, by the faintest shifts in complexion and scent. By listening—truly listening—to what the body revealed when given patience and skill.
Silver needles guided energy rather than nerve impulses. Decoctions did more than treat symptoms; they restored balance. Injuries that should have crippled a person for life were mended by correcting what had gone astray beneath the surface.
The Shen family did not merely heal flesh.
They healed the flow of life itself.
Her chest tightened.
This was a prestigious medical clan, respected and feared in equal measure. Warriors who could shatter stone still bowed their heads here, knowing that no amount of strength mattered if their bodies failed them. The Shen name carried authority not through force, but necessity.
And she—
She had been born into it.
The irony burned.
She saw herself again through borrowed memories: a quiet child lingering at the edge of consultation halls, watching from behind screens as treatments were administered. Memorizing the way hands moved, the order in which herbs were selected, the calm certainty with which diagnoses were made.
Always watching.
Never invited closer.
Because she could not cultivate properly.
Because her energy refused to circulate.
Because something inside her had been sealed before she ever learned its shape.
In a family that healed the powerful, she was the one no one tried to fix.
Her breath trembled as understanding settled more fully.
This world worshipped power—but medicine was power too. A subtler kind, one that determined who lived long enough to grow stronger and who fell behind, forgotten.
And she stood at the intersection of both.
A modern doctor reborn into a lineage that practiced a form of healing she had once longed to understand—only now, it was no longer optional. No longer theoretical.
It was survival.
Yueying lay still beneath the thin blanket, heart pounding softly in her chest.
If this world was governed on strength alone…
then knowledge might become the blade that carved her place within it.
And this time, she would stand her ground.