Of course, he couldn’t really say out loud that he’d prefer to not burn off his mouth, thank you very much. So, hands shaking slightly, Liu Haoyi ate the noodles.

“Are you enjoying them, my lady?”

With tears in his eyes, Liu Haoyu nodded. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak. His throat was on fire!

After considerable effort and almost shedding a few burning tears, Liu Haoyu finished the meal and gulped down all the tea. Eyes red and mouth tingling-numb, he rasped the question he’d been wanting to ask all this time. As all transmigrator story addicts know, this question was essential for figuring out how the heck he’d ended up in this body, and how he could get back.

“Yinuo, you said I was found in the pond half-drowned and covered in blood. What happened?”

Yinuo’s cheery smile disappeared, and her lovely eyes started watering again.

“Don’t cry!” Liu Haoyu burst. “Please don’t cry!” He really couldn’t stand another round of a woman crying into his shirt.

Yinuo sniffed, holding in her immense tears and trembling. “My lady…Oh, my lady, it was horrible! This maid is so incompetent! If only I had been there to stand in front of you and sacrifice myself for your health—”

“Oh, come on,” Liu Haoyu snapped. “You, sacrifice yourself for me? If I got attacked and you stood in front of me, the attacker would just push you out of the way and come for me next! Who do you think you are, a great cultivator or something?”

“...”

Liu Haoyu’s stomach dropped, flooding with guilt. Yinuo’s eyes were watering even more now, but she was clearly trying to hold her tears in like he’d asked.

“M-my lady…” Yinuo stammered breathlessly. Then suddenly, all at once, she threw herself at Liu Haoyu and grabbed her hands, weeping a flood onto the bed. “My lady! You are right! This maid is so sorry! I cannot even protect you! This maid is too weak! I am nothing compared to an amazing cultivator like you, and those evil assassins were even able to injure you! Even if I had been there and thrown myself in front of you to stop you attacker, I would have been no use! This maid is utterly, completely useless! Ah!”

“Okay, stop! No, no, that’s not what I meant!” Liu Haoyu burst, panicking. “I’m sorry! You’re not useless, Yinuo. You’re, um, a great maid!”

Yinuo sniffed, looking up at him with a teary, snotty pretty face and watery eyes. “Really?”

Liu Haoyu sighed, face red. He changed the topic. “Yinuo, I need you to answer my question from before. What happened to me?”

Yinuo’s eyes watered again, but she held in the tears, wiping away the moisture on her face. “The physician said you might not remember. My lady, no one knows what happened! Only that you went out on a walk in the Blue Wisteria Garden after speaking with your shimei Ji Huishi. There were loud noises of fighting in the garden soon after, and we rushed outside to find you half-sunken in the Red Glass Pond, with wounds all over your body and half-drowned!”

Noises of fighting, half-submerged, wounds everywhere…it did sound like an assassination attempt.

“You didn’t find the culprit?”

Yinuo shook her head. “No, my lady. No one was nearby! They must have escaped quickly when they heard people coming.”

Hmm. An interesting setup, then. The original owner of this body, Liu Haoyi—ah, it still bothered him that their names were almost identical!—had gone through a near-death experience, and maybe even died. Now, his spirit had replaced hers in this body, and he had no memory of what had happened. In fact, he seemed to have no memories of Liu Haoyi’s at all. Which was just perfect (that was sarcasm) because now he had no idea exactly how Liu Haoyi had died, who had tried to assassinate her, and whether he could get back to the modern world by reversing whatever had happened.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Also, this was just perfect (more fresh sarcasm for you) because it meant somebody unknown was out to kill him.

He’d just had to transmigrate into the body of someone on a hit list. Maybe more than one hit list. Seriously, why were transmigration stories always like this?! Did transmigration authors have a thing for the assassination of the innocent?

At least he knew what his next steps needed to be now.

1. Figure out if he was dead in the modern world and couldn’t go back. Somehow. Don’t ask how. He’d come up with something.

2. Figure out how this assassination had gone down.

3. Watch out for suspicious people so that he would

4. not die.

A pretty comprehensive list! Liu Haoyu almost chuckled to himself a little. Just an hour into his transmigration, he’d gotten down a basic plan. So being an otaku did have its benefits, in spite of it subtracting coolness and manliness points.

After probing around some more, Liu Haoyu found out from Yinuo that he—ahem, Liu Haoyi—was the eldest daughter and only child of the most renowned cultivation sect of the time, Zhengyi Liu Peak. She was a superb cultivator whose talents and beauty were known across the Central Plains. And, thankfully, she wasn’t arranged to be married to anyone. Liu Haoyu sighed a gigantic sigh of relief.

“You know Sect Leader Liu would never force you into a marriage,” Yinuo chirped, back to her cheerful and bubbly state as she brushed Liu Haoyu’s soft hair. “He loves you too much. You’re the apple of his eye! He knows you want your freedom, and he would never take it away from you.”

Liu Haoyu sighed another humongous breath of relief.

In these kinds of stories with female transmigrators in ancient time periods, there were only two types of fathers:

1. The evil, abusive father who forced their daughter into marriage for the sake of wealth and status, disregarding their daughter's desires entirely and treating them like a chess piece

2. The kind father who doted on his daughter to the point of nearly spoiling her rotten

By some gracious act, he’d received the second. Liu Haoyu silently thanked whatever immortals were out there and promised to give a huge offering at the first shrine he could find.

Just as he was about to ask where this kind and doting father figure was (he could definitely wheedle out some more information out of him and scope his life situation out more by meeting the father figure, it was always like that)—there was a bang, and the door burst open.

Into the room rushed a woman. She ran to the side of Liu Haoyu’s bed like she was beelining for her most precious treasure, and she kneeled down, gently taking both of Liu Haoyu’s hands in her own.

Liu Haoyu’s eye twitched.

How many more new experiences did he need to have today? Gods of transmigration, give him just a little rest, please!

Holding his hands and staring deeply into his eyes with the utmost concern was the most beautiful woman Liu Haoyu had ever seen in his whole entire (past) life. No, she had to be the most beautiful woman in the whole world. In all time! She was even more beautiful than he was, though it was a different kind of beauty. Her skin glowed like dewy lotus petals, her eyes sparkled with a divine light, and her hair that wasn’t bound with jewels and hair binding pins fell around her shoulders in goddess-like waves.

While Liu Haoyi’s beauty was warm and enticing, this woman’s beauty was divine.

“Ah Yu,” The woman panted. She seemed to have run here as fast as possible. “Are you all right?”