Prologue

Inside of Lei Nuwa, a million memories began to fall and glitter like sparks and confetti. Her mind seemed to split into pieces, as she bounced from one life to the next. Each one seemed more hopeless than the one before; each iteration, the girl in those memories seemed to lose light and life.

'Liu Yichen, Shi Qian, you must have cursed me in my first life. It was not enough to kill me; no, it was not enough for you to be satisfied. That is why I can never know peace or rest. I can't even close my eyes to escape your faces.'

Liu Yichen was a handsome and intelligent man who was in love with an equally beautiful and intelligent woman. Shi Qian was this girl, a stunning woman who impressed everyone she met. Said to be a match created by the heavens, the two were deeply enamored with each other.

Lei Nuwa was Liu Yichen's fiance; due to a certain man's dying wish, the two were engaged when they were young. Lei Nuwa was painfully average; her only standout trait was her strange purple eyes, but her looks were unremarkably plain in comparison. Many believed Nuwa to be a cursed child. Liu Nao, Liu Yichen's grandfather, had an intense reaction to her eyes, and immediately had her organized to be his grandson's fiance. As they grew up, their engagement was a sword hanging from a swing above their heads. Lei Nuwa was in love with Liu Yichen; Liu Yichen did not even register Nuwa as a person in his mind.

Two out of four lives, he had been the one to end Lei Nuwa's life. Her first life, he resented her for seemingly stealing his happiness with Shi Qian. In a drunken rage, he had beaten Lei Nuwa to death. In her second life, he had pushed Lei Nuwa off of a balcony in order to save Shi Qian's life. Both lives, Lei Nuwa had not mattered in the grand scheme of things. She was, as authors would put it, 'cannon fodder'.

Lei Nuwa grimaced at what she saw in her mind. Her third life: she had been in a car accident while on her way to the hospital to give birth. Her fourth: her lifeless body had been found in a moonlit room- she had committed suicide.

'Perhaps this is punishment for taking what was not mine. How long does retribution last?' Lei Nuwa had lived four lives, but she did not think she would feel truly alive ever again. Her heart was beating, but there was no light in her eyes. Her lungs breathed in and out, but she was so cold to the touch.

As many times as she had done this, she had still hoped that at the end of the streamline of her memories, she would be set free. That she would find peace in death, in nothingness.

The heavens were not kind to Lei Nuwa– and thus, she began her fifth life.