Chapter 1: Apology Letters on Divorce Day

Inside the main hall, the scent of sandalwood was so thick it felt viscous, swirling around the beams and pillars in an attempt to mask the suffocating stench of regret permeating the air. After a while, the smell left a bitter taste on the tip of the tongue.

Shen Lu snapped his eyes open. The light and shadows in his vision flickered violently, and a cold, mechanical voice exploded in his mind: 【Regret Value System activated. High concentration of regret detected. Initial values have been credited.】

He took a deep breath, forcing down the surge of nausea. Looking up, he saw Qin Huai kneeling on the gold-threaded red carpet, her frame as thin and fragile as a reed. She gripped a gold-embossed letter tightly, her knuckles white from the pressure, her eyes as cold as ice as she stared him down. Around them, the scions of the great families knelt in a sea of silk; the rustle of their expensive fabrics sounded jarringly loud in the silence. Zheng Chunmei stood to the side, a faint, mocking smile playing on her lips—a smile that pricked like a needle.

Shen Lu didn't move. He simply watched as Qin Huai raised the letter. Her voice was cold and resolute, echoing through the hall without a ripple of emotion:

"Shen Luming, the engagement between us is hereby void."

The words hit like a sledgehammer to the chest. Shen Lu felt a sharp pang in his heart—a resonance caused by the overlap of memories from his past life and the physical pain of this one. He remembered that he was a waste, his spiritual roots a chaotic mess; being dumped was only natural. But as his gaze swept over Zheng Chunmei’s hypocritical face, the system interface flashed again, red light jumping: 【Weak regret detected from Zheng Chunmei. Source: Misjudgment of identity.】

As it turned out, she had just learned the hidden truth behind Shen Lu’s family background and was currently panicking. That so-called mockery was nothing more than a facade.

Just then, the silence was shattered by the sound of chaotic footsteps. Jiang Chen swaggered into the hall, waving a notification slip. His face was a mask of triumph, tinged with a contemptuous sneer. He looked at Shen Lu and mocked him without reservation:

"You waste. Your qualification for the Pharmaceutical Competition has been revoked. Someone like you, who can't even memorize a basic formula, thinks he's fit to touch spirit herbs?"

The voice was shrill, echoing through the room. Shen Lu sneered and was about to speak when a slight commotion came from the entrance. Su Mingwei walked in, carrying an old medicine chest. Her expression was cool, her eyes sharp. She walked straight to Shen Lu’s side and slammed the chest onto the table, making the copper clasps buzz. She looked at Jiang Chen, her tone flat but every word cutting deep:

"Young Master Jiang, if this 'Clear Heart Powder' had half a tael of cinnabar added to it, it might actually save that brain of yours from the drug erosion. Unfortunately, you're out of luck. You only get to die once."

Jiang Chen’s face froze. He opened his mouth to lash out, but it felt as if an invisible hand had gripped his throat, choking the sound out of him. Shen Lu stopped Su Mingwei, raising a hand to signal her to hold back. He walked slowly toward the center of the hall, where seven black anonymous letters were laid out neatly on the table. They had just been delivered by fast horse; the envelopes bore no signatures, only a faint scent of ink drifting in the air, carrying a strange sense of solemnity.

The system prompt exploded in his mind again, more urgent than before:

【Seven high-purity apology letters detected. Regret Value +700. Would you like to exchange for "初级 Emotional Resonance"?】

*Exchange,* Shen Lu commanded silently. Instantly, a wave of heat surged through his fingertips, as if he had touched a glowing red wire. He felt the atmosphere around him thicken; the inner turmoil of everyone present transformed into visible ripples.

Qin Huai was standing up to leave. Her steps were unsteady, and the veins on the back of her hand were slightly bulging, betraying her inner panic. She thought the broken engagement was a liberation, a way to sever the past, but her body was collapsing faster than her logic.

Shen Lu walked up to her and, under the shocked gazes of everyone present, gently grasped her wrist.

The touch felt like an electric current piercing through skin and flesh.

Three seconds.

A fragmented image flashed in his mind: a late night, Qin Huai sobbing heart-wrenchingly in front of a mirror, murmuring to herself as tears splashed onto the cold stone floor:

"Please don't go... I was wrong. I'd rather die than lose you."

The voice faded. Shen Lu withdrew his hand and looked at Qin Huai calmly.

Qin Huai froze. The frost in her eyes shattered instantly, replaced by an unbelievable mix of terror and shame. She hadn't expected that this man, whom she viewed as a waste, could actually hear the deepest repentance in her heart. The fear of being seen through was more violent than any humiliation.

Zheng Chunmei snapped back to her senses and shrieked, her voice piercing the air:

"What do you think you're doing! Let go of her! How dare someone like you defile our Qingqing?"

She tried to rush forward to pull Qin Huai away, her fingers almost touching the back of Shen Lu’s hand, but an invisible aura radiating from him stopped her dead in her tracks. She felt a sudden, inexplicable fear, as if the man before her was no longer a helpless waste to be slaughtered, but a sword drawn from its sheath.

At that moment, Uncle Liu, who had been silent in the corner, approached carrying a cup of hot tea. He was hunched over, appearing humble, yet his steps were as steady as a mountain and his eyes as deep as a pool. He placed the tea gently by Shen Lu’s hand, the porcelain bottom hitting the wooden table with a crisp *ding*. He spoke in a low, raspy, yet clear voice:

"Young Master, the tea is still hot. Have a sip to calm your nerves. Miss Qin Huai wasn't the only one who knew the truth back then."

Shen Lu took the tea, his gaze glancing at the shadow behind Uncle Liu. He turned to Qin Huai and saw that she had opened the final letter. Her fingers were trembling; the paper bore a familiar handwriting—that of her deceased "ex-husband." Her pupils contracted violently. It was as if she had been struck by lightning; she collapsed to the floor, the letter fluttering down to cover half her face, leaving only her completely broken eyes visible.

The words "ex-husband" were like a bolt of lightning, smashing through the last layer of hypocritical ice in Qin Huai's mind. She stared at the paper, her fingertips white from gripping it too hard, her knuckles cracking. The handwriting was hurried and messy, the ink heavy, as if the writer's hand had been shaking or their emotions had been wildly unstable.

"Impossible..." Qin Huai's voice was hoarse and broken, sounding like the whimper of a wounded animal. "He died three years ago. How could he leave a letter like this?"

Shen Lu didn't speak; he just watched her break down. The tea in his hand had long since gone cold, but he didn't drink it. Instead, he set the cup gently on the edge of the table with a slight clink. In the dead silence of the hall, the sound was jarring, like a hammer striking Qin Huai's fragile psyche.

Uncle Liu stepped back slowly, fading into the shadows as if he had never existed. Shen Lu raised his hand and pointed to the unfinished letter—this was the seventh anonymous apology from the Shen Family secret archives, and a string of encrypted information he had forcibly decrypted using the converted Regret Value. This message didn't come from Qin Huai, but from that dead "ex-husband," the eldest legitimate grandson of the Shen Family who had died young.

The paper trembled in the air. Qin Huai finally saw the last line: "If you are still alive, look at him. He is the one who actually saved you back then. I don't deserve for you to keep hating him."

Memories flooded back like a tide. Qin Huai suddenly clutched her head, curling up on the floor in agony. She remembered that heavy snowfall three years ago, remembered being abandoned in the snow by a branch of the Shen Family, burning with a fever, nearly freezing to death. Everyone thought Shen Lu was just a waste who hid at home living off his parents; no one visited her. But she remembered that late at night, a figure had braved the wind and snow, using their own body heat to warm her freezing hands until dawn.

She had always thought it was a ghost or a hallucination because she hated that man so deeply that her subconscious refused to accept the truth. But handwriting doesn't lie. That was the unique brushwork of the Shen Family's eldest grandson—forceful and deep. Even after three years of death, that obsession remained etched in the depths of the soul.

"So that's how it was..." Qin Huai knelt on the ground, tears falling silently and soaking her collar. "I hated you for three years, and I didn't even bother to find out who you really were..."

Shen Lu walked up to her, looking down from above. He didn't reach out to help her up, because pity at this moment would only pollute his state of mind and affect the system's stability. He said calmly, "Qin Huai, do you understand now? Your so-called 'waste' was nothing more than a cage you wove for yourself. You locked yourself inside, thinking you were getting revenge, when in reality, you were just imprisoning yourself."

Qin Huai looked up. The terror was gone, replaced by a desperate kind of clarity. She looked at Shen Lu—the face she had once loathed, which now felt utterly foreign.

【System Prompt: High-intensity emotional fluctuation detected. Regret Value conversion complete. Current Regret Value: 1200 points.】

The cold prompt flashed in Shen Lu's mind, but his expression remained impassive. 1200 Regret Value was enough to exchange for a mid-level skill: "Truth Retrospection." It was the key to peering into every hidden moment of the last three years, including the undercurrents of the struggle between the legitimate and concubine-born lines within the Shen Family.

He looked around. The guests in the hall were holding their breath, not daring to make a sound. Zheng Chunmei's face had turned from shrill to deathly pale; she realized how ridiculous her arrogance looked in the face of the truth.

"What... what do you want?" Qin Huai asked finally, her voice so light it felt as if a breeze could blow it away.

Shen Lu didn't answer. He turned around and pulled a black jade token from his robes—part of the "Key to Truth" Uncle Liu had hinted at. He placed the token in front of Qin Huai, giving it a light kick with his toe so it stopped by her knee.

"Go back and check who actually opened the door in the backyard of the Shen Family old residence on the seventeenth day of the winter month, three years ago." With that, Shen Lu walked toward the door without looking back.

Qin Huai stared at the jade token, her pupils contracting again. Her hand trembled as she picked it up. The jade was smooth, yet it radiated a bone-chilling cold. On the back of the token was a tiny engraved character, a secret code that no member of the Shen Family should have known: "Sacrifice."

Just then, the sound of urgent galloping reached them from outside, followed by the voice of the butler, Uncle Liu, sounding more panicked than ever: "Young Master! Someone is outside! They say... they say it's the final secret order left by your father before his passing, specifically requesting to see you!"

Shen Lu stopped in his tracks. A secret order from his father? His father had passed away peacefully a year ago, and even the will had been written by his mother. Where did a deathbed order come from?

He slowly turned around, looking at the dark silhouette blurred by the wind and snow in the distance. Standing there was a figure in a black cloak, holding a long staff. A lantern hung from the head of the staff, swaying in the windless snow, casting an eerie red glow.

Qin Huai also stood up, staring intently in that direction. The jade token in her hand resonated with the lantern, emitting a faint hum. A cold curve touched the corner of Shen Lu's mouth. He knew the game had only just begun, and that so-called "ex-husband" might never have truly died.